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Daily Digest: "Drill Here, Drill Now" Will Literally Give You Gas

BY Joshua Sherman | Thursday, August 14 2008

The Candidates on the Web

  • MyBO NOOO!: MyBO (my.barackobama.com) has eliminated the system of awarding “points” in favor of a new “activity tracker,” a relative scale that tracks activism from 1-10. According to Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and one of Barack Obama's coordinators of online organizing, the "activity tracker" uses a new formula to gauge activity and is now visible to everyone on MyBO. #

  • McCain's Technology Plan: Yesterday we reported on Sen. John McCain’s lack of tech policy. Today, the Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Holmes and Amy Schatz reports that McCain will unveil a technology agenda that “bundles previously announced pro-business proposals with continued support for a hands-off approach to regulation.” The plan, Holmes and Schatz report, will "reiterate Sen. McCain's opposition to Internet taxes and new laws guaranteeing net neutrality, the idea that Internet providers must treat all legal Internet traffic equally." It also says that McCain maintains, "Congress shouldn't get involved in writing rules for the Internet. Any net-neutrality problems should be left to federal regulators like the FCC to deal with." #

The Web on the Candidates

  • Charts and Crafts: New voter-generated video has Andrew Sullivan’s approval and it is pretty effective. Entitled “Approval Ratings: The Public v. McCain,” the video attempts Al Gore’s mastery of fear-inducing charts. The horror! #

  • Newmark's 2.0 Cents: At ValleyZen.com Craig Newmark talks about technology and the Obama and McCain's online strategies. On Obama "using [technology] to tell people hey let's work together to get stuff done." On McCain: "McCain's site is kind of like my own joke about myself which basically says 'you kids get off my lawn.'" #

TechCongress and Beyond

  • "Drill Here, Drill Now" Wants to Give You Gas: American Solutions has announced a video contest on why America “must adopt a ‘Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” approach.” The winner will receive free gas for a year. American Solutions will choose the Top 3 videos based on their substance and creativity and present them on the contest page where users will be able to vote on their favorite. Oh and Newt Gingrich is involved, if you haven't figured that out yet. Gingrich wants the creative American to help shape the message because "you know, YouTube is a great thing. And it's a lot of fun." #

In Case You Need It...

If you’ve ever thought to yourself “Hey! I would love to see 47 seconds of video that would quickly go through President Bush’s past four years but without any context,” well today is your lucky day! If you need a little more, I can only really describe it as a psychotropic-time-travel-nightmare. This type of work is not new for creator Jeremy Tubbs who in the past has made similar videos for Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama. We're not sure what the message is but this video probably accurately portrays the adrenaline a candidate must feel. Also, it looks 3D, if you blur your eyes. #

News Briefs

RSS Feed friday >

Google to Charlie Rangel: You Are Dead to Me.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) might be facing particularly challenging reelection odds this year, at least acording to Google: based on its new Knowledge Graph interface, the search engine says that the very-much-alive Congressman died on November 20, 2004, as Colin Campbell first reported for Politicker via Azi Paybarah and Anthony Adragna. GO

friday >

Roemer to Americans Elect: Thanks Anyway

Americans Elect announced recently that it would suspend its online candidate selection process, leaving organizations in several states with an open slot on the ballot. Naturally, potential candidate Buddy Roemer is not enthused. "I am taking the next few days to review with supporters how best to proceed from here," he says. GO

Chris Anderson Says That Nixed TED Talk Was Rated "Mediocre," Links To It Anyway

TED's Chris Anderson responds to criticism of how his idea-spreading operation handled a talk about inequality — and posts video of the talk online. GO

Was the "Ricketts"/Fred Davis Obama-Wright Ad Pitch a Good Deal?

As if the content of the now-discarded plan for a new Super PAC-funded attack campaign against President Barack Obama wasn't controversial enough to grab attention — it would revive attempts to link President Obama to the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright just before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention this summer — the now-discarded plan featured a two-page pitch for a pricey social media component meant to boost its exposure. GO

Facebook's Growing Political Importance, Visualized

To commemorate Facebook's impending IPO, the Sunlight Foundation's* reporting group has a new story chronicling Facebook's increasing political spending. Accompanying the story, though, is an instance of their Capitol Words tool that shows Facebook's increasing relevance in Congress as well. GO

TED: Some Seattle Billionaires Have 'Ideas Worth Spreading'; Some Don't

A year ago, Microsoft mega-billionaire Bill Gates gave a talk at TED about state budgets and education funding, entitled "How state budgets are breaking US schools." It was an attack on state budgeting practices. All but one of the fifty states are supposed to balance their budget, but Gates argued that most states used gimmicks "that ... GO

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

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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