Technology: How has it affected the 2008 Election

February 14, 2008 · Filed Under Recent News · 2 Comments 

For the first time ever, all of the major candidates have teams in their respective camps who’s sole job is to reach voters through the internet and other emerging technologies. 

The vital key for any major  is name and face recognition.  That’s why whenever election time rolled around you ended up driving or walking by countless signs that said “Vote for [Insert Name Here}!!!” in big bright letters, often accompanied by a picture of the candidate. 

The theory being even if you know nothing about that candidate or where he stands on the issues, if you recognize his name and his face, but his opponent is a stranger to  you, you are more likely to give your vote to the recognized candidate. 

Politics is the ultimate people person job.  To get the job you have to make a large amount of people in the county, state, or country think favorably of you.  That means making personal contact with them. Or at least looking like you’re trying to. 

During the past century developments in mass communication technology had a direct impact on the American political process in many ways.  The advent of radio and television meant that public figures could suddenly have audiences in the millions, not just the thousands.  This drastically changed the manner in which candidates ran for office.  Instead of variety of ‘whistle stops’ along a campaign trail where people had to be interested enough to travel to where the candidate was speaking, now they could hear and see the candidate talking about his views right in the comfort of their own home. 

Political handlers and power brokers immediately seized on the advantage that TV and Radio could give them in presenting their candidates to the public.  Especially live television, seeing and hearing the person in real-time, giving statements and answering questions, was far better than meeting with mass crowds and attempting to shake a few hands and pat a few backs.  Meeting a candidate in person was often a chore, involving travel, and even then most people could only directly see the candidate for a few moments.  With TV and Radio, now they could see the candidate up close, and hear him or her talk at length.  This exponitially increased both name and face recognition with potential voters.

As the new century has dawned, technological innovation has continued at a rapid rate.  In just the last 8 years the internet has come to play a key role in elections in this country.  Just in the area of political discourse, the internet has made great contributions; organizations such as MoveOn.org and RealClearPolitics.com have provided a forum for people to discuss their ideas and strategies.  Political sites such as The Daily Kos and Free Republic can get over a million visits from readers in a day, many of whom engage in debate and the sharing of ideas. 

It used to be that town hall style meetings would have to be held to get together like-minded citizens to organize a political effort.  Today all you need is a website and an e-mail address and you can organize an internet ‘town hall’ meeting that spans the country in the thousands, if not the millions. 

In this year’s Presidential Elections, each candidate is well aware of the impact successfully conveying their ideas and personality across mass media is going to affect their chances of getting elected.  Now they not only have to craft messages for the TV and the Radio; they also must construct ads and make appearances for interviews  on websites that appear only on-line. 

The speed of information plays such a dramatic factor in the present day elections that each and every statement made by a candidate must be carefully weighed.  Within a matter of minutes a picture or soundbite from even the smallest town, college or remote location can be picked up and seen by millions online.  Every debate and conversation analyzed by thousands of bloggers, and every nuanced guesture critiqued by the masses.

Many would say that this truly does bring the elections towards a truer form of democracy - where the ’every-man’ gets a chance to weigh in and make a fact based decision on each candidate (if they desire to do so).   

Others believe that the parity seen in recent elections (2000-2004) is a result of the mass of information which is readily available and will continue to be the trend.  Perhaps in past years whistle-stops, name recognition and/or a debate or two were enough to insure a landslide.  Now millions of Americans watch every move and listen to every word.  No matter the policitcal stances taken the pure amount of communicatino and information available may be bound to create a close election result.

Whoever wins in the elections this year, you can be sure they will give lots of credit for their victory to those campaign workers who dealt with internet media presentations and advertisements, their PR management team who handled the constant barrage of critisicm from the bloggers and their writers for keeping each and every campaing stump clear from danger.

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Google Reader

January 28, 2008 · Filed Under Product Reviews, Technology · 1 Comment 

Google Reader has evolved into a powerful newsreader. Despite a plethora of competitors GReader stands out based on functionality and price (FREE). Newsgator recently opened their product up for free to consumers as well. Many consumer love the newsgator line but the stand-out difference is that GReader is a full online application (of course) whereas Newsgator is a standalone installable app.

Google Reader is easy to use. Browse to google.com/reader and login with your gmail account.

The easiest way to get started is to import an existing feed or collection of rss feeds. GReader can import any opml file under settings - import. In my case I had used a netvibes.com page for quite some time. Helpfully over at netvibes they allow adding pre-defined collections of feeds (tabs in their lingo) to your page which others have submitted. This is very easy to do and convenient. Since I already had 7 or 8 tabs added I exported those into an opml file - then imported directly into GReader.

Tabs from netvibes are imported as tags in GReader. Google continues the trend of using folders and tags interchangeably. Feeds can be subscribed to multiple tags. The interface is a snap to use - Folder list with feeds on the left, content pane on the right.

‘Add Subscription’ allow the user to type any blog/website name or the actual rss link. Feed will be added right away with no tag.

Click on any feed and ‘feed settings’ option allows for applying tags, subscribing and unsubscribing. As you scroll down the content pane of any feed GReader automatically marks that article as read. Unread articles show up in bold in the feed pane. Users can choose ‘mark all read’ in any feed to update all.

Anything with an RSS feed can be added to GReader. This can be deceivingly powerful and doesn’t just limit you to blogs. I’ve setup ebay listings, craiglist search results and even job searches to show up in my Reader based on the RSS feed available on each.

One of the most powerful (and untouted) features of Google Reader is that it saves the data for you. This means that you can add a whole slew of feeds, organize them at will - and then use the ever-available search to sift thru all of the data without needing to hit the live site(s).

This can be a great research tool - as well as an organization one. Since I’ve switched to GReader the time savings has been immense. Instead of flipping thru bookmarks, news sites and blogs I scan quickly thru the updated sites and can focus my time on the content that I truly need or am interested in. If I happen to miss something or don’t have time to catch up, it will be right there for me when I’m ready.

I’ve found that I don’t need to bookmark nearly as many sites as previously - they now wait for me in Reader.

Another of my favorite features - Google Reader Mobile. That’s correct - I can pull up google.com/reader on my phone and flip thru all of the same content. This makes my cumbersome phone browser suddenly useful. Instead of fighting to type in URLS and sites that do not fit on the mobile browser, the content is served up easily and organized just as I like.

Adding a bit of social flair google allows for all feeds and links to be shared publicly or with friends via ‘your shared items’. I am sure google will try to increase this functionality over time as it would position competitively with many other social bookmarking sites. Trends are also viewable and available (of course - this is Google) where you can see which feeds you spend time on, what you read, etc.

Thru the magic of Google Gears you can even take your Reader info offline with you. Install Gears and GReader allows you to sync the last 2000 articles offline - cached on your local system. In my mind this answers many of the original criticisms of the online Reader. When you connect again it syncs and marks the Read/Unread count as necessary.

All in all a terrific application. And for the price - how could you beat it. Google scores another win for usefulness and assuming they continue to upgrade and improve they’ve got a sure winner.

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