techPresident was nice enough to lump me in with a host of far better writers on the topic of how the candidates are using the Web for a 2007 in review post. You can check out the highlights of all of our thoughts at techPresident. Very interesting conclusions with Ron Paula and Barack Obama leading the pack in most questions but some mentions for John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton in there.
Not many Republicans are seen as really using the Web effectively, other than some brief Mitt Romney and John McCain mentions. For the most part I found it interesting that many of us who were asked to comment agreed on most of the answers.
Thanks to techPresident for letting me be involved!
I have never been a fan of polling people with online forms. Online polling is so easily manipulated it is a joke. In most cases simply deleting your cookies will let you vote a second, third, fourth, fifth time. If that doesn’t work there is an endless stream of over things you can do to mess with the vote, which is why Ron Paul wins every online poll taken right after Republican debates.
Right not TechCrunch has an online poll about who will be America’s best choice for a technology friendly president. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are leading with Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee coming in second. However Ron Paul’s vote total is two thousand votes higher than all of those who voted for Democratic candidates combined. In fact he has 1599 more votes than all of the other candidates Republican and Democrat combined.
A man who basically has admitted he knows nothing about the Internet and will cut government spending on all kinds of amazing science and math projects is the overwhelming choice of this online poll. Read the rest of this entry »
Announced today XM Satellite Radio & C-Span are teaming up to provide a 24/7 channel devoted to the 2008 Presidential Election. The channel will be titled POTUS ‘08. POTUS of course the acronym for President of the United States.
Most interesting though is that the channel will be “free to air” meaning if you have an old XM radio lying around you can listen to it even if you don’t subscribe to the service. Which I declare “rats” too because I did have an old XM lying around up until I moved a few months ago. Which kind of bothers me to tell you the truth. Oh well.
Clinton said a more even discussion of politics could come from Internet sites and Web blogs. He cited the tendency of blogs to scrutinize one or two subjects rather than a full plate of issues.
“They can do research and get the facts and don’t have to bad-mouth people. Sometimes they do, but they don’t have to,” Clinton said. “I think all these blog sites are creating a whole new opportunity for public debate that may revitalize our politics in an old fashioned way.”
Clinton and (Former President) Bush lauded the role telecommunications and technology can play in improving healthcare, spreading individual freedoms and eradicating poverty.
And as for personal technology, the former presidents said they were dedicated to using cell phones or wireless devices.
“The hour I’m here is about the longest I can be away from my Blackberry,” Bush said.
Just to add my own thoughts I am glad to see President Clinton have such a positive thought about blogs & the Internet. Especially since during his years The Drudge Report & sites like it played such a pivotal role in releasing information about his personal indiscretions. Meanwhile it is really cool to see elder Bush is a Blackberry user. Somehow I just wouldn’t have pictured it on my own.
According to the webblog TechCrunch, which tracks new Internet products and sites, McCain’s MySpace page profile included a pranked letter on Tuesday morning that read: “Dear Supporters, Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage … particularly marriage between two passionate females.”
On his own website, the co-founder of Newsvine, Mike Davidson, claimed responsibility for pulling the prank.
Davidson claims that he designed the MySpace template that McCain is using and usually lets anyone use it for free as long as they give attribution.
However, apparently McCain didn’t give him credit and Davidson sought retribution.
“I think the idea of politicians setting up MySpace pages and pretending to actually use them is a bit disingenuous, so I figured it was time to play a little prank on Johnny Mac,” writes Davidson.
Well the Internet has been atwitter the last few days over a video posted to YouTube that melds Apples famous 1984 Superbowl ad with the image of Hillary Clinton. The message is Hillary = Big Brother, Barack Obama = tightly clad woman with hammer ready to destroy a television set…. or so my understanding goes.
For me the WORST part of this parody was the nine hundred articles & blog posts written about it. Which is why I stayed away. Every one of these things had the same message. “The Internet is Changing politics” which is something I have heard since 1996 and doesn’t come as much of a surprise. But anyway, this video was a great visual representation of how the Internet is indeed changing politics AND in true Internet style it was a whopping example of copyright infringement.
It was the biggest topic in the campaign news for at least twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours this week, U.S. General Pace remarked that homosexuality was “immoral” and suddenly every news reporter was flocking to find out what all the candidates thought. Did Senator John McCain, the only major candidate to have served, agree with the general? Did Mitt Romney, the candidate now being championed AND questioned heavily by the Religious right, have the answer that would make them happy? The General was speaking about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell a popular issue in other elections. What did each candidate really think?
If you wanted to find out and get your news straight from the horses mouth then heading to any of the candidates Web pages certainly wasn’t the way to do it.
I am one step above the casual Web viewer when it comes to using the candidates sites. I subscribe to RSS when possible, get campaign e-mail and check out various other sites which monitor the candidates blogs. Nowhere, not in those immediate hours and rarely afterward did I see anything at all addressing the issue of the day. The sites had plenty of virtual networking available, I could watch old video footage, see Hillary have a conversation from three weeks ago. I could do a lot, I just couldn’t find out what the candidates were thinking, in real time, about an issue immediately relevant to the news.
Just about every campaign now has a blog or a blog in development but who has time to goto every site every day and read the entries? No one, exactly and that’s where the Web site oh-ate comes in.
The site follows all the blogs of the ‘08 candidates and updates visitors on the latest posts. Best of all? The site has an RSS feed directing you to all the fresh content. Check it out!
Not much to do with the current crop of candidates but I thought it was interesting to mention. Via techPresident WhiteHouse.gov has received a new look. Personally I like the unique look of the old site. This new one looks more like a standard PHPNuke type portal site.
It appears that all pro-McCain profiles at MySpace were deleted because of a miscommunication between McCain’s staff and the company. Here is the official announcement:
Over the last couple of weeks, the eCampaign at John McCain 2008 has been working to get a new website launched and begin engaging in the social networks. When I joined MySpace, I was proud to see the strong grassroots efforts people like you were making on behalf of Senator McCain and his campaign for President. I joined many of those groups with excitement.
In the last few days, we at the campaign began a discussion with MySpace about creating an official profile for Senator McCain. In the course of that conversation, a member of my team miscommunicated the campaign’s plans to MySpace, leading to the removal of all the pro-McCain grassroots pages created by supporters like you. Following the example of Senator McCain and in the interests of “straight talk,†I wanted to you to know exactly what transpired. When this miscommunication came to my attention, I immediately began working with MySpace to resurrect those sites, taking the issue to the highest levels of the company. Unfortunately, that effort was not successful. When content is deleted at MySpace it cannot be recreated.
I am extremely disappointed and sorry that this has happened. It is not only unfair to supporters like you who have worked so hard on Senator McCain’s behalf, it is a disservice to the campaign as we now have no forums in which to reach all those supporters you had worked to assemble.
I would like you to know that we will soon be launching an official John McCain profile at MySpace. I hope you will consider joining that group and trying to help recreate the strong presence of John McCain supporters in MySpace. I would also be glad to see you re-start your McCain group. If there is anything I can do to assist that effort, please let me know and I would be happy to personally help.
Please accept my sincere apologies once again. I wish there was something that could be done to change what has happened, but all I can ask is your help in moving forward and rebuilding. I hope we’ll be working closely together as the campaign progresses.
Sincerely,
Christian Ferry
National eCampaign Director
John McCain 2008
I am rather surprised it has taken McCain’s camp this long to put together a MySpace profile. There isn’t a lot of laborious work involved. From my repeated criticism of McCain’s Web site (despite the fact, mind you, that McCain advertises here constantly) you know I don’t have a lot of good things to say about McCain’s web effort. Still I am hoping they will turn things around.
