Obamma and the Wild Web

February 24th, 2008 Richard

There was a great article by Jose Antonio Vargas, in yesterday’s Washington post about Obama Fever breaking on the web. Vargas contends

In recent days, sites have popped up indicating that the ongoing online Obamamania has hit a wall. What kind of wall? A snarky, ironic, this-Obama-thing-has-gotten-over-the-top wall.

He then goes on to describe sites such as SenatorObamas.com and Is Barack Obama the Messiah?, interesting and negative variations on the Obama phenomenon.

I don’t see this web development is as negative as the title implies, rather it is inevitable, and it does make the important point that Obama on the web has grown way beyond the control of Obama’s campaign organizers. The web culture has taken the Obama message and facilitated it through YouTube videos like Yes I Can, and the more recent, and more entertaining, No You Can’t. Since that time, as the article points out, things have gotten out of hand, the Obama archetype has been co-opted, remixed, exaggerated, attacked, and generally taken on a life (many lives) of its own; good, bad, and ugly.

That’s the way the web works. Something grows at exponential speeds, and then branches off into a cornucopia of interrelated entities, each containing some part of the original, and no one can control it. Not even a Barak Obama or his campaign - they can only hang on for the ride.

Posted in politics, web and new media | 4 Comments »

Mahalo Daily Summarizes Debates

February 7th, 2008 Richard

One of my favorite new video blogs, Mahalo Daily, created some short entertaining videos “summarizing” the January 31 Republican and Democratic debates.

Posted in politics, web and new media | 5 Comments »

The upTake and Citizen Journalism

February 7th, 2008 Richard

My video blogging friend Chuck Olson and others formed a media company, the uptake, the purpose of which is to cover politics via citizen journalists.

Posted in politics, web and new media | 3 Comments »

Does the Web Transform Politics?

February 7th, 2008 Richard

The answer to the title of this post is “yes” if you believe Micah L. Sifry, one of the founders of the techPresident blog, which is blog dedicated to discussion of how the presidential candidates are using the web. He explains in this post why he believes the internet has resulted in the decline in big media and big money and the author goes so far as to say that Hillary Clinton would have already wrapped up the nomination if not for the internet.

Posted in politics, web and new media | 6 Comments »

Cool Stuff I found on the web yesterday.

January 31st, 2008 Richard

  • MyBoneYard: Recycles electronic stuff. But unlike other similar efforts they will actually give you some cash for stuff you recycle. (Learned about it from GeekBrief.TV).
  • An interesting piece on Mobuzz TV: Daily Buzz about the “micro blogging” twitter phenomenon, including a more secure wordpress service called prologue, and tweetmeme that keeps track of the most popular twitter conversations. (This 5 minute episode also includes some other, bizarre stuff, such as a woman who’se trying to get us to pay for her breast transplants - bymeboobs.)
  • An very creative and interesting (and typical) episode of rocketboom, which is mainly about buying property on the moon.
  • A really interesting web site with a video podcast from The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, FactCheck.org, where they present facts that both democratic and republicans got wrong.

Posted in cool stuff, politics, recycle, web and new media | 12 Comments »

Electoral Compass

January 16th, 2008 Richard

I learned of this electoral compass site via twitter with a post from my friend Charles Hope, a very bright guy, who is a co-founder of blip.tv.

It doesn’t take long to answer the questions and I turned out to be awfully strong in social liberalism and economically left. Below is a screen shot of my profile, also showing candidates. (Ok, actually I added the picture and my name - the site just shows the pencil.) I was closest to Barack Obama, though I was disappointed to see the site did not even include Dennis Kucinich, and my guess is that I would be closer to his views.

In any case, this is not a political blog, except as it relates to web issues, and, lord knows, I could not survive in the Ozarks at a technological university if I didn’t appreciate and get along with conservatives. However, I’m not secret about my views (this is America, damn it :) and mainly I thought the site was very well designed, functionally intuitive, and appears to do a good job of summarizing candidates views relative to mine.

Of course, the big question is, who created this site, and how much do I trust them to represent my views or the candidates? With a little effort (clicking on an obscure disclaimer button at the bottom of the page) I found that site isn’t even a US site, but is the work of a company called Kieskompas BV, located in the Netherlands. Further, they say that the data may be used for “scientific research” and may be published in “the media”, though I doubt seriously that this will involve any peer review, the cornerstone of academic scholarship and, of course, there is the other big question as to who they will sell these data too. Anyway, I thought it was a cool tool, though, of course, you must take these things with a grain of salt.

Posted in politics, web and new media | 7 Comments »