Posts filed under 'Maps'
Back to work! Here’s what you’ve missed the past few days:
- Have a Peaceful Memorial Day Week-end, Undeclared Superdelegates! Love, Arianna.
- Keynote presentation: Russell Simmons on how hip-hop fans build brands. Note: we’re going to the wrong conferences.
- China’s leaders’ new media-savviness. Meanwhile, Sudan’s leaders use technology to send a much older message — all they need are a few more heads on pikes (also check out the details of the rebel assault, more spaghetti western than D-Day).
- Obama, Clinton’s record campaign finances overwhelm Excel. But you can still read McCain’s numbers in a spreadsheet.
- McCain campaign seeks supportive blog comments, while TheNextRight.com seeks to rescue the Republican party (via Google Alert/SaveTheGOP.com).
- Ralph Nader and the Komodo Dragon. Bad, bad press work.
- Anti-Israel work on Wikipedia? The latest of several articles on this topic that have dropped in one way or another.
- Reviewing an MP’s site. All online politics is local.
- Senate Race in Minnesota Shows Power of Bloggers. Suggested by Farra Trompeter.
- Obama and the Jews: Voter-Generated Content Adds Context.
- Why banners fail. Not just because of insufficient waving.
- Politico’s John Harris notices that small stories get hyped out of proportion, but Glenn Greenwald isn’t impressed by his overnight conversion. But without endless blather, how would the cable news people pass the time?
- Flash is the new black. Make sure your online ads are In Style.
- Exposed! On the dangers of living an open life online — suggested by Burt Edwards, who is well known for his blatantly public displays of self-revelation (or not).
- Get ready for the World Live Web. Suggested by a loyal reader (thanks Dad).
- Who’s Gushing Now: World Oil Reserves. An oily Google map; c.f. May 26, 1908: Mideast Oil (and plenty of blood) Discovered.
- IsBarackObamaMuslim.com: The Rise of Nanosites. Hey Luigi, get your own ideas! See also this piece, where Mr. Montanez gives a Very Special anatomy lesson.
- For Hybrid Drivers, Every Trip Is a Race for Fuel Efficiency. On the beneficial consequences of displaying information to users; c.f the site Green Interfaces.
- Lanny Davis Goes Off Message. Let’s forward some lies.
- Strange hate for Rachael Ray on a rightie blog.
- Microsoft doesn’t like to give information away. Heard of Google, y’all?
- Google China’s Search Log Displays Moment of Mourning, via HowTheWorldWorks.
- Video versus the written word.
- Did Newsweek leave an anti-Obama piece out of its online promotion on purpose?
- Landing Page Optimization for Online Fundraising.
- Does McCain Have a YouTube Problem? Robert Greenwald’s anti-McCain film has been seen 1.3 million times in a week.
- Others make the case for Obama/Webb. See the e.politics take here and here (the latter including a Very Special personal ad).
- Long-term fallout for Obama from last summer’s YouTube debate.
- Online, It’s Target Clinton.
- Straight Outta Denver: LiveBarr.
- Obama’s Web Ads May Have Driven Big North Carolina Win. Mighty bold claim.
- The future of political dirty tricks and deception online, via Politics Online.
- Fascinating portrait of Moqtada Al Sadr’s attempted redefinition, including this excellent quote: “He is not the kind of man,” Obaidi said, “who plucks the fruit before it is ripe.”
– cpd
May 27th, 2008
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- Update: MoveOn Targets McCain Aides.
- Obama: Smear emails “not just a random sort of viral thing”.
- Racist Secret Service E-Mails. Oof. I mean really, oof. Stupid enough to think, even more stupider to email.
- How to spot Photoshop chicanery.
- Why is this site password protected? Burt Edwards wants to know.
- Can Bob Barr Tap Into Ron Paul’s Movement? C.f. Libertarian Bob Barr Hopes to Scoop Up Ron Paul’s Internet-Driven Support and Ron Paul Supporters, What Are Your Plans?
- MoveOn picks winner of Obama ad contest.
- Does his ad buy prove his critics wrong? Obama is online this week in WV, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania….
- On the Dangers of Hacked Computer Networks and Inadvertant Nuclear War.
- Unjustifiable Carnage, Uneasy Alliances, and Lots of Self-Doubt: What Grand Theft Auto IV gets right about gangland and illegal economies.
- Obama Looks Ahead to Oregon Primary in E-mail Push.
- How the Web Contest Predicted the Real Thing.
- Top Four Essentials of eCampaigning. C.f. The Essentials of Online Advocacy Begin With Email (e.politics sez, you better f*cking believe it).
- Why I like the Google Video Player.
- Quantcast Helps The Media Planner. Improve your advertising plans with free site demographics.
- Clinton Going Down, While the Web Dreams of an Obama Win.
- Another political PowerPoint, this time Clinton’s. See Politico and Wired.
- New Google Service Makes Web Pages Social.
- How Defense Research Is Making Troops More Effective in Wartime.
- Air Force Colonel Wants to Build a Military Botnet. Or not.
- The indie-rock fall and rise of R.E.M..
- OMG! WARNING: Over the top, offensive humor! Note comment: “Godwin’s Law: As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
- Obama’s online organization.
- Volunteers asked to help find dead spacecraft on Mars via online photos. Check out the size of those pictures!
- Republican Slogan Borrowed From Antidepressant. The jokes are too obvious to bother making.
- Concharto: Wikipedia for history/geography nerds. via GeoDog.
- The peak oil culture wars.
- Space porn! Virtual telescope brings the cosmos to your desktop.
– cpd
May 13th, 2008
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- Adding Video to Turn Dead-End ‘Thank You’ Pages Into Viral Marketing Campaigns. The Obama campaign finds yet another sweet spot for online recruiting.
- The Post Is Having A Rough Day. Spam attack!
- Reluctantly, a Daily Stops Its Presses, Living Online.
- Rev. Wright Baits the Soundbiters.
- The Internet Goes Green. The growth of the envirosphere, via Micropersuasion.
- Space war would leave destructive legacy.
- McCain: It’s “clear who Hamas wants to be the next president.” Fruits of a blogger conference call.
- Google Earth Outreach Aides U.N. Track Refugees and Save Lives.
- Beyond Bittergate, Barack Yields Success to His Supporters.
- Obama’s Database Will Make Him the Power Broker. Another persistent political following! “Like Mussolini/ And Kennedy…”
- The chummy relationship of campaign professionals and journalists in Washington. Or, getting scolded for making fun of McCain on Facebook.
- Schism Grows Between Obama and Liberal Bloggers.
- Were Mesopotamians the first brand addicts?
- Subject Line, ‘From’ Address Crucial to Email Marketing.
- Who Stole the Plans for iRobot’s Battle Bots?
- YouTube vid inspires Obamacrombie t-shirts.
- Facebook as Weekly Evil.
- McCain on FriendFeed: “Considering the McCain campaign’s sometimes uneven online strategy, this is a step in the right direction.”
- Social Applications Dominate the Web.
- Gays, Lesbians More Receptive to Blog Ads than Heterosexuals.
- An overview of web mining in societal benefit areas.
- Top 10 Wireless Marketing Mistakes.
- 3 Top Tips to Improve Your Online Writing.
- Henry Copeland of Blogads: “As the social media winter looms, the winners will be the folks with strong relationships, low overheads, a strong commitment on innovation rather than coat-tail riding, and, most of all, a indelible passion for the business. We’re looking forward to seeing you after the bust.”
- Sorry Disney, But You’re Kind of a Skank Factory.
- DNC’s national cable ad buy. The RNC’s not so hot about it.
- Web Site Blames Sen. McConnell for Quorum-less FEC.
- The Twitter Disconnect. An introduction and how-to. Also, glimpse a hardcore Twitter-using life.
- Things Really Were Different Before Clinton-Obama. Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin…into the future.
- Which Government Agency Should Be Your Computer’s Firewall? HAL 9000 or black squirrels?
– cpd
April 28th, 2008
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If you want to keep up with the county-by-county numbers from the Pennsylvania primary, the Times has you covered — they’re updating their online map as information comes in. It’s a nice Flash application that pops up the percentages as you mouse over each county, and is a terrific example of the way the ‘net can really add to political coverage. I’ll take solid data like this over talking-head blather any day of the week. Update: Pennsylvania Election Results, Mapped Alongside Voters’ Race, Age and Religion.
– cpd
April 22nd, 2008
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NetSquared has been holding a little contest of late to promote the use of data mashups as tools for the betterment of life and society, and the 21 finalists might give you a few ideas about how an advocacy or communications campaign can use mashups to make information accessible to people who aren’t total data nerds.
Many of the finalists use mapping layers, such as a project devoted to the preservation of linguistic diversity and another that tracks threatened houses in New Orleans, while others involve social networking tools, video or rss feeds. Bonus: Cisco’s a sponsor, and the 21 projects will share a $100,000 grant. Pretty cool stuff all around — for those of us who aren’t numbers or software people, it can be hard to envision exactly HOW data can tell a story, so being able to see concrete examples is a help.
– cpd
March 30th, 2008
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Greetings from New Orleans and the Nonprofit Technology Conference, where e.politics is bearing up nobly under the strain of going to fantastic cities and hanging out with bright and interesting people. Rough life, I know
As a takeaway for the participants in our online advocacy panel on Friday, below are a ton of articles on various aspects of the question of spreading a message and working to change politics and policy online.
(more…)
March 20th, 2008
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With many of our online colleagues taking the holiday week off, it’s time for e.politics — temporarily ensconced deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas while measuring the Pulse Of The Heartland — to take up the slack. And maybe to finish off a few articles that have been screaming for conclusion for weeks.
But first, let’s connect some dots international-style, with a nod to the globalization instincts of How The World Works. What does a European rocket launch from Guiana have to do with the rise of global people power? When an Ariane 5 boosts an African communications satellite into orbit, plenty. The Rascom consortium — dig the animated intro with an excellent backing track — aims to bring new digital communications access to telecom companies and internet service providers across this tragically most unwired of continents.
And based on a Netsquared presentation from Kim Lowery of Kabissa back in September, they should see plenty of demand. Among other things, she talked about how people in one small town, lacking a ‘net connection, would type out emails and give them on disk to a car owner who would drive them weekly to the nearest city (hours away) and send them to the wider world, returning later with the replies. THAT’S being hungry for communications.
Political implications? In countries where even the basics of government spending are closely held secrets, information that we in the industrialized world take for granted can be revolutionary (remember Google Earth and Bahraini corruption?). For a hint of the new potential, see this Post piece on modern campaign tools’ spread to Kenya (note that Dick Morris unfortunately went along for the ride). And while cell phones are still much more common than computers in the Third World, the tubes are coming: I got my first look this weekend at the one-laptop-per-child XO machine, courtesy of my father, who’s taken advantage of the give-one/get-one holiday offer (my brother and his IBM-Linux-guru wife have done the same). The user interface seems clunky, but the wifi works and the next generation of the software promises to be much more straightforward. Just you wait until these little critters and their descendents overrun the globe….
– cpd
December 24th, 2007
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ABC News reported today that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has reserved two domain names for use against close rival Barack Obama:
Votingpresent.com and Votingpresent.org are domains hosted by the same IP address as official Clinton Web sites, such TheHillaryIKnow.com, which was launched with much fanfare this week.
The Clinton campaign intends to use these new Web sites to paint Obama as cowardly.
Apparently, Barack voted “present” rather than take a stand on controversial bills several times in the Illinois legislature, which is apparently a reason to take after him (sounds like a bit of a stretch, but what do I know). ABC does seem to have jumped the gun by describing the sites in its headline and article text as having been “launched,” though, since neither site is live as I write this and the domains have only been registered (to Hillary Clinton for President) since December 4th. Will they ever go live? Or is this just a bit of psychological warfare?
Next, among the more famous promotional activities organized by the Ron Paul army of supporters is a rented blimp, which you can now track online via a Google Map. Good work on the site, which is dirt-simple but effective (fundraising through Google Checkout, btw). Viral tools not neglected, either:
– cpd
December 20th, 2007
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Two new sites popped up today that take very different yet effective approaches to advocacy. First, the serious side: the new CARMA.org site (Carbon Monitoring for Action) defaults to showing you the worst power plants in the world from a global warming perspective, but it’ll also let you find your own power provider and take a look at their plants’ emissions. Because the folks behind the site (the Center for Global Development) used a Google Maps interface, you can easily drill down to each plant and pop up data about how much power and pollution it puts out. Start adding those numbers up and it gets frightening fast.
Next up: satire, the highest art form, as the folks behind the Predatory Lending Association have figured out. Want to know the advantages of predatory lending over indentured servitude? Find out here! Need racial profiling tools? Try these! Quite clever — note the Military Loan Finder map application on the site front page that hooks you up with payday loan establishments clustered near military bases. The nice thing from an advocacy point of view is that both the hard-data and humor/satire approach can work if they’re done right. In these two cases, I think they were.
Update: After I finished this article, my NET intern Alicia LaPorte bombarded me with emails about the End Mountaintop Removal site, which also has great map features, video and a Willie Nelson song (can’t hardly beat that). It’s now her most favoritest advocacy site of all time.
– cpd
November 14th, 2007
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The Sunlight Foundation has just put Google Earth to an excellent advocacy purpose: letting us follow the (budgetary) money. As the Foundation’s Gabriela Schneider writes:
Mashing up Google Earth and with the companies, universities and nonprofit recipients of earmarks in the House Defense Appropriations bill (available from Sunlight and Taxpayers for Common Sense on EarmarkWatch.org), citizens can get a bird’s eye view of where members of Congress are shipping our defense dollars, and zoom in close on recipients. Each plotted earmark links to a corresponding page on http://EarmarkWatch.org so you can investigate the earmark to determine whether it addresses pressing needs, favors political contributors or is simply pure pork. You can search for earmarks by city, state or zip code.
Now, Google Earth’s just about the most fun online tool to play with (Zoom in! Zoom out! Zoom in! Zoom out! Repeat as necessary), but this is a good example of the serious uses to which it can be put. Earmarks are those little “extras” that congressmembers slip into appropriations bills and are the eternal bane of budget hawks. Since they’re outside the normal budgetary process, publicity is often their worst enemy, and Google Earth really lets you see how they’re distributed in a way that text alone can’t. Let’s look at an example, courtesy of a couple of screen-captures and some Photoshop magic:
When you drill down, you can see that Space Photonics of Fayetteville, Arkansas appears to be getting $1,000,000 for an Intelligent Free Space Optical Satellite Communications Node — hmmm, sounds like something that might just become self-aware and launch a genocidal war against humankind. More details on the project and how to install it at the Sunlight Foundation blog.
– cpd
November 6th, 2007
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The latest of Internet politics legend Alan Rosenblatt’s Internet Advocacy Roundtables covered free online advocacy tools, particularly those available to nonprofits. We heard a lot about the usual suspects — Google Apps, MySpace and Facebook, YouTube, Drupal and Joomla — but I thought the most valuable resource presented that afternoon was Center for American Progress web guru Annie Schutte’s list of various tools for presenting advocacy information online. Her index covers mapping applications, timeline generators, chart and graph creators and more — the kind of non-sexy technologies that actually help get a message across in a way that words alone can’t. I.e., they have the potential to be damn useful. Joe Bob says, check it out. Update: Alan’s pulled together a Google doc (one of those free tools…) that includes Annie’s list, plus a lot more resources suggested during the panel.
One caveat that came up many times during the presentation: just because a tool is free, doesn’t mean it’s actually free. You’ll pay in time, at the very least, and open-source software usually requires a mechanic to tinker with it before it’ll run. You have been warned.
– cpd
November 1st, 2007
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The San Francisco NetSqared group got a great overview of Google Earth’s potential for online advocacy communications on October 9th, courtesy of Google Earth project manager Steve Miller. Two audience members have written the presentation up for our enjoyment, complete with screenshots and links to more resources: check out Britt Bravo’s version on the NetSquared blog or his own site as well as Lorna Li’s take (BTW, the most alliterative author pair-up I’ve ever seen).
You’re not going to walk away from either article ready to make your own maps, but you’ll get to see some of the potential of this great tool and you’ll leave armed with examples and links to how-tos that’ll get you started. Plus, either article is a good resource for that most difficult of lobbying efforts — the one within your own organization.
– cpd
October 17th, 2007
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News arrived via Katrin Verclas today that online advocacy provider Convio (which recently ingested competitor GetActive) is opening itself up to the wider world of online advocacy. According to the company’s Open Initiative site, Convio is allowing programmers access to its API, giving outside developers the ability to write software that interacts with data in the Convio system. Besides this new toy for our friends in the ones-and-zeroes community, the company also has a Facebook advocacy aplication in beta stage, integrates its data with Google Maps and with Salesforce.com and other CRM providers, and is offering advocacy widgets for use on social networking sites and blogs.
Smart move all around: most online advocacy providers have traditionally tried to live in closed worlds, keeping their clients wedded to custom systems that generally aren’t flexible (I had a hell of a time getting one to dispay a YouTube video the other day, for instance). But as the variety of online channels constantly expands, and as we in the advocacy community get more experience using them effectively, we’re not going to be satisfied with tools that are rigid, limited and expensive. We need to reach supporters where THEY are, using the methods that they prefer. Traditional email lists will continue to be powerful tools for the foreseeable future, but they’ll be more effective if integrated with other forms of outreach, particularly using social networking sites. And, who knows what cool applications our programmer colleagues will come up with? Ultimately, opening its platform should only make Convio and its products more valuable down the road.
– cpd
October 15th, 2007
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- Users’ Online Time Spent Mostly on Content - Not Communications, Commerce. Content is king!
- Tech Savvy Protesters take on China, but when is it appropriate to spam the Great Firewall?
- Social networks not just for kids, as Boomer site pitches own political tent. See what all those Cialis ads have led to?
- Building a Successful Internet Presence.
- Sidestepping the ‘macaca’ moments. Politicians’ desperate desire to be boring.
- Democratic Advisers Take Posts in Group Opposing Wal-Mart.
- Cost of Saving the Climate Meets Real-World Hurdles. On problems with the selling of carbon offsets online.
- As Billboards, Public Phones Always Work. Does advertising assure the survival of pay phones?
- Army Reports Brass, Not Bloggers, Breach Security. “It’s clear that official Army websites are the real security problem, not blogs,”
- More military threats: Russia Orders Long-Range Bomber Patrols. Backfire bombers, coming soon to a backyard near you.
- How Google Works. Nice visual overview, suggested by my NET colleague Erica Peth.
- Which Presidential Candidates Have Mastered Google?
- Mobile Advertising is Irritating. Shocking news from the world of marketing.
- More fallout from Wikipedia edit tracking: Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs, and find out about The Feds Who Edit Wikipedia. Lamest Wiki story, as noted by tPrez and about 10,000 NY Times commenters: Messing With Iowa.
- 13 Winning Ways to Make Enemies in the Press. Never too early in the week for self-sabotage.
- Rule #1 In E-Politics: Don’t Attack The Bloggers. But what if they’re annooooooying?
- Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web.
- The continued usefulness of direct mail in the Internet era.
- A Simple Yahoo Pipes RSS Filtering Example.
- Investing In Netroots Innovation.
- Cheap media, cheap ads. Seth Godin takes on a common mistake.
- Facebook Opens Email Up A Little; I Want More. C.f. Newsweek’s take on Facebook, via David All, and Facebook rules for the rest of us (when is a poke not a good idea?).
- EmergencyCheese: A Citizen Journalist gets a taste of MSM.
- Beware the Dark Side of PR 2.0. Spoilsport.
- The Untold Story of the Cheney ‘Quagmire’ Video. The making of an Internet hit.
- Why the YouTube Election Should Evolve into the Gaming Election. Because we have 14 months to go and desperately need a distraction?
- Late addition! Google Maps are now embeddable, via Rochelle Robinson.
- A final sad note: the geek community loses a founder, as Joe Engressia, Expert ‘Phone Phreak,’ Dies. The first guy to manipulate the phone system by whistling in perfect pitch, he was an original hacker — you gotta love someone who picks a city to live in because he likes the quirks in its phone circuitry.
– cpd
August 21st, 2007
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