Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

The Europe Roundup: Restart Romania

BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, November 17 2011

Romania | Restart Romania Like many post-Communist countries, Romania is having troubles promoting a modern idea of citizenship: transparency, activism and engagement are relatively new words for Romanians. ... Read More

Is The road To The Elysee Passing By Twitter?

BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, October 27 2011

After the Socialist primary election that happened earlier this month, the French presidential campaign is heating up and social media are being used by both parties in what can be seen as the second social media ... Read More

Social Media Campaigns - Norwegian style

BY Antonella Napolitano | Monday, September 5 2011

Jon Worth, Pia Guldbransen, Ole Berget and Mudassar Kapur (photo by Alessio Baù) Last week at NordicTechpolitics Norwegian campaign politics had an interesting spot with a panel featuring Pia Gulbrandsen (Labour ... Read More

Slovakia: Transparency, Censorship and a Legislation Gap

BY Antonella Napolitano | Wednesday, July 20 2011

Some weeks ago I wrote about ZNasichDani.sk ("From Our Taxes" in Slovak), an application that was among the winning projects of the  Open Data Challenge, a big open data competition promoted by the European Union. ... Read More

The Europe Roundup: Apps4Germany

BY Antonella Napolitano | Monday, July 18 2011

Germany | Apps4Germany Open Data in Germany takes a further step with the launch of a national competition called "Apps für Deutschland" (Apps for Germany). Apps4De is set to "open up the public sector", as explained ... Read More

An Apps Contest for the MTA

BY Nick Judd | Monday, July 11 2011

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the entity responsible for the New York City Subway and commuter transportation in the city's metropolitan area, is hosting an apps contest for developers to build on top of the ... Read More

Saxby Chambliss, On Your iPhone

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, June 15 2011

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) today released a mobile app compatible with iPhones and other Apple devices. A press release from Chambliss' office claims this is the first official application offered by a U.S. Senator. ... Read More

Change.org Invites Developers to Hack for Change (and Dollars, Too)

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, May 25 2011

Change.org has just announced that it's going to be throwing a 24-hour-long Hack for Change event, starting at noon on Saturday, June 18th, in the company's headquarters in San Francisco's SOMA district. The goal is to ... Read More

San Francisco Gets Ambient Awareness of How It Parks

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, May 9 2011

Image credit: SFPark.org The New York Times' Matt Richtel profiles San Francisco's new SFPark app, a mobile tool for helping drivers find parking spots in the city by the bay. Finding elusive open parking spots in a city ... Read More

Recovery.gov's Stimulus Spending Tracker is Now Location-Aware, and Mobile

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, April 28 2011

The team behind the federal government's much-critcized Recovery.gov site recently rolled out a pair of mobile versions of the site, customized for the iPhone and iPad. The pair of Recovery.gov apps make use of the fact ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed wednesday >

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.

GO

yesterday >

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.

GO

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.

GO

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.

GO

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

More