My NET colleague Kymberly Escobar showed me a neat toy today — a video camera that’s designed for easy Internet connection, is about the size of a video Ipod and that costs about $100. She’s been using one to shoot videos of her kid, but she immediately saw the usefulness for online advocacy, particularly for field organizers or campaign volunteers.
The Flip Video camera shoots either 30 or 60 minutes of 640×480 video, depending on the size of the flash drive, and also contains editing software that you can launch when you hook the little critter up to a computer via USB. When connected, it’s designed to upload videos directly to YouTube — a great feature for newbies, and a clever time-saver for a lot of applications. From what I’ve seen, the image quality is quite good, considering the obvious resolution limits, and the camera includes a 2x (digital) zoom and the ability to capture stills. A nice extra: it’s small enough to escape notice much of the time, and if you (or someone else) should happen to step on it? While not quite disposable, it’s close enough.
Imagine the campaign uses: at a field event (protest, press conference, media stunt, punking opportunity), organizers or volunteers armed with these cameras and a laptop with wireless connection could very quickly shoot video and select and edit clips. They could then either post them to YouTube for the world to see (tag them with a common and unique keyword for easy searching and/or distribution via RSS) or email them to the campaign communications shop. Want a collective record of an event, to use for good or evil? Have several people armed with these machines in the crowd, supplemented as necessary by cameras that hold more footage or that shoot at higher quality, and wait for the Macaca moments to roll in.
– cpd
August 20th, 2007
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As part of an excellent Tech Daily series that National Journal opened to non-subscribers today, one article looks at differences in the ways lower- and higher-tier presidential candidates use the web. You often hear that candidates can take more risks when they’re behind in the polls — in fact, they have to — and this cycle’s presidential campaigns follow the customary pattern, with Mike Gravel blogging on Huffington Post and Ron Paul benefiting from an upwelling of online support. One extra observation from IPDI’s Julie Barko Germany jumped out at me: “Though candidates with higher name recognition like Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. and John McCain, R-Ariz., use the Internet as a significant part of their outreach, their use of the technology appeals more to core supporters than undecided voters.”
Excellent distinction: site features such as MyMcCain (dreamed up when McCain was a leading candidate) and MyObama are designed to build relationships with existing supporters rather than to draw new ones, where Gravel’s blogging, Tancredo’s aggressive video outreach and Richardson’s TV ads touting his website are intended to connect with new supporters. Though let’s not go too far with this: keep in mind that some top-tier candidates HAVE invested in search and display ads online, for example.
More from the Tech Daily series, including a detailed look at the different candidates’ technology-related platforms.
– cpd
August 20th, 2007
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A front page story in today’s Post looks at the symptoms of a new malady afflicting the body politic: next year’s race for control of Congress is already running at a fever-pitch, at least in some areas, and we’re still more that 14 months away from the general election. The only arm of the electronic politics arsenal mentioned in the Post piece is everyone’s “favorite” — robocalls — but when television ads are already flying, you can expect websites and online ads to follow close behind. The never-ending campaign moves from presidential politics to the next step down the ladder, with more leaps surely ahead: are hope-filled dreamers of dogcatching glory already preparing YouTube attack ads in every community in America?
– cpd
August 20th, 2007
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