blogging | TechPresident

Come Together, Conservative Bloggers

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, September 9 2010

Bringing Blogging's Energy to the Department of, Well, You Know

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, July 20 2010

Energy Secretary Steven Chu -- seen here touring the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, in 2009 -- is now blogger Steven Chu. Read More

In the Barricades of the Cuban Blogosphere

BY Diego Beas | Friday, July 9 2010

Few countries in the world have such an active and anti-establishment blogosphere as Cuba. Ironically, it's one of the Western Hemispheres' poorest countries, with an outdated communications system, very limited Internet ... Read More

The Blogger as Politician

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, March 4 2010

The New York Times' Ross Douthat riffs off of Mickey Kaus's plan to challenge Barbara Boxer in California's Democratic Senate primary to consider why more bloggers don't run for office: Read More

iPad Politics

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, February 1 2010

The morning-after reaction on the ultimate utility of the iPad has been distinctly mixed. But at least the new device from the mind of Steve Jobs is proving politically useful. The iPad's 3G network connection, when ... Read More

Palin's blogger ban is local

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, December 23 2009

What do you have to do to get banned from a Sarah Palin book signing? Snark on her from a close distance, it seems. Some of Palin's frequent home state critics found themselves blacklisted from attending a recent ... Read More

No room in the White House press pool for HuffPo, TPM?

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, December 4 2009

Are the Days of Independent Political Bloggers Numbered? Digby and Atrios Chime In

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, October 19 2009

Is political blogging no longer a place for the individual, crusading voice? Do you have to be part of a group blog, and ideally backed by a big media property, to flourish in the national political blogosphere in the ... Read More

The Top U.S. Politics Blogs, Via Technorati's Update

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, October 16 2009

Back in January, we updated our list of the fifty top political blogs, using one simple metric: # of incoming links as measured by the blog search engine Technorati. Well, the good folks at Technorati (yes, the company ... Read More

One Year After Obama, Most Big DC Orgs Aren't Embracing Social Media Tools

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, October 15 2009

Marc Ross, Christine Stineman, and Chris Lisi of 2ndSix, Tribe Effect and Chris Lisi Communications have just published a very interesting report looking at how 102 big Washington-based trade associations and advocacy ... Read More

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

tuesday >

Website Imitation is Flattery in New York City Council Race

A New York City Council candidate who had made his name as a technology consultant and spearheaded an open government initiative several years ago found parts of his website copied by another City Council candidate in a different borough, as Politicker first reported. GO

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