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Daily Digest, 2/28/07

BY Joshua Levy | Wednesday, February 28 2007

The Web on the Candidates

  • Heather Greenfield of Technology Daily writes about the use of Google Adwords and Google-bombing in political campaigns. Despite search-engine operators' objections, bloggers from the left and right -- people like Chris Bowers of MyDD and John Hawkins of Right Wing News -- have used Google bombing to influence Google's search results.
  • TechPresident blogger David All has a poll up on his site asking readers, "Which website/service will have the most impact during the 2008 Presidential campaign?" So far, 18 out of 21 voters have chosen YouTube. Giuliani advisor Patrick Ruffini rightly suggests, however, that we don't yet know what the killer app in 2008 will be: "...the killer app of 2008 hasn’t been invented yet. It will be invented in a garage in August of this year, start gaining critical mass by the end of the fourth quarter, and be on the tip of everyone’s tongue by the middle of next year."
  • In the Hill, Jessica Holzer writes about the rise of the Internet and mobile technology in today's campaigns. She quotes Simon Rosenberg: "'07 will be a year of massive experimentation. Much more of the advertising is going to be outside the campaigns," and Joe Trippi says, "Anyone can fake it for a 30-second TV ad, but no one can fake it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We’re going to see authentic candidates, warts and all. But even with the warts, we like 'em."

The Candidates on the Web

  • On day seven of "One Week, One Million," Hillary has raised $978,551.
  • This week John McCain created his own YouTube channel, which consists of videos from his campaign site. It also recreates the black-and-grey motif from that site, and upon loading automatically plays the over-produced, completely un-YouTube-ish video "Democracy is Not For Sale."

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

"Power Politics in the Age of Google"

TechPresident's editorial director, Micah Sifry, will be speaking this afternoon on a panel at Harvard University called "Power Politics in the Age of Google," alongside Susan Crawford, Nicco Mele, Elaine Kamarck and Alexis Ohanian. The panel will be moderated by Harvard Shorenstein Center Director Alex Jones, and will be live-streamed here. GO

House Republicans Get a Jump on the Budget

Via Politico's Mike Allen, the House Republicans are out with a video — this one attributed to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy — getting the drop on President Barack Obama's next federal budget, expected Monday. GO

Mittbucks.com Lets Voters Compare Their Paychecks With Romney's

What would it take for Mitt Romney to be able to relate to the average American's daily economic life? He'd have to pay $1,208.09 for a gallon of gas, according to Mittbucks.com, a web site recently created by Adam Rosenscruggs and his wife Danielle in Washington, D.C. The eye-popping figure results from an annual income that I plugged in ... GO

What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

GO

tuesday >

Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

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