Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) uses Twitter to communicate with constituents (and other folks). But according to TechDirt, he has been using that potent networking tool to “ignite a totally misguided partisan war, pretending (falsely) that Democrats are trying to prevent him from using Twitter.”
Read the rest of this entry »
The Village Voice reports that the viability of an open source electronic voting system is threatened “the State Board of Elections’ $2 million testing fee.” But Darlene Mealy, a Brooklyn City Council Member, is asking that the fee be waived. She is also pushing for a requirement that the voting equipment be based on accessible software: Read the rest of this entry »
The Democratic Party is truly experimenting with citizen media this election cycle. On Wednesday, they held an “online debate” that consisted of Charlie Rose, PBS, asking questions and recording answers. The questions, of course, came from online voters. Sponsors: The Huffington Post, Slate (owned by the Washington Post) and Yahoo! .
Interested voters can now create “mash ups” using Yahoo!’s online video hosting/editing service, Jumpcut (requires Yahoo! ID). Start by reviewing candidate statements on various issues.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Sunlight Foundation recruited citizen journalists to evaluate Congressional websites on three criteria:
The results are in — and a quick comparison of my native state of Georgia with my current home of Washington shows that being in a tech-savvy locale does not necessarily translate to thinking of us voters when it comes to a Congressional website. Ugh. Ugly.
Quibble, if you like, with the choice of measurements and “passing” scores — this was a great test of distributed citizen action.
Have an extra 10 minutes to spare? Consider helping the Sunlight Foundation conduct a review of Congressional web sites. It’s easy (if the web site is logically organized) and informative (I discovered some unknown-to-me info that Congressmen have to disclose).
One potential flaw: it looks like each web site will be reviewed by only one person, which could introduce error. For example, I marked one question incorrectly on Part 1 of the survey — but was able to correct it when I ran across that bit of information later in my search of the web site. What if I had not done so (either found the info or figured out how to make the correction)? The Congressional web site would have received an erroneously low score, because of a coding error.
Nevertheless, it’s an interesting application of the distributed labor / open-source software model. In an earlier project, the Foundation tracked 1753 of the 1810 earmarks in the House Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Bill and 477 of 553 earmarks in the Housing and Urban Development Bill.
In effect, this is what conservative radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham initiated when she suggested her listeners call a hotline set up to report a toll-free voter protection hotline. (tip)
… This is what I’m thinking. Tell me if you think I’m crazy. This is what
I’m thinking. I think we all need to call 1 888 DEM VOTE all at the
same time. And, by the way, when you call, when you call the number —
and remember, it’s ‘Dem Vote’ not ‘Dumb Vote’…
CERT provides background on Denial of Service Attacks, "an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service." The proposal Ingraham made on the air falls in the first category of attacks: "attempts to ‘flood’ a network, thereby preventing legitimate network traffic."
If behavior like this isn’t sue-able, it should be. At a minimum, the
FCC should fine the stations and consider this inappropriate use of
public airwaves when license renewal comes ’round again.
Edited to add: Their website lists Seattle AM1300 as KOL-AM (three letters?!?) … but in 1975, KOL-AM changed its call letters to KMPS-AM. There is no KMPS-AM affiliation noted on the KMPS-FM site … and Google brings up nothing. No one local to write to, I guess.
We’ve taught a class in streaming media this summer — but we
mustn’t forget a powerful method of sharing video: peer-to-peer (P2P)
networks.
One of the most successful is BitTorrent. Dave Winer reports today that former Sen. John Edwards is using BitTorrent to distribute campaign videos. He says this is a big deal.
They are using MoveDigital as their service/host. There’s a list of benefits
on their ‘how to’ page — one of these is "pay as you go" for
bandwidth. Plus, your visitors can help pay for bandwidth, in very
small increments (cents, not dollars). Of course, there’s RSS, so your
viewers know when you’ve added files. And a lot of other things (ease
of use being a biggie).
Right now, there are four movies and four
licenses — the largest is 26mb. One suggestion off the bat: they need
to name their files with human-readable names, if the file name is the
only descriptor for the download!
Clicking on the "download" link
does not start the BitTorrent version — for that, you need to click
the P2P link. And to have a BT application installed. My straight
download (the .mov) was much faster than the BT download (unlike Dave’s
experience, I’m still "waiting").
From the BitTorrent website:
Bram
wanted to enable effective swarming distribution - - transferring
massive files from server to client with the efficiency of peer-to-peer
- - reliably, quickly and efficiently. By 2003, BitTorrent had sparked
a global revolution in file distribution on the web. Today, we are
providing millions of users worldwide with a valuable platform to
publish, search and download popular digital content.
I’ve created an account (it’s painless!) and will test the interface
next week. One month free — basic account $10/year. (Yes, you read
that right - per YEAR.)
Here’s the direct link to the minimum wage video (mov).
I’m on a panel Wednesday morning with Robert Scoble and Pam Miller: "Blogging: Its power and impact on public affairs and the media" is a panel discussion before an audience of public sector PIOs in Seattle.
What to say, what to say? I could start with my comments from a PRSA workshop earlier this month. Or maybe with this image from EuroBlog 2006? (tip) Or this post by Steve Rubel - DoS hosts webchat with David Kline. Ummm …. let’s start by advising folks to watch EPIC2015 — because blogs are just one part of a larger social ecosystem that will change politics and media. And work.
OASIS, the international standards consortium, has approved Election Markup Language (EML) version 1.0 as
an OASIS Standard. "EML is designed to benefit public officials who oversee voting in
local or national elections and referendums, as well as those who
conduct private elections within corporations or other organizations.
Suppliers of electronic voting systems profit from EML by reducing
their development costs," noted Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "Of course
ultimately, it’s the voters who stand to gain the most from this
standard. The added reliability that comes from using common data
elements in a consistent manner provides more security and reduces
costs in the election process, which is a bottom-line benefit that has
the potential to touch us all."
Technorati Profile
Technorati tags:
eVoting,
Oasis,
Politics
gada.be tags:
eVoting ,
Oasis ,
Politics
kegill
kegill2
seaphotog