Republican nominee for Vice President Sarah Palin has been taking a beating from her interviews with Katie Couric on CBS.  The clips on foreign policy, newspapers, supreme court cases and domestic issues have become viral hits this week, all of them exposing the less-than-prepared side of Palin.

Well, it appears the campaign has gotten smart and started advertising on YouTube, no doubt looking for keywords matching Palin and CBS, ensuring that their ads will appear next to the damning videos.  Good thinking, but it offers an interesting juxtaposition.

This morning, John McCain is announcing his running mate.  If I were making the biggest announcement of my campaign, I’d make sure my website works.  It has looked like this for about two hours.

Update: Well, it was fun while it lasted.

If there is anything I don’t like about technology, it’s the constancy.  More specifically, it’s the never-ending stream of communication that pressures us to be “plugged in” 24/7 to every aspect of a project or effort.  It is the premiere micromanaging tool.  There isn’t time for solace or reflection-no time for thought.

People are busier, transportation permits packed schedules, a 24-hour news cycle means there’s always a story to get or correct. It’s just constant noise.

I was refreshed to read this morning in the NYT a candid conversation between Sen. Obama and British PM David Cameron.

Mr. Cameron: Do you have a break at all?

Mr. Obama: I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who — not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process — said that should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be …

Mr. Cameron: Your feeling. And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions.

Mr. Cameron: These guys just chalk your diary up.

Mr. Obama: Right. … In 15 minute increments and …

Mr. Cameron: We call it the dentist waiting room. You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.

Mr. Obama: And, well, and you start making mistakes or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of, I think you lose a feel …

Whether it’s time to think about business strategy, political moves, your life goals, your purpose or to reflect on a fun vacation you just had, stopping for a moment and thinking about your life is critical.  It’s nice to know that two powerful men realize that.

via 43Folders

When creating advocacy videos for YouTube or other electronic media, the general rule is to make it shorter than 5 minutes. Even better is 3 minutes. Then, why is Barack Obama’s campaign churning out 20 minute videos? Because people are watching them.

Link to video

On Monday, in Cambridge, the FCC held a hearing on accusations that Comcast is restricting bandwidth in certain sections of its network. Comcast was there to argue that major ISPs should be able to play “traffic cop” on the Internet.

Obviously, this isn’t very popular among the masses (the AG in NY has subpoenaed them). So, to make sure the public couldn’t express their concern, Comcast essentially bought up all the seats with snoozing line-standers.

Paying people to stand in line in Washington is certainly not new. But, when Comcast uses the line-standers to completely block out the public, it’s a gross misuse of what is normally an acceptable practice.

To bring light to this attack on public access to the hearing, savetheinternet.com created a fantastic video that perfectly represents their argument. It is short, peppy and informative. It contains exactly the pieces of information necessary for those that did and didn’t know about the hearing, and gives you the opportunity to act once you’ve seen it. Well done. It’s probably the first YouTube video to ever get over 12,000 views in one day with the main subject being the FCC.

In what could be called the slowest response to the Facebook community yet, Hillary Clinton finally got her own Facebook application today, 6 days before what is arguably her most critical step in the primaries…and it’s not even from the campaign.

The “Go Hillary” application is designed to unite Hillary supporters, recruit them to sign up more supporters, contribute, make calls, host events and compete with each other for points based on their activism.  Unfortunately, the application is probably too late to have any real impact on the primaries.

Obamahas over 640,000 supporters on Facebook, while Clinton pulls in 125,000.  The lack of support could be a result of low youth support in general, but is no doubt aided by the lack of opportunities to funnel the youth support online.  Obama’s application has a Digg-like rating system of news, videos and other Obama tidbits.  It also places a nice box on supporters’ profiles indicating their support of the candidate.  Clinton’s doesn’t appear to do any such thing, at least for this user.

In this case, once again, Obama is the Mac and Clinton the PC.  Too bad, for such a great candidate.

via techPresident

Hillary Clinton announced today that she is loaning her presidential campaign $5 million of her own money. Barack Obama responded with his own campaign – to raise the same $5 million in individual contributions. Looks like he’ll do it in about one day. I pulled this graphic from the email his campaign manager sent this evening asking donors to match her loan.

Now, it may seem like he’s kicking her while she’s down, but the huge headlines declaring that Hillary’s campaign coffers are running dry and that her campaign staff is now searching through trash bins seems a bit a over-the-top. She’ll make the money back quickly in contributions and power through March.

But, it is, as always, a fascinating look at how the Internet has driven these campaigns. Obama raised $32 million in January, taking $28 million of it online. That’s 87% of his fundraising for the month. The reach of his campaign and the number of small donors this online system can engage is staggering. With PayPal, Google Checkout and other ready-made online checkout systems, contributors needn’t even get out their checkbooks.

Astute Wonkette commenters picked up on a recent gem from the Ron Paul forums.

“Does anyone fear that the internet will be attempted to be taken away from us because of the “threat” RP and we have posed? Assuming Paul doesn’t become President, the people “in charge” will have to know that we are all fired up and organizing on the internet for the long haul to make sure the Constitutional candidate in 4 years does win.. I fear they will try to take the internet away, somehow, and then it will be back to hitting the streets, which isn’t bad, but you get my point…”

Yep, I get your point, and think it’s a pretty good idea. Who is it exactly that is “in charge?”

via Wonkette
The Ron Paul Forums 

Microsoft‘s recent bid to acquire Yahoo!, I was looking around to find out where the anti-Microsoft folks from 1998 have ended up. They were witnesses, journalists, economists, congressmen, etc. One was Ed Felten, a professor at Princeton. He has a blog (“Freedom to Tinker“). And he found something interesting recently.

He found two sets of unattended, electronic voting machines at Princeton. It is well documented that these machines can be tinkered with to affect the vote outcome. Proponents of the machines assure they are always well-protected to prevent this from happening. Apparently, not so much.

All night I’ve been looking for the best place to watch results from Super Tuesday roll in. I want a map. A simple map. I want it to update the results automatically and let me roll over the states to see the little data pop up. I want to know how many delegates each state has and where they’re going. I want to see a full list of all the states, too. It’s not too much to ask.

Well, the New York Times got it right with their “Democratic Results Map” (or Republicans, if you prefer). It’s simple, it gives me all the information I want without any flashy spinny things or talking heads. Thank you, NYT. Way to keep it classy.