Archive: Year: 2012

Ten days ago, we wrote you, our readers, asking for your feedback regarding a potential metered paywall to techPresident.com, as one way to support Personal Democracy Media's work. Thank you for all comments. Your responses to our survey have been gratifying and clarifying. Here's what we learned: -First of all, you are a loyal group. Nearly three-quarters of you have been reading techPresident for more than one year, and half more than two years. (Though we love our new readers too!) -You're reading us for the right reason: to get info on the latest trends in tech and politics. -It was gratifying to learn that the vast majority of you said you were extremely or very likely to recommend techPresident to others. That...

Ever since the news broke on the Huffington Post and the Campaign for America's Future (CAF) blog that Change.org, the fast-growing online petition and campaign site, was altering its operating model to become a more open platform, I've been amazed and dismayed by the reaction of many self-styled progressives. HuffPo's Ryan Grim, who usually aims his guns at rightwing billionaires, banksters and sleazy lobbyists, set the tone with his incendiary claim on Monday that Change was now going to "work with corporate, anti-abortion, GOP campaigns." Jeff Bryant of CAF said that Change, "enabler of Davids, decided to side with Goliaths instead." Raven Brooks of Netroots Nation has been on a tear: "Change.org sells out the progressive movement" was how he...

In the last month, from September 23 to October 23, Barack Obama's campaign has posted 256 videos to its YouTube channel, garnering 22.4 million views, according to the video tracking service OneLoad.com (formerly part of TubeMogul). Mitt Romney's campaign has posted just 44 videos, earning just 4.7 million views. On a per video basis, Romney is getting slightly more views on average, 107,000 to 88,000. But in terms of reaching voters and supporters, the Obama campaign is trouncing Romney on YouTube. This matters for several reasons. The first is money. While it costs the Obama campaign something to produce all these videos, the costs of distribution are close to zero. Exactly four years ago on this site, I asked Democratic...

On September 3rd, Labor Day, I got a curious email from Jim Messina, the campaign manager for Barack Obama. "Join Sportsmen for Obama," read the subject line. Inside were 195 words of simple prose extolling "America's great outdoors" and President Obama's efforts to preserve "our states' natural wonders and limited resources." The email reminded me of something an aide to Vermont's most popular politician, Bernie Sanders, had once told me. There are a lot of people who don't call themselves environmentalists but who care about the environment. To connect with them, you have to use different language, he said, like "preserving the natural habitat" rather than saving the planet. Visiting hunting lodges to talk about protecting natural resources for hunting...

Are you building a tech product or service that helps people connect to each other in new ways? Are you building a new app or tool for making and sharing news? Or maybe you've got a new mobile invention, or an innovative web technology? If so, you should think about applying for the SXSW Accelerator, which is taking place next March 11-12 during the annual SXSW Interactive Festival. (I'm pitching in this year as an advisor to the news technologies track.) The deadline to register is Friday, November 9, less than a few weeks away, so visit...

Filipino Senator Teofisto "TG" D. Guingona III has filed a bill called the "Crowdsourcing Act of 2012." In a nice touch, he is also seeking public comments to improve it. The bill goes beyond other similar proposals aimed at opening up the legislative process in requiring the body to not just post the text of proposed bills and committee work online, but calls on several steps to ensure much greater public participation, including: allowing the public to comment online on bills; making those comments part of the permanent public record; publishing the schedule of committee hearings online; the creation of online mechanisms for collecting and displaying public feedback. "When people are allowed to participate, we have better laws," Guingona told the Philippine Star. "When people...

Every four years, Valdis Krebs, an expert in network analysis, takes a look at the political book-buying habits of Amazon's customers, and performs a bit of data visualization magic. By looking at the data Amazon shares about people who buy books in common, along with the "also-bought" pairings, Krebs produces a network map linking books, and their buyers, into clusters. You can see the moats dividing many Americans into blue and red islands, but also the places where intellectual bridges may exist. (I've included a snippet of the map, but to see the full picture you should go to Krebs' website.) There's some good news here for anyone concerned with the seeming hyper-polarization of politics in America, for the first thing...

In the wake of comments by CNN's Candy Crowley, who will be moderating tomorrow's presidential debate, that she was planning to ask her own follow-up questions to the ones posed by citizens that she calls on during the townhall-style event, Mark Halperin reported last night that both campaigns were expressing concerns to the Commission on Presidential Debates. Halperin says he was leaked a copy of the memorandum of understanding between the Obama and Romney campaigns, and that it explicitly limits Crowley's role in the following way. After each audience member question and two-minute response from each candidate: “In managing the two-minute comment periods, the moderator will not rephrase the question or open a new topic … The moderator will not ask...

Five days from now, President Obama and Governor Romney will meet for their second debate at Hofstra University, answering voters' questions in a live town hall forum format. For the last week or so, Google has been promoting a page called "Your Questions for the Candidates," encouraging users to post and vote on potential questions for the moderator to ask. More than 20,000 people have done so, some of them prompted by online advocacy campaigns by various groups. The site announces: "The Commission on Presidential Debates will give a selection of your questions to CNN's Candy Crowley, who will be moderating the debate and asking questions of the two nominees." Unfortunately, this isn't really what is going to happen. A high-level source in CNN's...

The Commission on Presidential Debates' "The Voice Of…" Internet initiative, touted by the CPD as providing "unprecedented access for citizens to participate in [the national] conversation" with the bannered support of AOL, Google and Yahoo!, is essentially a dud. An estimated 67 million Americans watched the first Obama-Romney presidential debate last week, while just 2,792 people have bothered to share their views about the top issues facing the country on the online platform built by the commission so members of the public could "share their voice." In an interview with me on Monday morning, CPD national co-chair Mike McCurry explained that he wants the commission to use the web to better involve the public in highlighting the pressing issues in...