Previewing the State of the Union's tech topics; data-driven campaigns go after the under-18 vote; open data activist Carl Malamud's renewed campaign to liberate the law; and much, much more. Read More

Imagine fleets of small boats cruising around the ocean, monitoring levels of plastic, oil and radioactivity, and eventually helping to clean up the ocean, and all completely unmanned. That may not be as far from reality as one might think. Scoutbots, a company that develops and builds open hardware technologies for environmental stewardship, recently began selling the first commercial prototype of its radio-controlled sailing robot, the Protei 011 “Optimist.” It is kind of like a seafaring drone.

In this article, we're going to look at Upwell, a nonprofit that describes itself as "a data-driven social media PR agency" with just one client, the ocean, and just one goal: more people talking about the ocean. What it's doing with "big listening" and "distributed campaigning" is pioneering a new kind of online political organizing. Read More