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Daily Digest: Who Wants Obama's Waffles?

BY Joshua Levy | Thursday, April 24 2008

The Web on the Candidates

  • Who wants waffles? Seminal food site Chow.com discovered that an eager customer at Glider’s diner in Scranton, PA got his hands on Barack Obama’s uneaten waffles three days ago and put them up for auction on eBay. The bidding reached $20,100 before diner patron John Oakes took the listing down, fearing bad publicity for the diner. “We put it up there because we figured people are nuts and they might go crazy with it. And guess what? They did,” Oakes said.

  • We somehow missed this the other day: techPresident contributor Colin Delany discovered that, thanks to a progressive Google bombing campaign, if you Google a phrase like “Barack Obama Muslim,” the first hits debunk the claim that Obama is some kind of Muslim Manchurian Candidate. Delany isn’t sure if the Obama campaign was involved, but he writes that it’s “another measure of the subtlety of the ways campaigns can interact with the public via the ‘net.”

  • YouTube news and politics editor Steve Grove has stood at the crossroads of politics and the web for the whole of the 2008 campaign, launching the YouChoose ‘08 channel on YouTube, interviewing presidential candidates as they’ve come through Mountain View, working on the YouTube/CNN debates, and running last year’s Spotlight series of candidate/voter interactions. He’s also been posting videos of his own commentary under the Citizentube moniker, and now he’ll be blogging as Citizentube too. We’re excited to see more of him in the space. Also, we somehow missed this profile of Steve from earlier this year. Check out that cute picture!

The Candidates on the Web

  • John McCain is criticizing the North Carolina Republican Party for planning to release a new TV ad highlighting Barack Obama’s connection to Jeremiah Wright under the guise of opposing Democrats Bev Purde and Richard Moore for Governor. McCain himself sent a letter to the NC GOP Chairman, writing, “the television advertisement you are planning to air degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats. In the strongest terms, I implore you to not run this advertisement.” A commenter on a post from the Politico’s Jonathan Martin thinks this could be a win-win situation for McCain: “Was there ever any doubt that it would air? This way McCain still looks clean and comes away with the higher ground while the negative ad does its damage to the Obama camp. Best of both worlds. Brilliant move from the GOP. An excellent example of politics 101.” I guess that’s politics 101; here’s hoping for a politics 2.0.

  • You may remember a moment earlier this year when an internal Obama spreadsheet “leaked” to the press showing complicated math that argued that Obama could win the nomination by taking a pledged delegate lead and fighting through June (sound familiar?). In a wonderful “Plouffe piece,” the New Republic’s Noam Scheiber profiles Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and exposes the truth about that leak: it wasn’t a leak after all.

  • Congressional Quarterly’s Eric Pfeiffer writes that, despite the Hill’s fear of social media, a handful of congressional offices are dipping their toes in the blogging pool. Among others, Nancy Pelosi’s office, led by Director of New Media Karina Newton and New Media Advisor Jesse Lee, has been producing a blog called The Gavel, John Boehner’s office has a blog and a Twitter account, and Mitch McConnell has been reaching out to bloggers for a while. Come in, Congress, the water’s fine!

In Case You Missed It…

Yesterday Liza Sabater wrote about getting Lost In Hillaryland while driving down to Philadelphia to volunteer for the Obama campaign. She wrote about how after the mini-adventure of the day, her oldest son came to the same conclusion as Joe Trippi: that Obama was going to lose. The observation was the most interesting part of the whole trip because it lent credit to her recent thinking about “politics as interface”.

Micah Sifry suspected that the “Hillary raised $10 million online overnight” report that the Washington Post ran yesterday was too good to be true. Now the Clinton campaign has clarified its post-PA fundraising numbers. Peter Daou, the campaign’s internet director, makes clear that the $10M was a projection that the campaign put out midday and hit sometime last night. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has probably pulled in $6.5 million since Tuesday, and most of that was before it started an email push in response to Clinton’s claims.

Alan Rosenblatt just has to share with you the satire of the satire… It’s Raining McCain - Slayer Style!

News Briefs

RSS Feed today >

In Denmark, Online Tracking of Citizens is an Unwieldy Failure

Six years after Denmark passed a law mandating that telecommunication companies retain and store their customers' personal data for up to two years, local advocacy groups and the telecom industry are pushing for immediate changes to the legislation. The practice of keeping records of private citizens' Internet use is an unjustifiable invasion of privacy, they say. The police, meanwhile, have concluded that requiring telecoms to store subscriber data has not helped them track criminals, which was the the ostensible purpose of the practice. But the Danish government still wants to postpone an evaluation of the law for another two years. GO

"Accidental" Blocking of Australian Websites Raises Concerns About Government Censorship

An Australian government agency admitted last week to unintentionally blocking more than 1,200 perfectly legal websites in the process of shutting down one allegedly fraudulent site. In their defense, they pointed out that they have successfully blocked a number of websites in the past nine months without such digital collateral. This assertion came as no consolation to Australian netizens concerned about Internet censorship, especially opaque and hazily legal censorship.

GO

tuesday >

Honda Campaign Rolls Out Endorsements From Asian American Stars

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) rolled out several additional endorsements from Asian American leaders and celebrities Tuesday, with one of them vouching for his high-tech bona fides. GO

Here Are The People President Obama Hopes Will Repair American Elections

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration established by President Obama after problematic 2012 elections now has a web presence at SupporttheVoter.gov. Obama established the commission by executive order on March 28 "to identify best practices in election administration and to make recommendations to improve the voting experience." GO

After Oklahoma Disaster, Neighbors Look Online for Ways To Help

In echoes of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, social media sites and small business websites in and around tornado-wracked Moore, Okla., are full of offers of help, questions about missing pets and loved ones, and evidence that neighbors are willing to reach out to help one another in a disaster. On a single Facebook group, there's a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City promising free meals to first responders or people hit by the tornado; a mother a few hours' drive from Moore offering to open her door for children who might need a place to stay; a resident sharing a picture of a found dog and contact information for the owner to get in touch. GO

Change.org Lands $15 Million From Omidyar

Change.org capped an extraordinary few years of growth Tuesday with the announcement that it has landed a $15 million investment led by the Omidyar Network. GO

What German Politicians Think of Google Glass

The German government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel has not had the easiest relationship with Google. The company launched a public campaign against a law backed by her coalition that would require search engines to pay to show news articles in search results, with mixed results. What's more, Google has long had to navigate the privacy waters in Germany and throughout the European Union. But that has not stopped her federal minister for economics and technology, Philipp Rösler, from giving Google Glass an enthusiastic test run as he leads a delegation of German technology companies and politicians on a trip to Silicon Valley this week as part of German Valley Week. GO

Crowdsourcing Waste Management Solutions in Montenegro

For once we aren't talking about the worldwide scarcity of toilets, just good old-fashioned household waste. Montenegro has a garbage problem so bad even the tourists are complaining about it. A new mobile app sponsored by the Agency for Environmental Protection, NGO Ozon and United Nations Development Programme in Montenegro will hopefully get citizens involved in reporting illegal garbage dumps. GO

monday >

Her Majesty's Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

GO

Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

GO

Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

GO

thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

GO

wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

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