Archive: Year: 2009

Is there such a thing as the "Daily Me" effect? Is New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on to something when he writes: ...

Remember two years ago when Senator Richard Durbin took the blogosphere and specifically MyDD.com and RedState.com for a series of open thread discussions about shaping a broadband bill? "Legislation 2.0" got some attention at the time, but then the Durbin staffer who was responsible for shepherding the process reportedly went back to graduate school, and little more was heard of the notion. A couple of legislators have turned to the web to take questions from the public--most notably Speaker Nancy Pelosi at last year's Netroots Nation with "AsktheSpeaker," and a couple of Senators and Representatives who have been going on YouTube's SenateHub and HouseHub to solicit and respond to questions there. But in terms of actually involving the public in...

Gov. Corzine is using the web to get suggestions on the state budget, reports GovTech. Unfortunately, it's just a one-way suggestion-box form. FAIL. Celebrity shlock blog TMZ decides that politics actual does have good looking people. Now, could they go stalk some lobbyists, please? President Obama's teleprompter has a blog. Now that's funny. And it's already sucking up to Rush Limbaugh. And that's not. Colorado and Nebraska are using Twitter accounts to share news of recovery spending US Justice Dept...

On the first full day of his presidency, Barack Obama issued an executive memo calling on the government to become more transparent, participatory and collaborative. He wrote: My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Of course, public participation is a two-way street. That's why, today, Personal Democracy Forum is proud to announce that we are partnering with a cross-partisan coalition of old and new media in launching "Ask the President," an open, collaborative, participatory forum where anyone can post a question and vote up...

Over on O'Reilly Radar, Rep. Mike Honda of California has a guest post up that asks a very important question: "How can Congress take advantage of web 2.0 technologies to transform the relationship between citizens and government? Instead of viewing the public as a customer for services, I believe that we should empower citizens to become our partners in shaping the future of our nation." My hats off to Rep. Honda (and his internet staff guru Rob Pierson) for taking the leap. We all know the water of social media is fine, but most Congressmen are just preening at the edge of the pool with their one-way tweets and staff-written blogs. Rep. Honda is jumping in with both feet. He...

Everyblock's Daniel X. O'Neill argues that NY Attorney Generals in opaque homes shouldn't throw transparency around as a slogan Obama socnet wunderkind Chris Hughes adds to his portfolio, joining VC firm General Catalyst Jury system collides with 21st century. Is the netroots turning on Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick? FluTweet, meet SickCity. Just cover your mouth when you cough, ok? Oh, and the kids at Sunlight will be able to get new sneakers. Yay!"...

Start a meme watch: Is President Obama too dependent on his teleprompter? The Rightosphere has been trying to pump air into this question for a while now. For example, see this "Fox News report" from controversial conservative academic John Lott Jr. (who reportedly sock-puppeted reviews of one of his books on Amazon). AOL blogger Tommy Christopher debunks Lott's story handily. Still, the meme appears to have legs, no doubt because the technology itself is glitchy. For example, RedState catches him and the Irish PM in a minor teleprompter-flub yesterday. Here's how references to Obama and teleprompter appear to be tracking in the blogosphere:...

Today's must-reading: Neil Munro's detailed look at Google's growing presence in Washington. He writes: Executives at online-advertising giant Google are helping President Obama and Capitol Hill legislators get their messages out to the public, but they're facing nascent opposition from privacy advocates and small competitors who say Google is inappropriately using its presence on government Web sites to track users' political activities online. These critics say that Google, aided by the White House, is using "cookie" software and the popular goal of government transparency to boost its own revenues and to build a vast database of citizens' political attitudes. I think Munro paints Google's activities in a more malevolent light than the company deserves, raising the spectre of potential privacy violations from...

Will Turnage, a freelance developer working on RepresentedBy, a really cool Facebook application that he is planning to submit to the Sunlight Labs "Apps for America" contest, has uncovered a seemingly suggestive correlation between how "digitally transparent" a Member of Congress is and how much money they are seeking in earmarks in the 2009 economic stimulus package. He writes, "as digital engagement increases, there becomes fewer and fewer legislators who are sponsoring extremely large earmarks." Here's a table summarizing his findings: Turnage applied the following method to rank legislators by degrees of transparency: Digitally transparent can mean a lot of things to different people, so in an attempt to quantify that, I’ve developed what I’m calling the DTI, or Digital Transparency Index....

Organizing for America brings out the big gun: the President, who is featured in this morning's email blast to his campaign list and via YouTube video. "Passing this budget won't be easy," he says, as the video closes with a big ask. "That's where you come in. That's why I'm asking you to head outside this Saturday to knock on some doors. Talk to some neighbors and let people know how important this budget is to our future. And that's why I'm asking you to stay involved in the days ahead. By writing letters and making phone calls and summoning the spirit that first gave us this chance for change. Now is our moment to seize that chance." Plus, Jeremy Bird,...