Must-Reads

• The Wall Street Journal reported on campaign advertising online and noted the following:

  The Obama campaign had already spent some $10.4 million on Internet advertising and other online expenses by the beginning of March, according to a review of campaign-finance reports by the Center for Responsive Politics. Mr. Romney had spent $2.3 million, more than any of his rivals. Rick Santorum's campaign had spent just $323,000 or so on Internet ads, according to the Center, but Santorum aides have been aggressively using Twitter and other social-media networks for fundraising and to get out their candidate's message.

• As questions rise over what exactly happened when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot, MoveOn and ColorofChange are sharing a video featuring a "Song for Trayvon" in an e-mail to supporters. Earlier, an I Could Be Trayvon Tumblr had emerged, as well as a Tumblr showing Fox News journalist Geraldo Rivera in a hoodie following remarks he made in which he suggested that African-American parents should tell their children not to wear them. Brian Stelter from the New York Times reported on how journalists from minority backgrounds in part were drawn to the Martin case through posts directed at them on social media.

• The U.S. government scientist who first used the now infamous "pink slime" did so in an e-mail that he thought was private.. He had criticized the beef industry's proposal for a mix of fatty beef by-products and connective tissue, ground up and treated with ammonium hydroxide, and blended with ground beef, in an e-mail to co-workers that later was released through a Freedom of Information Request submitted in the course of reporting a 2009 New York Times article on food safety. The term has since become a rallying cry for consumer advocates.
  

  The issue got renewed life when British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who advocates for American children to eat healthier food, devoted an episode of his television show to the topic in April last year. Disgusted by the product, consumer activist organizations, food safety blogs and the media have pounced on the issue. More than a million people have watched a YouTube video of Oliver's show, an online petition has begun and consumers have complained to major grocery companies ... "The whole thing went viral ... Just blew the top off everything," said [the scientist] Gerald Zirnstein...."I am really an involuntary whistleblower," he said. But he added, "It looks like pink slime. That is what I said."

  The company that makes the product announced yesterday it is suspending operations at three of four plants.

• Some fund-raising for the Susan G. Komen foundation is lagging following the dispute over its financing of Planned Parenthood. In a column, David Carr, looking at exits from the Komen Foundation, the investigation of the Trayvon Martin case, and more, concludes that maybe he was mistaken in his initial skepticism of online activism.

Notable

• The DCCC has released a video in support of Medicare featuring Martin Sheen, who played President Josiah Bartlet on the popular T.V. show "West Wing."

• Rick Santorum is using his unfriendly run-in with a New York Times reporter as a fund-raising pitch in an e-mail titled “I Am Ready to Take On The New York Times.”

• While YouTube initially removed Herman Cain's latest video — the one Politico's Tim Mak could only describe as "involving the depiction of a rabbit that is shot by a firearm after being launched into the air" — it reappeared. Politico reports the removal was a mistake.

• The Supreme Court has posted the audio and transcript for the first day of hearings on the health care law.

• Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), running for Senate in Wisconsin, is running online ads in support of her petition calling for the Buffett Rule, which would increase taxes for wealthy Americans.

• New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane wrote that the paper overplayed the implications of a possible link between Mitt Romney and Bain Capital's selling of video surveillance technology to China.

• McClatchy Newspapers looked at how the U.S. military attempted to remove the online traces of the soldier accused of murdering civilians in Afghanistan.

• The White House is inviting its social network followers to a Tweetup at the Easter Egg Roll.

• A digital consultant to the Santorum campaign said the candidate's Google problem has been solved. Presidential candidate Rick Santorum's site now appears higher in search results than the site started by columnist Dan Savage to turn the former senator's last name into a sexually charged term.

• The New York Times profiled the company Factual, which sells a wide range of data, including government data, to both big corporations and independent software developers. In another project, several researchers are planning an online browser that searches for language changes in a large online database of scientific papers known as arXiv.

• A Connecticut Patch site has suspended the blog of a Republican Congressional candidate associated with the Tea Party after she was found to have plagiarized several entries from a conservative website and the Washington Times without attribution.

• Chicago State University has lost track of 950 computers, according to an audit.

• Around 10 percent of all bus riders are using the New York City MTA's BusTime system on Staten Island, WNYC reported. BusTime provides real-time location data about buses to commuters.

• Nancy Scola recently spoke with Carole Post, New York City's chief information officer, about the city's new open data legislation.

• A man in New York City aims to walk every street in every borough of New York City, and is tracking his progress in a Google map on the website http://imjustwalkin.com/.

• The New York World is showcasing the New York City mayoral candidates as if they were participants in the Hunger Games. An e-card suggests that "Under 'Obamacare' you'll be covered under your parents' health plan when you are picked as a Hunger Games tribute."

• The Hmong community in California is launching an online translator for the language, which is threatened by assimilation.

• Southern states are lagging behind others in the adoption of broadband Internet, according to a study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

• Nine of the country's largest utility companies have pledged to support the White House's Green Button program and make energy use data available to consumers.

International Headlines

• A new stock exchange called BATS Global Markets had to halt trading on its own stock after technical glitches and errors in its system, also affecting companies like Apple.

• Germany's Pirate Party received 7.4 percent of the vote in the elections for the state parliament of Saarland, its second electoral success after winning 8.9 percent in elections for Berlin's city-state assembly last year. The liberal FDP party, Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition partner, only received 1.2 percent and will not be represented in the parliament. Der Spiegel reported that the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote:
  

  These Pirates, who owe some of their image to their racy name, have now established themselves in provincial Saarland following their grandiose success in big city Berlin. Until recently, they didn't even have political platforms. Ahead of the general election, the other parties can now safely assume that the success of the Pirates is more than just hype. The Pirate Party evidently satisfies a trusting, impartial, heartfelt, grassroots desire for politics. This desire has become alien to an increasingly frumpy and jaded FDP, and the Greens have lost this desire in the daily grind of parliamentary politics.

• German police forces are increasingly using social media to hunt for suspects and witnesses in spite of data protection concerns.

• Nicolas Sarkokzy has joined Google Plus.

• Canada's opposition party faced delays in voting for a new leader as hackers attacked the computer system that allowed party members to cast their ballots online and slowed down the system.

• Several countries have kicked off a six-month-long campaign that will involve volunteers using the Internet to target illegal trash dumps.

• Greeks have come together to fund a Times Square ad advertising Greek tourism using a crowdfunding site called Loudsauce, dedicated to crowdfunding advertisements.

• The Guardian highlighted the Satellite Sentinel Project backed by George Clooney, which uses satellite imagery to monitor potential human rights abuses in Sudan.

• The European Union has banned the sale of Internet surveillance equipment to Iran. Meanwhile, U.S. and European officials say that Iran is providing technology and expertise on monitoring the Internet to Syria.

• An activist in the United Arab Emirates is free on bail, but faces charges for commenting on uprisings against autocratic Arab rulers in his Twitter posts.

• Teletubbies have become part of a code for Chinese microbloggers seeking to escape censorship.