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Daily Digest: 8/29/07

BY Joshua Levy | Wednesday, August 29 2007

The Web on the Candidates

Ben Smith, who covers the Democratic candidates for the Politico, writes about some unforeseen consequences of journalists using Facebook. "When a campaign type is considering leaking to a reporter, couldn't the fact that you're "friends" on Facebook make the source queasy?," Smith asks. There is certainly some illuminating data to be mined from the Facebook friends of reporters, staffers, and consultants; for example, "Obama insider Pete Giangreco has just a couple of reporter-friends, including Facebook wizard (434 friends, 330 more than [Smith]) Marc Ambinder." Ben's solution is to get us at techPresident to use our legendary data-charting skills to create a map of these relationships. We'll see what we can do, Ben.
The GOP Bloggers blog runs monthly straw polls that, while unscientific, give a taste of how the Republican candidates are faring online. One candidate is glaringly missing from this month's poll, however: Ron Paul. "After my decision to include Ron Paul in the previous poll, I monitored (to the best of my ability) the efforts by Paul's online supporters. With the help of other bloggers, we discovered a sophisticated coordinated effort to spam the poll, obfuscate their actions, and even cheat the poll," writes blogger Matt Margolis. This "coordinated effort," according to Margolis, may include Paul's communication director, Jesse Benton, and has caused the results to be "severely flawed and useless as a barometer." Since Paul supporters have shown that they won't play nice, this month there's no Paul.

The Candidates on the Web

YouTube debate skeptic Mitt Romney has apparently embraced some aspect of the voter-generated content movement. The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas reports that Romney is asking supporters to use Yahoo's Jumpcut.com, a video-editing site, to create a television ad for him. They're being encouraged to mashup video clips, audio files, and photos (some are provided by the Romney campaign, but users can bring in their own media as well). It's a pretty cool idea, shows that his more forward-thinking staff, or maybe his sons, may have gotten through to him on the tech stuff. I know a certain snowman who might be interested in participating...
Vargas also chats with Cyrus Krohn, the former director of Yahoo's election strategy who's now the the director of the RNC's eCampaign department. One of his major tasks will be to tackle the perception that the Republicans are behind online, though we won't concede that they are. "We can't just focus on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook," Krohn told Vargas. "My history with the Internet is with the portal space, with MSN and Yahoo. So to me, the question is, why are we focused on three or four sites and a list of blogs when we still need to figure out the value of portals in the political process? Yahoo Groups, for all intents and purposes, was the original MySpace." Um, ok, except that my favorite band didn't get huge by setting up a Yahoo group.
Chris Dodd just got a major endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters, and his website now sports "firefighter yellow" to prove it. The header graphic now features a photo of Dodd with -- you guessed it -- a bunch of firemen. Also new to the site are individual state pages for early primary states and Connecticut, Dodd's home state. He isn't the first candidate to do this, but it's evidence of the struggling candidate's commitment to staying in the race.
Elizabeth Edwards is known to show up on blogs to support her husband's campaign, and she's often quite candid in her posts and interviews. But her recent comments about Hillary Clinton in an interview in Salon, and a New York Times' story about parents taking their kids on the campaign trail, have inspired a slight kerfuffle in the blogosphere. Writing at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, "Rebecca" told Elizabeth off. "Elizabeth, I DON'T LIKE the choices you have made! TAKE YOUR KIDS HOME. Get off the freakin' campaign trail. Your husband is NOT going to be the candidate, and he is NOT going to be president." Whoa. There's lots more where that came from, with a bevy of comments backing up Elizabeth to boot.

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

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.

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

Controversial Hoekstra Microsite Targeting Debbie Stabenow Created By The Prosper Group

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has caused a firestorm in the past 24 hours with a new campaign ad that depicts China as a young woman riding a bike in a rural area speaking in broken English. The thirty second spot aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it accuses Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow of aiding ... GO

White House CTO Aneesh Chopra's Exit Interview

On his way out of the White House and back to Virginia, where he is expected to run for public office — but will neither confirm or deny that's the plan — Aneesh Chopra describes the shape of the post he pioneered as the country's first-ever chief technology officer.

As a result of Chopra's interview with The Atlantic's tech/politics correspondent, Nancy Scola, there's now a public record of what this first-ever CTO thinks the CTO's job actually is ("On any topic that is a priority for the president, my role is evaluate how technology, data, and innovation can advance, support, and improve upon those strategies," among other things) and how it might be improved.

friday >

Slovenian ambassador apologizes for signing ACTA, Poland halts ratification

Apparently, some EU countries are reconsidering their support to ACTA, only a week after signing the agreement.
Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, has in fact issued a public apology to her country for signing it. Meanwhile, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he's halting the ratification process of the international treaty.
Last week people took the streets in Poland, and a protest is planned in Ljubljana tomorrow. GO

Hip or Hype?

Debates 2.0

GOP 2012

SOPA/PIPA