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Newt's New Online Ad

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, March 7 2012

Newt Gingrich is celebrating his win in Georgia today with an online ad through Google that announces "Newt Wins Georgia - Keep the Momentum Going - Donate Today."

But as Gingrich continues with his campaign, he seems to still be struggling with keeping parts of his website online on election days.

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Did Newt Gingrich Lose Florida for Want of a Better API?

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, February 2 2012

Slate's Sasha Issenberg has a great story outlining one narrative about Newt Gingrich's loss in Florida: He inspired a group of tech-savvy volunteers, but gave them no way to plug in to the campaign. Read More

Mitt Romney Doing Click-to-Call Voter-ID In Florida

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, January 31 2012

Mitt Romney's campaign is asking volunteers to use click-to-call tools to do voter identification for the campaign in Florida today.

First-time callers get a script prompting them to ask the person on the other end of the line if they're voting today and who they plan to vote for, and a web form where they can fill in the answers; it's entirely possible that folks who have made more calls get a more complex script.

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"Free Rand Paul" Rallying Cry for Liberty, Campaign Cash

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, January 24 2012

Rep. Ron Paul's presidential campaign is turning online to raise money from his son Sen. Rand Paul's run-in with the Transportation Security Administration Monday.

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First POST: Iowa Caucus Online

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, January 3 2012

Google's new election portal gives a bird's-eye view of the Iowa ground game on the day of the Republican caucuses there. As Iowans convene tonight to pick their choice of presidential nominee, here's a look at where the Internet is playing a part. Update 8:44 p.m.: CNN's Election Center page is carrying entrance polls headed into the caucuses, and Politico is streaming its "results show" live online. Read More

Gingrich Savvy On Facebook, Says Company's Political Team

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Monday, December 12 2011

Current Republican presidential race frontrunner Newt Gingrich's Facebook's page is "a great example of providing many ways for supporters to get involved," according to Facebook's political team. Read More

Do Sen. McCain's Tweets Hint at a Future Presidential Endorsement?

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, December 8 2011

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has said that he isn't going to endorse any Republican presidential candidate any time soon, but he may have blown his cover with a recent series of tweets. Though the Arizona senator was ... Read More

Occupy Wall Street Inspires a Moneybomb

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, December 7 2011

Fundly.com Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer hopes that his support for the Occupy Wall Street movement can translate into fundraising support with the launch of a moneybomb initiative, "$99,000 for the 99 percent," ... Read More

Newt Gingrich's Google Ad Buy Jumps the Cain Train

BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, December 1 2011

Politico's Morning Score notes that Newt Gingrich is running ads on web searches for news about Herman Cain in Iowa and New Hampshire with the message "Support the Candidate that can win." In terms of web searches, that ... Read More

Watching Republican Candidates' 'Boomlets' Through Twitter

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, November 29 2011

Turns out the horse race of Republican presidential politics — who's up, who's down, who's having their "boomlet" or whatever Politico's calling it these days — tracks pretty close to a Twitter statistic. On ... Read More

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Summer Olympics to Stream Live From the UK — For Some

The BBC announced its plans yesterday to broadcast its live Olympics coverage of London's Summer games to PCs, mobile-devices and Internet-connected televisions, Reuters reported.

With a free Olympics application for Apple and Android phones, the BBC says it will be offering up to 24 live streams and video highlights clips, and plans for over 2,500 hours of live programming ... that is only available to viewers in the UK. NBC also plans to stream online, but the majority of free viewing of the Olympics will only be available to existing cable TV subscribers.

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CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront" Will Have Some Tech-Politics Commentators

This should be interesting: CNN nightly news program Erin Burnett OutFront is out with its list of political commentators for the general election. Some of the names are familiar in Internet-politics-land. The gang includes Upworthy's Maegan Carberry, who was previously director of communications at Rock The Vote; Sasha Issenberg, who ventures into our corner of the political world frequently while documenting the new science of political campaigns for Slate; and Ben Smith, veteran political blogger turned BuzzFeed's top politics editor.

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Copyright Fights Heat Up Again Around Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today re-released part of a previously leaked February 2011 draft of the U.S. proposal for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on his KeepTheWebOPEN website, as he joined calls by advocacy groups to make the currently ongoing deliberations about the treaty more open.

The United States, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam are all involved in negotiating the agreement, which include provisions about intellectual property and copyright that will play a role in the developing global online economy. A 12th round of negotiations on the deal is now under way in Dallas, Texas. Issa is encouraging users to use his MADISON platform to comment on the document, which the website Knowledge Economy International obtained and released in March 2011.

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House Republicans Relaunch Speaker.gov

House Speaker John A. Boehner's office on Tuesday pulled the wraps off of the Speaker's overhauled web site just in time for a major policy speech about House Republicans' stance on any debt limit negotiations in the coming year. GO

We're All Journalists, Indeed: Obama Campaign Guests Checked Mobile Phones at the Door

Zeke Miller at Buzzfeed, studiously reading pool reports from President Barack Obama's recent campaign fundraisers, catches something: the Obama campaign, per Washington Post pooler David Nakamura, appears to be collecting mobile phones from event attendees at the door, and storing them in plastic bags. At least, that was the case at a Monday event in New York City.

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Americans Don't Elect to Use Americans Elect; 3rd Party Hits Wall?

Is Americans Elect, the third ballot line cum party that hoped to use the Internet to nominate a centrist ticket for president in 2012 dead? It certainly looks that way. But before anyone starts writing the post-mortem, remember that it has ballot lines in half the states--and those could be used by renegade factions in 2012, or possibly in 2014 to run candidates for Congress. GO

Lori Compas, Netroots Challenger to Wisconsin Senate Republican Scott Fitzgerald, Posts Irreverent YouTube Riposte, And It Takes Off

Lori Compas, a Democrat who's challenging Wisconsin state Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) in the state's June 5 recall election, had a rather unusual Mother's Day this year: She spent at least part of the day making a YouTube video with her family. GO

Romney Campaign Targets Obama's Barnard Commencement Speech With Google Ads

New York City area web users looking for details about Barnard College's Commencement Ceremony, where President Barack Obama gave the Commencement Address earlier this afternoon, are also likely to have encountered a targeted ad calling out "Obama's Wasteful Spending" on Mitt Romney's website, as Emily Schultheis from Politico first reported. While she suggested it was targeted at only the zip code where the college is located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, it also showed up on a search for a zip code located in Queens, while accessing the Internet from Lower Manhattan. But it did not show up for an Internet user located outside the New York area. GO

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