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Daily Digest: Fighting Robos with Radar

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, October 24 2008

The Web on the Candidates

  • Will Going Public Be the End of Robocalls?: Townhall.com's Matt Lewis taps into an idea that's been making the rounds: old-school campaign tactics that thrive in secrecy, like very negative robocalls and mailers, might not survive the transparency the Internet can create. The Obama campaign is certainly hoping that's the case. The campaign has just released an Under the Radar map that plots robocalls and negative mailers on a map of the United States. The map not only tracks the slate of actions against Obama, it posts the audio or image of the charge itself and the campaign's pushback. We'll have to wait and see if a map like this is really an effective counteraction. Now, Talking Points Memo experimented with a similar map, but the Obama campaign's is a step better. The poli-tech truism that innovations don't happen on campaigns is looking less solid these days. #

  • Tracking Ideas Via Video, Voting with Your Dollars: Two neat new political visualizations are worth pointing out. Shifting The Debate's Political Video Barometer tracks the popularity of video clips through the liberal and conservative blogospheres, as proxies for the spread and influence of ideas. If you lean partisan, it's fascinating to see what the other side is watching. (Thanks Fred Stutzman) And GoodGuide uses political contribution records from the Center for Responsive Politics to see which businesses align with your personal politics. Using a beautiful Flash-tastic interface, it plots, for example, your bank up against other lenders to see if you're cashing your checks in the best place for you. #

  • Charting Your Down-Ballot Vote: While it's fairly easy to remember whether you're voting McCain, Obama, or a third-party candidate for the big job, figuring out who to vote for in the other seats up for grabs next month can be far tougher. Enter your address, and e.thePeople's National Voter Guide widget helpfully lets you know which races are relevant to you, down to the city council and state legislature. As an added bonus, the voter guide presents a fascinating look at the scores of other presidential candidates who are on the ballot in the state. I've got 25 to chose from! #

  • The TPM Empire Continues Its Growth: Under the leadership of publisher Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo has just set new traffic records, pulling in 27 million page views and 2.6 unique users last month. The TPM video channel is also at the very top of YouTube charts. The company recently launched MyTPM, an attempt to blend left-leaning news, community, and activism in one integrated online hub. A potentially powerful feature in the new MyTPM seems borrowed from Twitter: follow people whose work you admire and gain a following yourself. Whatever Josh and company are doing seems to be working. #

The Candidates on the Web

  • Grassroots "Joe the Plumber" Ad Beats the Pros' Effort: The McCain campaign is out with a compilation clip from its "I'm Joe the Plumber" video contest. Featuring Pam the Antique Shop Owner and Tito the Truck Driver, it's an optimistic and confident web video. The people in it are appealing, relatable, and identifiably human. In the other corner, there's the McCain campaign's professionally-produced "I'm Joe the Plumber" ad. It's a dreary traditional campaign spot, complete with breathy voiceovers and enough panning to do Ken Burns proud. The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini asks in what universe the professional spots merits paid TV air time while the grassroots compilation video gets limited to the web. #

TechCongress and Beyond

  • Technically, That's Not Quite Right: CNN.com has long tracked the story of how al Qaeda and its web of allies make use of the Internet, and how that's made them the subject of online attack. CNN's Octavia Nasr reported yesterday the breaking news that the "al Qaeda-linked site" Al-Ekhlaas had been "hacked." But it's looking today like someone just neglected to renew the domain. Writes Octavia: "downed/hacked/disabled -- you choose the terminology that works for you." Let's hope U.S. intelligence services are keeping things a bit straighter. #

In Case You Missed It...

techPresident has made Comedy Central's Indecision 2008 blog, thus checking a major item off our collective bucket list. The post uses our social-networking numbers to highlight Obama's online dominance over John McCain. Of course, this being there's a zinger: "The bad news for the Democrat, however, is that the vast majority of users on these social networking sites are Taiwanese teenagers."

For those of you who happen to be in the New York area, the local chapter of Internet Society is hosting an intriguing afternoon event on Monday, October 27, with Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow. The topic will be "The First Internet Election?"

And Nancy Scola highlights a new contest being held by the District of Columbia that challenges developers to mine the city's mountain of data to build iPhone, Facebook, and Google Map apps that make the lives of DC's residents better.

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

PD+ This Thurs 1pm: Thriving Online With Howard Rheingold

I'm really looking forward to talking with author Howard Rheingold this Thursday on the next PD+ teleconference. His new book, Net Smart, is a concise and thoughtful guide to understanding and making the most of the hyper-networked, always-on, firehose of information and distraction that is the contemporary experience of anyone who uses ... GO

City of Joplin, Mo. Launches New Online Center Ahead of Tornado's Anniversary

The city of Joplin, Missouri launched its new web site over the week-end ahead of the May 22 anniversary of the massive tornado that devastated the city and killed 161 people. The new site enables Joplin citizens to sign up for emergency alerts via text message, e-mail and RSS. In addition to those alerts, individuals can also sign up for ... GO

In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

GO

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