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So You and Your Phone Will Be in Downtown Manhattan Today ...

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, October 5 2011

Today, hundreds, possibly thousands, of people will converge in the lower Manhattan for a march on the financial capital of the world, urging dramatic changes — for now, any changes — to the status quo. And ... Read More

Free-Speech Advocates Push for FCC to Rule On BART Cellphone Service Shutdown

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, August 31 2011

In the wake of a shutdown of cellphone service earlier this month the San Francisco Bay Area's commuter rail provider, BART, in order to stop a political protest, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have asked ... Read More

A Full Third of American Adults Own Smartphones, Pew Study Finds

BY Nick Judd | Monday, August 15 2011

Photo: Cheon Fong Liew / Flickr Here are three reasons why mobile phones could be a crucial battlefield for the 2012 election, courtesy of a Pew Internet & American Life Project study released this morning: ... Read More

In Syria, the Dead Conceal the Living

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, August 4 2011

From The Guardian's ongoing live blog of events in the Middle East: Protesters say they have been taking the sim cards of those shot dead so that they can talk to each other and media without being tracked, Nour Ali (a ... Read More

Mobile Phones and the Middle East's Many Million Documentarians

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, February 21 2011

Photo by Mahmood Al-Yousif as uploaded to Flickr yesterday; caption: "Just Bahraini, with pride!" Read More

Politics is Mobile, According to New Pew Report

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, December 23 2010

As much as 26 percent of the adult American population may have engaged with the midterm elections using their mobile phone, according to a study released today by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Online ... Read More

What Your Phone Says About Your Politics

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, February 9 2010

The San Francisco company Tulchin Research is out with some fun polling of California voters that fleshes out the intersection of tech and politics. Among the findings: Read More

Daily Digest: The Mobile Voter Double Whammy?

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, October 22 2008

The Web on the Candidates Google Maps Debuts Polling Places: If the air seems to be crackling with excitement today, it might be because Google has just connected up Google Maps with the Voting Information Project (VIP) ... Read More

News Briefs

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What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

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tuesday >

Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

Controversial Hoekstra Microsite Targeting Debbie Stabenow Created By The Prosper Group

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has caused a firestorm in the past 24 hours with a new campaign ad that depicts China as a young woman riding a bike in a rural area speaking in broken English. The thirty second spot aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it accuses Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow of aiding ... GO

White House CTO Aneesh Chopra's Exit Interview

On his way out of the White House and back to Virginia, where he is expected to run for public office — but will neither confirm or deny that's the plan — Aneesh Chopra describes the shape of the post he pioneered as the country's first-ever chief technology officer.

As a result of Chopra's interview with The Atlantic's tech/politics correspondent, Nancy Scola, there's now a public record of what this first-ever CTO thinks the CTO's job actually is ("On any topic that is a priority for the president, my role is evaluate how technology, data, and innovation can advance, support, and improve upon those strategies," among other things) and how it might be improved.

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friday >

Slovenian ambassador apologizes for signing ACTA, Poland halts ratification

Apparently, some EU countries are reconsidering their support to ACTA, only a week after signing the agreement.
Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, has in fact issued a public apology to her country for signing it. Meanwhile, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he's halting the ratification process of the international treaty.
Last week people took the streets in Poland, and a protest is planned in Ljubljana tomorrow. GO

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