Clearing the Cache: Real World -- Ashland County
BY Nancy Scola | Monday, June 21 2010
- Sean Duffy, a veteran of the Boston edition of MTV's "Real World" series and the current District Attorney of Ashland County, Wisconsin, is putting his refined media skills to work towards his campaign to fill the U.S. House of Representatives seat being vacated by long-time congressperson David Obey. In his latest, and wobbly, YouTube hit, Duffy, a Republican, is seen riding along in a car on his way to, he says, a farmer appreciation dinner in Chippewa Falls. Folksy, yet thoroughly modern: the fast-talking Duffy takes a minute of that downtime to talk up the "2,100 online contributions" that have come into the campaign thus far, and to make a personal appeal for more of them to come in.
- Politico launches a morning tech news roundup email. Authored by former reporters at The Hill Kim Hart and Tony Romm, the breakfast missive is meant to be "your daily download of breaking news, scoops and analysis from Washington, Silicon Valley and beyond."
- In the UK, the Guardian describes 10 things that it has discovered from the Cameron government's release of a massive Treasury budget database known as the Combined Online Information System, or, rather cleverly, COINS.
- The team around Data.gov says that a handful of new APIs are in the on-deck circle, aimed at making it easier for the public to engage with the data served up on the site.
- And Politico also profiles Joe Trippi, the spark for much of the online politics taken as the norm today, with a look at what meaning might be taken from the arc of his career.
- A real-time train map of the London underground.
- Craig Newmark explains that one of two reasons he's a vigourous retweeter is because it's "easier than having an original thought."
- A Republican candidate for Governor in Florida wonders if the state's legislative calender argues against greater government transparency. "I was a legislator," said current Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, "and you can't negotiate and do deals in the Legislature and get business done in 60 days or 90 days or whatever your session may be with open government, to be perfectly frank."
- And there are new calls for governing transparency where the controversy over the U.S.'s disallowed goal against Slovenia has proven it do be desperately needed: with the world football association FIFA.