Archive: Category: TechPresident

Want to know when to get on Twitter to chat with fellow users about such topics as community building, optimizing your conversion rates, fundraising or new developments in mobile tech and social media? Check out Twitter Chat Schedule, the Google-doc-powered TV Guide of Twitter talk. It's got more than 450 hashtags listed for more topics than I knew existed under the sun, including many of sure interest to folks in the poli-tech world. See for example: #commbuild, a monthly chat that happens on the third Thursday of every month, from 4-5pm EST, moderated by Amy Sample Ward, NTEN's membership director (she also integrates CoverItLive into the chats and keeps archives!); #CROchat, a weekly chat Thursdays from 1-2pm about conversion rate optimization; #fem2, a weekly...

The Minnesota state government has shut down due to the collapse of efforts to reach a budget deal, and all kinds of state services are closing, including highway rest-stops, highway and bridge construction programs, funding for special education programs and safe houses for domestic violence victims. 23,000 state employees have been laid off. Monitoring of beaches by the state health department for high E. Coli levels has also been halted, according to the Democratic-leaning Alliance For a Better Minnesota's protest site, ShutdownShame.org. (The Huffington Post has a nice live-blog of the unfolding story, and the folks at TheUptake.org, who specialize in live-blogging crises over there, have great coverage as well..) But online, there's a kind of ghostly continuation of...

This past Wednesday afternoon, during a panel discussion on social media and the 2012 elections at The Century Foundation in New York City, Nicco Mele, a lecturer at Harvard University who was Howard Dean's webmaster and whose company, EchoDitto, worked on Barack Obama's web campaign for U.S. Senate, made a startling statement: it's not too late for a national Democrat to put together a 2012 primary challenge. Said Mele: "You could have a candidate announce in September and raise $30 million on the Internet to challenge Barack Obama in the Democratic primary." He argued that a "compelling platform" could be put together around the issues of the unfinished Afghan and Iraq wars, dissatisfaction with health care reform, and the bailouts...

Our friend Felipe Heusser writes with a breaking development from the streets of Chile: I am writing you guys from the streets of Santiago in the middle of a 150,000 students protest. We are live streaming from an iPhone using the balloon-mapping technique learned from our friends at the Public Laboratory. Signal is not that good, but please check it out now and tweet. Video clips at Ustream Public Laboratory, in case you need a reminder, has specialized in finding cool ways to cheaply map local areas using balloons and cameras. Now, in Chile, you can see how a similar citizen-led technique can be used to generate footage of political rallies. Add in...

If you haven't seen the new fundraising video from WikiLeaks, which plays off an old Mastercard commercial, don't miss it. It's smartly done, and doubly effective given that Mastercard is one of the companies that are refusing to process donations to the whistleblowing site. With more than 100,000 views on Vimeo since being posted a few days ago, you have to give Julian Assange credit for knowing how to make a viral video. What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo. And if you think Mastercard is likely to sue WikiLeaks for copyright infringement, leaving aside the perverse Streisand effect that would ensue, that story has already been written. Back in 2000, third-party candidate Ralph Nader made this...

Moments after the Republican-controlled New York State Senate voted in favor of same-sex marriage, here's what the Twittersphere is talking about:...

“Apps containing references or commentary about a religious, cultural or ethnic group that are defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited or likely to expose the targeted group to harm or violence will be rejected.” That's a quote from the guidelines for Apple's app store, and it was that rule that Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr cited when he told the Associated Press why the company had removed a pro-Palestinian app built in Bahrain called ThirdInfitada from the app store. The company had received a complaint from Israel's Minister of Public Affairs, Eli Edelstein, who wrote Steve Jobs demanding the app's "immediate removal" of the application, which he described as "an instrument for incitement to violence." "From browsing through the articles, stories and photographs that appear...

For a couple of years, our friend Scott Heiferman, the founder of Meetup.com, has been urging us to start holding Personal Democracy Forum local meetups in addition to our annual conference. A year ago, he announced the creation of Meetup Everywhere, a very cool free tool that is designed to enable anyone with a cause or common interest to spark simultaneous meetings around the world. Since then, we've been thinking, why not see what happens when people who are excited by PdF's focus on how technology is changing politics, government and civic life get together locally? So, after eight years of cultivating the field and building our core community, we've decided to take a leap of faith. The seeds are...

Are you a reporter? Do you know the difference between a server and a waiter? Do terms like CRM, microtargeting, retweets, Creative Commons, API, Anonymous and sock-puppet intrigue you? Are you fascinated by how technology is changing politics, government and civic life? If so, then maybe you should be writing for techPresident.com, Personal Democracy Forum's award-winning news site that tracks how politicians, campaigns and activists are using the web (and vice versa). We're looking for freelance writers with pitches for feature pieces, and we'll pay up to $500 per article. Lengths can vary from 750-2500 words. Send story proposals along with links to relevant writing by you. editors@personaldemocracy.com....

This video of President Obama taking a crying baby from First Lady Michele Obama while on a White House rope line, and then demonstrating some kind of presidential/parental magic touch, has earned more than half a million views in five days, no doubt in part due to thousands of upvotes on Reddit.com: By comparison, it's gotten just 17,000 views on the White House's WestWingWeek, where this snippet of footage originated (and is buried at the end of the 5 minute video). Lesson: Politicians, especially Presidents, being human = viral potential. Just ask this fly:...