The Republican National Committee has launched a new Web site, which is heavy on collaboration, user interaction -- and features a tiny talking GOP Chairman Michael Steele. RNC New Media Director Todd Herman hinted at the redesign in June at the Personal Democracy Forum annual conference in New York City. At the event, he said his party was preparing for a Web-based revolution and tech-savvy conservatives had finished licking their campaign 2008 wounds. "Conservatives online are dying to organize," Herman said. A memo he posted on GOP.com promised "[a] new look and a more enjoyable, modern, open and participatory way to share our ideals with the country." Read a more thorough review of the site at RedState.com.
A Washington watchdog group that promotes ethics and accountability in government and public life is setting its sights on computer manufacturer Dell. Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with District of Columbia Attorney General Peter Nickles on Monday asking for an investigation into why the Austin, Texas-based Fortune 500 company reportedly refused to honor its next-day service warranty, which guarantees on-site response. The victim of the alleged breach of contract: CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan.
"Honoring a warranty is a matter of ethics and at CREW, we take action when confronted with unethical conduct," the group said in an e-mail. "If Dell promises next day service, Dell should deliver next day service." In a January 2009 settlement with 34 state attorneys general (not including D.C.), Dell agreed to pay $3.35 million to resolve allegations of deceptive advertising and its failure to honor its warranties. CREW also launched DELLception.org, a Web site where consumers can submit stories about similar experiences with the firm.
A Dell spokesman was unaware of Sloan's individual case and could not comment on her situation. Regarding CREW's referenced settlements with attorneys general, the number of actual complaints reflected represented a small percentage of the millions of transactions Dell had in those states. "Many of the customer issues were resolved satisfactorily before the settlements were negotiated," the Dell official said. "Settling with the AGs let us avoid long-term litigation and focus our efforts on providing customers a great experience."
A diverse coalition including retailers, real estate firms and state governments this fall is set to renew its decade-long push to require collection of online sales tax on out-of-state purchases, CongressDaily reported Friday. Aides to Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., and Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., said they are working on revamped versions of measures they introduced in the 110th and previous Congresses, although there is no timeline for introduction. Sources said they expect the "Main Street Fairness Act" to be unveiled as early as September.
Under a 1992 Supreme Court decision, retailers are not required to collect sales tax on online purchases in states where they do not have a physical presence, such as a warehouse, store or distribution center, although some states have passed laws requiring online collections. Supporters claim that leaves brick-and-mortar stores victimized by online retailers like Amazon and eBay that generally do not have to collect the tax and deprives states of billions of dollars in tax receipts annually.
Earlier this year, the jewelry stores' trade association wrote Enzi and Delahunt urging them to move quickly. Jewelers said they have been hurt by consumers browsing to get a sense of what they wanted, and then heading home to buy at online vendors like Blue Nile to avoid sales tax. "Internet retailers should not receive a tax advantage at the expense of traditional retailers and state and local governments," say August talking points from the International Council of Shopping Centers. Read the full story here (subscription required).
Electronic commerce trade group NetChoice on Tuesday unveiled an updated version of what its backers believe are the worst proposed Internet-focused laws in America. A Maine proposal to require Web sites to obtain "verifiable parental consent" before collecting personal information from teens has taken over the top spot on iAWFUL (The Internet Advocates' Watchlist for Ugly Laws). NetChoice says the statute would negatively impact online communities because sites have no means to confirm consent.
Several other new measures also debuted in the iAWFUL Top 10 in its first update since the list's June launch. Those include: a New York City ordinance slated to take effect in September that the group says would "slam Internet users with an unfair extra tax on hotel rooms;" new taxes on digital downloads in Colorado and Washington; a bill that would restrict Internet advertising in Massachusetts; and a North Carolina bill that would hamper commission-based online advertising.
"The Internet is increasingly under attack as lawmakers seek to mandate technological behaviors, impose new taxes and otherwise restrict the free flow of information and commerce online," NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco said in a press release. "While we were pleased to see some measures fall off the iAWFUL list, thanks to the efforts of Internet advocates, new attacks on innovation and online freedom have arisen to take their place." Read more at www.iAWFUL.com.
Two Friday staffing announcements from the Business Software Alliance and The Telecommunications Industry Association:
• BSA has hired Washington attorney Jodie Kelley as general counsel and vice president of anti-piracy. Kelley, who served for six years as vice president and deputy general counsel at Fannie Mae, will lead the high-tech trade group's domestic and international intellectual property enforcement programs, its efforts against Internet crime, and its educational programs to promote software license compliance and respect for IP.
• The standards development organization TIA is bringing on Cheryl Blum as vice president for standards and business development. Blum will be leaving Alcatel-Lucent, where she is a senior manager. She has extensive experience with almost every aspect of telecom systems, including software development, systems engineering, network architecture and standards development.
• More than six months since President Obama took office, the process of filling key positions in his administration continues. Obama's nominee for director of the Patent and Trademark Office, IBM Assistant General Counsel David Kappos, will appear for questioning Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The session gets underway at 10 a.m. in Room 226/Dirksen Senate Office Building.
• The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday will resume its examination of inadvertent file-sharing over peer-to-peer networks, with a hearing that will focus on how the popular platform LimeWire could adversely affect both privacy and national security. The session takes place at 10 a.m. in Room 2154/Rayburn House Office Building.
• The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee plans to mark up legislation Wednesday that would replace a 2005 law -- popularly known as 'Real ID' -- which required states to issue new secure drivers' licenses and identification documents to their residents. The session kicks off at 10 a.m. in Room 324/Dirksen Senate Office Building.
• With last month's nationwide transition to digital television signals firmly behind them, broadcasters plan to celebrate with a Tuesday reception on Capitol Hill that will trumpet their latest technology: digital broadcasts to mobile devices, including cell phones, netbooks and in-car displays. Invited dignitaries to the event -- which kicks off at noon in the foyer of the Rayburn House Office Building -- include Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich., Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.
Read more details at CongressDaily's TechCentral here.
Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, launched his Facebook page on July 2 and has already managed to more than 300 fans, NextGov.com's Bob Brewin writes. Mullen's Facebook page shows he's a wired guy, with links to podcasts, videos and Twitter feeds, although the last Tweet - on July 5 -- is a bit dated: "Off to Moscow for the Summit. Looking forward to signing the workplan for better cooperation with the Russian military."
The Internet experts at Morningside Analytics recently took a look at the blog footprint of WhiteHouse.gov now and one year ago. The results? The Obama administration has successfully expanded its online reach beyond the political blogger echo chamber and is now part of a broader discussion within online communities that are normally attentive to health, science, technology and culture, the firm said. Above, an illustration of the current reach of WhiteHouse.gov. Click here to compare with a 2008 snapshot.
A day after announcing she would resign, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin staked out national goals for herself in a 465-word missive on Facebook. "I am now looking ahead and how we can advance this country together with our values of less government intervention, greater energy independence, stronger national security and much-needed fiscal restraint," she wrote on the popular social networking site. "I hope you will join me. Now is the time to rebuild and help our nation achieve greatness!" She repeated in the posting what she said in her Friday speech that she does not need a formal title to "forge progress in America." She has been considered a likely candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. As former White House adviser Karl Rove and other pundits assessed her move on the Sunday talk shows, Palin bit back with a post on the micro-blogging Web site Twitter. "Critics are spinning, so hang in there as they feed false info on the right decision made as I enter last yr in office to not run again," she wrote. Read more weekend coverage from CongressDaily here.
Former Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska, a charismatic former candidate in the 2008 presidential election whose bizarre YouTube "Rock" video became an Internet phenomenon, chatted with Tech Daily Dose at the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference Tuesday about President Obama's high-tech and cybersecurity agenda. As expected, Gravel has a lot on his mind. Enjoy!
Republican National Committee New Media Director Todd Herman stood before an auditorium full of technology experts on Tuesday, many of them left leaning, with the message that the Grand Old Party is preparing for a Web-based revolution. Tech-savvy conservatives have finished licking their campaign 2008 wounds and are ready to take advantage of the same kinds of Internet innovations that helped President Obama win his bid for the White House. "We'd be fools to not admit what happened," Herman told the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference. The GOP was slow to rally Web supporters and got spanked on Election Day.
"I can tell you that's changing. Conservatives online are dying to organize," said Herman, who previously served as MSNBC's video evangelist. For starters, the RNC plans to re-launch GOP.com in about 45 days. While he refused to offer details on the new site's features, he said RNC Chairman Michael Steele told him to "take the lid off" when it comes to the party's Internet strategy. A memo Herman posted on GOP.com promises "[a] new look and a more enjoyable, modern, open and participatory way to share our ideals with the country." "The Web site you see today is difficult to update, hard to use, and locked in a Web 1.0 environment. It is also stale. It is in need of a massive spring clean," he wrote.
At a reception honoring the winners of Virginia's Innovative App Contest on Saturday, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Jim Shelton, head of the Education Department's Office of Innovation and Improvement, shared the stage to give remarks and field questions from the audience. Technology's role in the classroom is less about hardware and software and more about the marriage of ideas and relevance, Chopra said. The tech guru was careful not to endorse a particular product in a room full of educational technology vendors. The State Educational Technology Directors Association hosted the event as part of a five-day forum on emerging technologies.
The forum overlaps with the National Educational Computing Conference, which began Friday with opening remarks from popular author Malcolm Gladwell. The event ends Wednesday afternoon. When asked what tops his ambitious agenda on leveraging technology to improve education, Chopra stated that data and analytics are the key. "We know more about retailing than we know about the educational experience," he said. Shelton agreed, adding that improvements to the infrastructure of education must be made to enhance decision making. Shelton also emphasized the importance of boosting access in education through broadband. -- Eliza Krigman
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is taking a page from White House Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra's playbook by announcing a new annual competition that will let his tech-savvy constituents repurpose raw government data to create innovative Internet applications. The forthcoming "Big Apps" project will be housed on NYC.gov and while the size of the initial data dump was not specified, Bloomberg told the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference it would be "huge." "The point of collecting data is to manage information effectively... so why not allow the private sector to help us do so?" he reasoned during a keynote via a Skype video call.
Kundra spearheaded a similar project called "Apps For Democracy" while serving as chief technology officer for the District of Columbia government and in May launched Data.gov, a Web site that offers raw feeds of information from a range of federal agencies. Bloomberg's contest will offer cash prizes, publicity and networking opportunities to those who take part, he said. The billionaire businessman said he will also take the winners of the contest out to dinner "and we'll definitely order some apps." The 2008 D.C. government competition produced 47 applications in 30 days using open source programming for iPhones, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps and others.
The man who helped President Obama win his White House bid through a groundbreaking Internet mobilization effort offered some advice to the Republican Party on Monday during remarks at the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference in New York City. To rebound in 2012, the GOP needs new leaders who not only understand technology but also can embrace "the wants, needs and desires of regular people across the country," new media strategist Joe Rospars said. "It will not only help them electorally but will also drag the leadership back toward the middle." During an exchange with Mark McKinnon, who advised Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on the campaign trail, Rospars argued the GOP has veered too far right and despite making some technological progress in recent years is still stuck in the pre-Web world.
"We got millions of people to do stuff... in a substantive way," Rospars said of the Obama campaign. "You have to capture something both at an emotional level and at a this-matters-to-me level." McKinnon agreed, saying the future of conservatism hinges on connecting with people in new ways. Republicans have to get "leaner, tougher and smarter" while using emerging online tools to spread the message that they understand what the American people care about. McKinnon said his party is suffering from a "leadership deficit" similar to the one Democrats experienced a decade ago. But he believes the GOP can regain its footing as voters begin to feel disenfranchised by the party in power. "I hope President Obama is an extraordinary success for the sake of our country [but] the hard stuff is just beginning," he said.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., is among the first in the political world to embrace ChallengePost.com, a Web site that lets users create and join challenges to accomplish goals. The New York City based start-up launched Monday at the Personal Democracy Forum's annual Internet and politics conference. Gingrich's wishes include:
• "Create a method of learning math and science that kids like, and that enables us to leapfrog India and China."
• "Create a method for reusing nuclear waste to make Yucca Mountain, Nevada unnecessary as a repository."
• "Create the first privately financed permanent lunar base."
• "Create a reusable system that could get people into space at 10% of the current cost, thus enabling genuine space tourism and launching an age of exploration."
• "Create a cheap method for turning large quantities of seawater into fresh water."
• "Create a modestly priced, mass-manufacturable hydrogen engine for cars, which would be the biggest single contribution to reducing carbon loading of the atmosphere and reducing subsidies through high oil prices to dictatorships."
• "Create a low-cost vaccine or preventive intervention for malaria -- possibly the single biggest potential improvement in the quality of life in poor tropical countries."
ChallengePost founder Brandon Kessler got the idea after seeing 23-year-old Colin Nederkoorn's contest to run Windows XP on an Intel Mac in 2006. Donations poured in, bringing the cash award to more than $13,000. The ChallengePost community can similarly add prize money to competitions they think are worthwhile. Read more here.
Electronic commerce trade group NetChoice launched a new project Tuesday intended to "track dangerous legislation and mobilize citizens in defense of core Internet principles." The Internet Advocates' Watchlist For Ugly Laws (iAWFUL) identifies the top 10 legislative and regulatory proposals that its creators believe are "truly bad bills that threaten the future of e-commerce and online communication." The roster will be regularly updated to reflect the most immediate dangers, based on severity and likelihood of passage. "Some of the most serious threats to the Internet arise when lawmakers try to 'fix' it," NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco said in a press release. "Knee-jerk, overly prescriptive laws can destroy whole business models or stifle innovations in e-commerce and communication before they even have a chance to prove themselves."
Topping the inaugural iAWFUL list is a New Jersey social networking bill, which the group argues would force a large number of Web sites to become law enforcement investigators. The measure would impose civil and Consumer Fraud Act penalties on social networking sites for failure to promptly probe and report to law enforcement a user's complaint of sexually offensive and harassing communications. Other bills making the iAWFUL top 10 include proposals from California, Connecticut, North Carolina, Nevada, Texas, New York and federal bills aimed at curbing organized retail crime. Some measures would penalize environmentally friendly digital download purchases, hobble the use of online marketplaces, and harm local businesses, iAWFUL stated.
After more than a month of fine-tuning, a new trade group called Business Forward is launching with the goal of promoting President Obama's economic competitiveness agenda. The organization tried to woo big high-tech firms like Cisco Systems, Google, IBM, and Microsoft as members, a source involved in the effort told CongressDaily in March. The New York Times reported Thursday morning that initial members include AT&T, Facebook, Hilton, IBM, Microsoft, Pfizer and Time Warner. Rather than lobbying, Business Forward's initial aim will be hosting events around the country to focus on maximizing funds in the $787 billion economic stimulus package. "There are very few platforms for the administration and Congress to engage the business community," the official told CongressDaily.
It will be led by political operative Jim Doyle; former Viacom lobbyist David Sutphen, whose sister is Obama's deputy chief of staff; former Obama media consultant Erik Smith; former Obama campaign staffer Julie Andreeff Jensen; and Hilary Rosen, former head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Business Forward's founding members will pay up to $75,000 per year for a membership, while smaller firms will pay $1,500 in annual dues. One organizer rejected the notion that the group is the Democrats' answer to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business. It won't compete with progressive think tanks like the Center for American Progress or grassroots group MoveOn.org, the organizer said.
"You know what you get with all the existing organizations around town," the official said. "They all have a role to play. This isn't an 'either-or' endeavor. It's an 'and.' "
Wanda Sykes at the White House Correspondents Dinner: "Who's idea was it to give the Queen an iPod? What is she gonna do? Download Lady Gaga? What are you gonna give the Pope? A Bluetooth?" Watch full coverage from C-SPAN here.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., will become the Senate Judiciary Committee's ranking member after reaching a deal with Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley, aides familiar with the talks said on Monday. The official announcement could come as early as this evening after the panel's GOP members meet, CongressDaily reports. The appointment requires endorsement of the full Republican Conference, which aides said should not be a problem. So what do we know about the former Alabama attorney general's track record on tech policy? The Information Technology Industry Council's congressional scorecard, which has been rating members since 1998, says Sessions had an 80 percent voting record in the 110th Congress.
Sessions voted in lockstep with ITI in favor of the America Competes Act; the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement; comprehensive energy legislation; and a Senate Finance Committee tax extender package, which included a provision to expand the research and development tax credit for two years. But Sessions voted against the financial bailout package. At the time, Sessions issued a statement saying government "can and should be part of the solution, but we should tailor its role to have maximum benefit with minimal market interference." He called the Obama administration's plan well-intentioned but said it represented "unprecedented governmental intervention in the economy." "Its enactment will be a signal to the world that America has turned its back on the free market," Sessions said.
Are you a member of Congress on Facebook and don't like being called a politician? Then maybe you should look into converting your current "politician" page to the new "government official" one. That's the suggestion coming out of the office of House Minority Leader John Boehner. In guidelines his staff is sending to the Republican Conference, Boehner and Facebook are introducing a new category, "government official," that draws a "clear line between" political pages -- such as PACs and campaigns -- with official member sites, explained Nick Schaper, Boehner's new media director. Outside advertising, such as those paid for by lobbying or advocacy groups, will be removed from government official pages but in-house advertising by Facebook will continue.
Adam Conner, an associate for public policy at Facebook, said the new designation will help members of Congress "represent their official duties separately from their political activities" and came out of discussions with both parties. Schaper emphasized that the guidelines would not be mandatory and members can choose to switch to the new category. "There are a number of different ways Facebook can be utilized, and we're not necessarily saying that there is one right way to do it," Schaper said. Facebook, Boehner's office, and the House Administration Committee have been working on the new category for several months. Even though Boehner's guidelines will only be sent to the GOP, all members are able to use the "government official" designation. -- Amy Harder
From NationalJournal.com's David Herbert...
Barack Obama's presidential campaign was an online juggernaut, and the new administration has proposed to use that technological wizardry to make government more transparent. But while new media observers give the team's two most ambitious Web sites -- the overhaul of WhiteHouse.gov and the stimulus-tracking Recovery.gov -- an "A" for effort, the consensus is that Obama's online efforts have a long way to go in the next 100 days. In a recent poll by NationalJournal.com, new media experts from across the political spectrum gave WhiteHouse.gov an average grade of C+.
Although they mostly saw the site as an improvement from the previous administration's, many noted that it remained a one-way forum and suggested it be opened to allow comments and make greater use of the "Open for Questions" feature. "This occasional use of interactive tools" is impressive, says Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. But "90 percent of the time the site is pretty straightforward, as it was under [George W.] Bush." Recovery.gov fared even worse in our poll, averaging a C. The most common gripe about the site, which was designed to track stimulus projects, is that it's "the view from 30,000 feet," as Micah Sifry, co-founder and editor of the Personal Democracy Forum, put it. Read the full story here.
iPhones have cornered the market in cool, and now they may be giving BlackBerrys a run for their money in terms of practicality. Federal News Radio on Wednesday interviewed Andy Einhorn and Alex Salta of OhMyGov.com who touted the usefulness of iPhone applications for government employees. Among the hill-friendly apps are Congress+, a comprehensive congressional directory that includes staff contact info in addition to lawmakers'; FedTravel, a full digital version of the Federal Travel Regulation 301 Handbook for US Official Business Travelers and LawPod, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure formatted for iPhones. Most of the applications are inexpensive or free; Congress+ costs $10 but just Congress, a comparable version, only costs a dollar. FedTravel and LawPod only cost a buck as well. To avoid less useful applications, check the reviews, said Einhorn, managing editor of OhMyGov, "don't bother with anything less than three stars." For more on iPhone apps for government, check out this article. -- Eliza Krigman
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., uses Twitter to talk about her spinach soup recipe and the budget debate. That blend of the personal and political is key to engaging constituents, she explained today at a conference on politics and the Internet.
McCaskill joined Reps. Cathy McMorris Rogers, R-Wash., Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., at the 11th annual Politics Online Conference in downtown D.C. to talk about how their offices are using Twitter, YouTube and other new media.
"It's not a fad, it's not a phase," McMorris Rogers said of the Web's growing influence. "It's a new way citizens are engaging elected officials. It's the new town hall. It's the new letters to the editors." McMorris Rogers, who is the vice chair of the House Republican Conference, is working to train GOP members to adopt new media for their offices.
But Twitter has drawbacks, too, the lawmakers emphasized. McCaskill, who has nearly 21,000 Twitter followers, said she needs to be cautious when working with colleagues on the Hill. "I don't want to be marginalized in the Senate by the fact that the people don't want to deal with me because interactions with me might immediately go on the public bulletin board," she said.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced his candidacy for California governor on Tuesday in an email blast to supporters, via microblogging tool Twitter, and on the social networking site Facebook. "It's official. Today, I became a candidate for governor because California needs a new direction," he wrote. "In San Francisco, we're showing what can be accomplished when we stop looking back and start looking for solutions," Newsom said. He could end up facing eBay CEO Meg Whitman or several others who have announced they are thinking of running. Whitman launched her exploratory Web site in February.
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen spoke to the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet's Politics Online conference on Monday about how she has embraced new technologies to make government more accessible and accountable to the public. She and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner emphasized the promise of cloud computing, the storage of large amounts of data by external hosting providers with the goal of saving money and increasing efficiency. The California government will soon move to a cloud computing structure on election night, Bowen said. She also articulated the promise and perils of social networking site Facebook and microblogging tool Twitter. Neither is good for having a complex discussion about complicated issues, said Bowen, who personally handles both of her accounts and as such can communicate directly with citizens. "You drive your communications department to drink," she laughed. "You hate to be the worst leak in your office." Watch the video of Bowen's speech above to learn more.
From Washington to Las Vegas, it will be a busy week on the policy front for the communications industry. The National Association of Broadcasters holds its annual convention this week in Las Vegas, with CEO David Rehr delivering a keynote Monday and FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein speaking Tuesday. Hot topics will include the shift to digital television culminating June 12, public-interest obligations for DTV stations and the industry's entry into mobile DTV -- technology that lets stations transmit signals to cellphones and other handheld gadgets. Sessions will tackle the administration's approach to media ownership and the battle over whether radio stations should compensate artists for playing their work.
• The George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet will host its annual Politics Online conference Monday and Tuesday. Lawmakers slated to speak include Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., John Culberson, R-Texas, Steve Israel, D-N.Y., and Timothy Ryan, D-Ohio.
• Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., will speak at the Motion Picture Association of America's Business of Show Business summit Tuesday, which will stress the economic impact of movie and television production and distribution. Professional wrestler turned actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will provide the luncheon keynote.
• From Tuesday to Thursday, the Consumer Electronics Association holds its annual Washington Forum featuring a keynote by David Plouffe, campaign manager for then-candidate Obama, on Tuesday and a DTV session Thursday. CEA members make the rounds on Capitol Hill Tuesday, followed by Wednesday night's annual Digital Patriots dinner honoring Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
More than 120 people have downloaded bulk data from the Center for Responsive Politics' campaign finance clearinghouse OpenSecrets.org in the 24 hours since the site opened up its data archives to the public for non-commercial purposes, officials said Tuesday. After 26 years, CRP unshackled about 200 million records so that skilled data-divers can explore information aggregated on OpenSecrets. Officials hope that Web developers and database experts will grab federal money-in-politics data that CRP's researchers have standardized and coded, and mash it up with other data sets. Timelines, charts, maps, other graphics and mobile applications are just some of the projects that could result.
"Putting our data into more hands will put more eyes on Washington and, we hope, engage more Americans in their government," CRP Executive Director Sheila Krumholz said in a press release. "We hope that more people counting cash will lead to more people making change." The OpenSecrets OpenData initiative is being underwritten by a three-year $1.2 million grant from Sunlight Foundation. Sunlight's Ellen Miller said CRP's initiative will have "a long-term impact, undoubtedly inspiring many effective and creative uses of the data by civic hackers, journalists and bloggers."
The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format here.
• Campaign finance: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees.
• Lobbying: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they • reported working on, dating to 1998.
• Personal finances: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. Reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June.
• 527 organizations: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for issue-advocacy groups that can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.
NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder recently sat down with Joe Rospars, President Obama's new media campaign director. Here's a snippet...
Long after dozens of Obama For America campaign diehards had gone home, Joe Rospars and Sam Graham-Felsen were still staked out on the 11th floor of a nondescript Chicago office building one night in March 2007. As usual, they were working long hours, blogging, tracking supporters and otherwise keeping Barack Obama's new media operation alive. But that night they were also waiting for someone special to arrive -- the campaign's 75,000th donor, a milestone that, at the time, seemed grand.
Rospars, then 25, had recently come on as the campaign's new media director, overseeing a team of fewer than a dozen Web specialists. From the start he was committed to recognizing donors, not money, recalls Graham-Felsen, who ran the campaign's blog. So when the donation came in, Graham-Felsen remembers Rospars saying, "Let's give that guy a call." The donor's story was spotlighted on the blog and e-mailed to thousands of supporters. The blog post was signed by Graham-Felsen, and the e-mail came from campaign director David Plouffe. Not from Rospars, even though the idea was his. That's how Rospars wanted it.
A few fun facts about Rospars: He spends a lot of time on Facebook; follows Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Shaquille O'Neal on Twitter; and has a MacBook Pro.
Read the full story here.
House Republican High-Tech Working Group Chairman Bob Goodlatte just completed three days of meetings in Silicon Valley, which involved discussions with high-tech industry leaders about the challenges they currently face. Legislative attempts to overhaul the U.S. patent system as well as concerns about "card check" legislation and tax policy were big issues for the executives, officials said. The Virginia Republican met with CEOs and other top level officials from M2Z Networks, Covad Communications, Infinera Company, Yahoo and Cisco Systems as well as with executives from Amyris Biotech and Solazyme who are working to develop biofuels. The political network TechNet facilitated the meetings.
On the topic of patent reform, Goodlatte said "it is becoming increasingly clear that current patent laws do not sufficiently contemplate all the complex products in today's economy." "Without patent reform we will see more and more inventors registering their ideas under the laws of countries with more predictable intellectual property protections. This will only serve to further damage our fragile economy," he said in a statement. Goodlatte is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which is expected to consider patent legislation in the near term. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed its patent bill before Easter recess.
Goodlatte also stressed the GOP working group's opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, which he believes would strike a huge blow to the privacy rights of workers throughout the country. The impact of that bill would be devastating to small businesses, and to the economy, he said. On tax reform, Goodlatte said the Democratic leadership's fiscal 2010 budget "expands the wayward philosophy of big government by increasing taxes on individuals and small businesses and burdening future generations with compounding debt." The proposal "will lessen the prospect for economic revitalization and job creation," he said.
From NextGov.com's Aliya Sternstein...
Some bloggers are using the social media tactics that President Obama has long promoted against him as they protest his proposed rule to overturn conscience protections for health care workers who refuse to participate in controversial medical procedures. "Obama obviously has championed social media for his purposes. ... We are trying to take a lesson from his toolbox and engage in that as well," said Charlotte Davis, director of strategic operations at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. Obama's proposed regulation would rescind a Bush administration rule that prohibits federal funds from going to healthcare providers that force workers to deliver services they find religiously or morally objectionable, including abortion and sterilization. The rule took effect Jan. 20.
Heritage has created a Web site, ADoctorsRight.com, with an online form letter of disapproval that visitors can modify and submit directly to the public docket by hitting "Send." The deadline for commenting on Obama's reversal is Thursday. Davis said the official Web site for submitting comments electronically, Regulations.gov, is hard to navigate. "If you go to Regulations.gov, that Web site is inherently confusing. It's a travesty, really," she said. "We have set up a system where [citizens] don't have to worry about remembering the docket number." Read the full story here.
Campaign finance clearinghouse OpenSecrets.org, which is run by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, is going "open data" next week, according to an e-mail circulated by the center on Thursday. For the first time in CRP's 26-year history the money-in-politics watchdog is making its most popular data archives fully available to the public for download for free. "Putting our vast data on campaign finance, lobbying and the personal finances of lawmakers in more hands will put more eyes on Washington. More people counting cash will lead to more people making change," the e-mail said.
Officials hope that OpenSecrets.org, a four-time Webby winner for best politics site, will remain the go-to independent source for most people interested in "following the money" but now the skilled data-diver can explore the information that's already aggregated on the site to its full depth. CRP is expecting all sorts of data mash-ups, maps and other cool projects to result from the new capability. Transparency group the Sunlight Foundation helped fund OpenSecrets.org's OpenData initiative to make millions of records available under a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike" license. CRP will continue to offer its data to commercial users for a fee.
Microchip giant Intel has joined the ranks of its high-tech brethren -- Google, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Verizon -- by launching a corporate blog focusing on public policy issues of concern to the company. Intel General Counsel Bruce Sewell provided the inaugural post earlier this week. In his missive, Sewell explained why Intel started the blog, particularly when the firm already has a site where Intel's key global policy objectives are spelled out. "The benefit of our existing site is that visitors get a sense of what Intel stands for, and what we care about in the public policy arena. The limitation is that the site is pretty static," he wrote. "At the 50,000 foot level, our most important policy objectives don't tend to change very much from year to year... But, go one level beneath our broad policy goals and there's a lot happening."
The policy blog will let Intel executives highlight issues and positions at critical stages during the policy process -- such as before a vote or committee hearing. And officials can go in-depth on select issues when we think it's more relevant to readers, Sewell said. "We're encouraging all of our individual policy staffers to blog at-will, with minimal filters. And we're intending these to be brief, timely, conversational postings. No dull treatises," he wrote. Some potential topics on the blog, Sewell offered, could include energy, healthcare and immigration. Hot links: Microsoft blog; Google blog; Verizon blog; Cisco blog.
Tech-savvy Republican strategist David All has grown his boutique Web 2.0 agency by two. On Monday he announced the hiring of Ethan Eilon and Heath Clayton. Eilon was formerly executive director of the College Republican National Committee and joins the David All Group (DAG) as manager of political and grassroots advocacy. Eilon has overseen the grassroots organization and online activism of over 250,000 students on 1,800 college campuses. In Colorado, Eilon lead the 72 hour get-out-the-vote program for the former President George W. Bush's 2004 reelection effort and worked on numerous congressional and state legislative campaigns.
Clayton will serve as executive assistant to the president to help ensure that the leadership of the firm is best utilized to produce results for clients and focus on business development, according to a press release. He joins DAG having previously worked for Bush at the White House; first in the Office of Strategic Initiatives and then in the Office of Presidential Correspondence. A native of Texas, Clayton most recently worked for his hometown district congressman, Rep. Louie Gohmert. All founded his firm in 2007 and works with a range of clients from blue chip companies and conservative non-profits to Republican political organizations and candidates.
See what you missed this week on the high-tech policy agenda by reading TechCentral's regular Friday feature, the Executive Summary.
This week's topics:
▪ Senate Panel Backs Patent Bill
▪ Hutchison Calls For Low-Cost Cable Options
▪ Lawmakers Urge Caution In Distributing Broadband Funds
▪ Senators Unveil Mobile Anti-Spam Bill
▪ Bill Would Provide Greater Access To Presidential Records
▪ Bills Aim To Improve Cybersecurity
▪ Key Lawmakers Warns Firms To Better Protect Data
▪ Homeland Security Official Urges Congress To Reconsider Cargo Mandate
▪ Bill Links ICANN Contract To Cybersecurity
NationalJournal.com's Lucas Grindley writes:
With everyone from "Meet The Press" moderator David Gregory to Sen. John McCain suddenly fiending for Twitter, it didn't take long before the media came up with a bevy of cute puns and, just as quickly, top 10 lists of the most vital political feeds to follow. The Los Angeles Times and Politico have so far sounded off with their own rankings of top feeds, but the geek world hasn't been much impressed. Washington social media expert Nick O'Neill used his blog to dismiss the Politico top 10 as "an arbitrary list which was highly effective linkbait." Politico's list included influential politicians, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Al Gore, but real-world cred doesn't necessarily translate into tweets.
The Times created its ranking based on the number of people signed up to read each twitterer's posts -- essentially equating Twitter "followers" with the much-ballyhooed contest to rake in "Facebook friends" during the presidential campaign. Government consultant Mark Drapeau took to his blog to call this "an even worse list" than Politico's. So he wrote up his own based on "my own experiences and some private polling of the Twitter community." Fellow blogger O'Neill made that list. Karl Rove did not. So what is a Twitter newbie -- like one of the congressmen who didn't type their way through President Obama's speech -- supposed to do? How are they supposed to know what they're missing or who to emulate? Read the full story here.
The former director of the e-campaign division of the Republican National Committee is resigning but not without getting in his two cents worth. Cyrus Krohn wrote Thursday that the Republicans must attract more computer programmers to build platforms and applications in order to gain political power once again.
"Maybe we should start providing computer science scholarships in exchange for a commitment to serve our party," asked Krohn. "Yes, we have generational and geographical hurdles stunting our digital spurt. The former will be solved actuarially and the latter the Democrats will solve for us by upgrading the grid," he wrote.
Krohn said that he is relocating to Seattle with his family and plans to work on building new online applications for the best presidential candidate to use in 2012. Prior to joining the RNC, he was director of content production for Yahoo and served as publisher of Slate.com. -- Winter Casey
From Hotline On Call...
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched a new Web site -- ImSorryRush.com -- spoofing Republicans who criticize conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh and "then turn around and quickly beg his forgiveness." The site allows users to customize their own Limbaugh apology letters. "If you're one of the growing number of Republicans who need a quick and easy way to apologize to Rush Limbaugh after you cross him, look no further than ImSorryRush.com," Jennifer Crider, communications director for the DCCC, said in a statement. "Even if you're not a Republican, this new site gives you the opportunity to apologize to Leader Rush just like the elected Republicans did."
The site is an effort, of course, to push the Michael Steele/Limbaugh feud into another news cycle. And to hammer home the notion that "Leader Rush" is heading the GOP. But the Democrats aren't the only ones still musing about Republican National Committee chief Steele's recent criticism of Limbaugh, whom he called an entertainer who makes "ugly" and "incendiary" remarks. The conservative blogosphere is buzzing with discontent. Blogometer's Ian Faerstein reports that bloggers are slamming Steele and sticking by Limbaugh. Read the full story here.
CNN and social networking site Facebook are teaming up for President Barack Obama's Tuesday evening address to Congress in hopes of recreating their successful Inauguration Day live streaming and commenting collaboration. During that historic event, over 2 million Facebook status updates were posted through the feed with 4,000 status updates per minute on average and a spike of 8,500 updates when Obama began his speech, Facebook reported. CNN touted the effort as "the largest live video event in Internet history." The partnership was "a symbolic day for social TV" that showed millions of people want to talk with their friends while watching TV that they care about, even if they can't be in the same place to watch it together, according to the Inside Facebook blog. Read more here.
See what you missed this week on the high-tech policy agenda by reading TechCentral's regular Friday feature, the Executive Summary.
This week's topics:
▪ Gregg Withdraws Nomination For Commerce
▪ Leahy To Unveil Patent Bill Soon
▪ Opposition Builds To Music Royalty Bill
▪ FCC To Allow Some Stations To Convert To DTV Before New Deadline
▪ Stimulus Compromise Leaves Health IT Funding Largely Intact
▪ Broadband Tax Credits Dropped From Stimulus
▪ FTC Unveils Consumer Privacy Guidelines For Net Ads
▪ Review Of Federal Cybersecurity Efforts Praised
▪ Border Initiative Now Focusing on Technology
▪ Government Close To Deal To Allow Agencies To Use YouTube
▪ Lawmakers Wary Of Ticketmaster, LiveNation Merger
▪ House Passes Measure To Bolster Nanotech Oversight
Read the full rundown here (subscription required).
Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman officially tossed her hat in the ring for California governor on Monday by forming an exploratory committee led by California Republican Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Mary Bono Mack. The long-anticipated announcement that she would seek the GOP gubernatorial nomination in 2010 comes on the heels of her service as a co-chair for the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Former California Gov. Pete Wilson will serve as her campaign chairman.
In the coming weeks, through speeches in Silicon Valley, Orange County and at the California Republican Party Convention in Sacramento, Whitman will offer a vision for the Golden State, according to a press release. "California faces challenges unlike any other time in its history - a weak and faltering economy, massive job losses, and an exploding state budget deficit. California is better than this, and I refuse to stand by and watch it fail," she said. "Now is the time for people across the state to join in a cause for change, excellence and a new California."
Jeff Randle, CEO of Randle Communications, will serve as Whitman's senior advisor and has worked with her since 2007. Randle joins Henry Gomez, one of Whitman's closest advisors during her tenure at the Internet auction Web site. Randle called Whitman a "tremendous leader and team-builder" and said she is poised to address California's problems. "Meg is committed to working to restore the state's greatness. With new leadership and a new direction, Meg will forge a new California, which will once again be the number one state in economic growth, job creation and quality of life," he said. Whitman's chief opponent is Republican California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
"Joe The Plumber," the Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site PJTV.com -- an offshoot of blogger network Pajamas Media, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The Toledo area resident whose name is actually Samuel Wurzelbacher said he will spend 10 days covering the fighting there. He told WNWO-TV that he wants to let Israel's "'Average Joes' share their story."
Wurzelbacher gained attention during the final weeks of the campaign when he asked now President-elect Barack Obama about his tax plan. He then joined Republican John McCain on the campaign trail. Wurzelbacher has been keeping busy since Election Day. In November, he started working to educate people about the nationwide conversion to digital television coming this February and founded a watchdog group called Secure Our Dream. He is also promoting his book: "Joe the Plumber - Fighting for the American Dream," which was co-written by novelist Thomas Tabback.
Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman is preparing to run for California governor in 2010, the Associated Press reported Monday. The Silicon Valley leader who served as an adviser to the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., stepped down from the boards of eBay, Procter & Gamble Co. and DreamWorks Animation SKG as of Dec. 31, her spokesman confirmed. He said it was for "personal reasons and time commitments" but would not elaborate.
A person who is knowledgeable about Whitman's political aspirations told the AP that the 52-year-old wants to run for governor and her resignations were "a strong indication" that she wants to clear any commitments that might interfere with a run for political office. She will make the announcement official in four to six weeks, the individual said. Whitman is one of three Republicans who are considered front-runners in the 2010 California gubernatorial race. The others are state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Rep. Tom Campbell. GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cannot run again under the state's term-limits law.
If Whitman were to win the GOP primary, she is likely to face a well-known Democratic opponent in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 13 percentage points, the AP said. Former Gov. Jerry Brown, 70, now the state's attorney general, is thought to be the leading Democratic candidate if he decides to run -- unless Sen. Dianne Feinstein jumps into the race. Read more news about the race here.
Republicans have been kicking themselves for not thinking of some innovations that Barack Obama's campaign rolled out one after another, but in some cases John McCain's strategists were presented the same ideas and gave them a thumbs-down. One infamous case: text messaging supporters with the announcement of a vice presidential pick. Online GOP strategist Patrick Ruffini writes on TheNextRight.com that he's heard from "numerous" people inside the McCain campaign who say the idea of announcing online or via text message was floated "months before" the Obama camp made its announcement. Senior staff "shot down" the proposal as "undignified."
That's a dangerous mindset, Ruffini warns. "The notion that this is somehow not mainstream enough, that this is somehow not dignified, too cutting edge, too bleeding edge, is just so self-defeating and so illustrative of the problem that I think it must be discussed," Ruffini said in an interview with NationalJournal.com. Former McCain Web staff denied to NationalJournal.com any notion texting was dismissed for being "undignified" but confirmed that it was considered before being disapproved on concerns it would disrupt the rollout of a surprise pick.
The campaign strategy was to "ride the wave of the pop," and "anything that would have mitigated that pop we couldn't do," said the McCain Web staffer. The surprise factor (announcing little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin while the media focused on Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty) successfully drove thousands to JohnMcCain.com, and the campaign raked in $4.5 million in donations from the Web during the 24 hours after the pick, with thousands signing up for campaign e-mails.
I love this quote from Colin Delany at e.politics:
If there’s any piece of the primary-season frenzy that seems designed to drive voters insane, it’s the unsolicited phone calls. The ones from real people are bad enough, but robocalls were clearly invented by someone with a deep hatred of the human race.
That question is at the core of a complaint that techPresident Editor Micah Sifry has lodged against Michael Arrington and his TechCrunch blog, which on Thursday announced plans for the "TechCrunch Tech President Primaries."
TechCrunch has been interviewing presidential candidates in recent weeks -- the first five to participate were Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain, and Democrats John Edwards, Mike Gravel and Barack Obama -- and its primaries are running from Dec. 18 to Jan. 18. The site will endorse one candidate from each major party "as the 'Tech President' candidate based on the popular results of reader voting and blog input from our community of technology leaders and entrepreneurs."
Ten specific issues are being emphasized in the primary: network neutrality, immigration and H1-B visas, taxes and Internet taxes, technology education, the "digital divide," identity theft, the mobile spectrum auction scheduled for January, China, intellectual property, and renewable energy.
Ironically, techPresident's Sifry accused TechCrunch of violations in two of those areas -- identity theft (later retracted) and intellectual property -- for allegedly stealing the brand that techPresident has been working to build since it launched in February. Sifry titled his post "TechCrunch Commits Identity Theft."
Continue reading Can The Phrase 'Tech President' Be Trademarked?.
Cross-posted at Beltway Blogroll
Micah Sifry at techPresident calls attention to one that has garnered some attention this week, including from Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic.
The tactic: Register an unflattering Internet address and point it to a Web site you don't own in order to make a candidate you don't like look bad. The specific episode currently being discussed involves domain names like BarackOsama2008.org being pointed to the same Internet protocol address that hosts HillaryClinton.com.
The take-away from the controversy is this, according to Sifry: "Thanks to the Internet, there are all kinds of new games campaigns can play on each other now, and given the pressure to be first with a story, all kinds of new dangers that a misunderstanding about how the Web works will turn into a serious political story."
Political reporters (and bloggers) beware; don't be fooled by stories that sound too sensational to be true.
We know the grades for the Democratic presidential candidates, so now it's time to see where the Republican candidates rank on the tech policy scale. TechPresident has the report card (with a few shout-outs for the reporting we did here at Tech Daily in the summer), and none of the candidates scored higher than a C:
-- Rudy Giuliani: D
-- Mike Huckabee: C ("and we're being generous")
-- Duncan Hunter: F
-- John McCain: C-plus
-- Ron Paul: C
-- Mitt Romney: D-plus
-- Tom Tancredo: F
-- Fred Thompson: D-plus
Republican new media consultant David All has partnered with Dan Manatt of PoliticsTV to produce a new Internet video program dubbed NetCenter08. The first episode revisits the controversy over last week's CNN/YouTube debate featuring Republican presidential candidates.
That's what techPresident wants to know about tonight's Republican presidential debate, which will feature video questions submitted via YouTube.
Rather than letting YouTube users pick the question, a very World Wide Webby thing to do, CNN is still insisting that it needs to filter the questions to avoid controversy. But techPresident disagrees and is citing a spreadsheet of the YouTube community's response to all 4,927 submissions to make its case.
The spreadsheet lists the videos by views, favorites, ratings, comments, honors and links. TechPresident focused on the 40 that were viewed the most.
"And guess what we discovered?" Josh Levy wrote. "No cyborgs! No snowmen! Only two of the top 40 videos stick out as possibly too weird to show the candidates. ... In fact, that vast majority of these top videos ask important, cross-partisan questions.'
We'll know tonight how that filter compares with the one chosen by CNN -- namely, debate moderator Anderson Cooper, CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman and two or three other network staffers.
James Kotecki, now a video commentator at The Politico, rose to new media fame this year by offering unsolicited advice to presidential candidates from his dorm room and posting videos of the sessions to YouTube. It seems only fitting, then, for YouTube to give the keys to its home page on the day of the CNN/YouTube debate featuring the Republican candidates.
Kotecki explains in a video and offers a peek inside the political world as seen through the eyes of YouTube users:
At the Personal Democracy Forum's annual conference in New York this year, the founders of techPresident announced their standard for what it will take to become the first "tech president" and challenged the crop of 2008 candidates to join that race within the race. This week, techPresident issued a report card on the candidates.
Here are the grades for the Democrats (Republican scores to be announced later):
-- Joseph Biden: B
-- Hillary Clinton: B-minus
-- Christopher Dodd: C
-- John Edwards: A-minus
-- Mike Gravel: D-minus
-- Dennis Kucinich: D
-- Barack Obama: A-minus
-- Bill Richardson: C-minus
Get the details on the grades at techPresident.
Google employees in Silicon Valley received a political treat last week when Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama unveiled his innovation agenda in a speech at the Internet firm's headquarters. But you don't have to be a Google employee to watch the speech; the company has posted it online at YouTube, the company's video-sharing unit.
The session with Obama is the latest in a series of appearances by presidential candidates at Google. Others who have spoken to company employees this year include: Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Mike Gravel and Bill Richardson; and Republicans John McCain and Ron Paul.
Given the importance of online video this election cycle, the progressive think tank New Politics Institute has released its new "how to" guide both in http://www.newpolitics.net/files/Reimagine_Video.pdf">text and video forms Wednesday.
Dan Manatt of PoliticsTV explains why video is so critical with examples of video campaign announcements from Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards. Manatt outlines basic ways any campaign should be using video -- for a candidate's bio, capturing "gotcha" moments of an opponent and keeping a video blog.
Manatt also offers sample expense sheets to show how cheap it is to buy the equipment for any level campaign.
By Aswini Anburajan
© National Journal Group Inc.
It's not just Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama who believes in the power of Barack Obama. Republican John McCain believes in it, too. The McCain presidential campaign has at least two different advertisements with Google AdWords that use Obama's name to direct users to McCain's Web site.
AdWords are text-based advertisement that appear on a viewer's screen next to the list of Google search results. Advertisers bid on search terms using an automated process based on what users are searching for at that moment; placement of the ads is determined by who won the bid and the relevance of the ad. Advertisers pay per ad clicked.
Both of McCain's AdWords have the headline "Obama for President?" followed by a pitch for McCain. Under the heading, one ad asks, "Why not learn more about John McCain for President," with a link to the candidate's Web site. The second ad reads, "Learn more about John McCain's journey on the '08 campaign trail" and also includes a link to McCain's home page.
Searching for the term "Obama for president" brought up both McCain ads, which appeared in the top five search results on the first page.
Obama isn't the only presidential moniker that the McCain team has embraced. Searches for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney -- as well as for the word "president" -- also bring up AdWords for McCain, with similar language to those appearing next to the Obama results.
Christian Ferry, McCain's deputy campaign manager, said bidding on the names is part of a much larger online strategy that takes advantage of frequently searched terms. "We buy hundreds or thousands of different AdWords -- that's monitored all the time," Ferry said. "It's based on what's going in the news cycle [that is] relevant to the 2008 cycle."
Continue reading Candidates Bet On Each Other With Google Ads.
Saturday marked the second annual celebration of One Web Day, an event previewed in Friday's PM Edition of Technology Daily, and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards used the occasion to tout his Internet policy agenda.
"I am proud to have outlined an agenda to build a universal, affordable Internet with a starting place goal of giving all U.S. homes and businesses access to real high-speed Internet by 2010," Edwards said in a statement. He said the Internet has given people the ability "to effect change and make profound differences for good in their communities," but a "digital divide" than leaves many rural and black Americans without technology access needs to be addressed.
Edwards, who along with his wife Elizabeth have actively engaged with the Internet political community, also reiterated his support for the concept of network neutrality in broadband content. "My commitment, as president, will be to ensure that the FCC preserves free expression and competition on the Internet by continuing to enforce net neutrality, ensuring no degradation or blocking of access to Web sites," he said.
Micah Sifry of techPresident lamented that Edwards was the only presidential candidate who "understood the value of One Web Day."
MoveOn.org is promising to double its TV ad buy condemning Republican senators who voted against an amendment Wednesday to allow troops serving in Iraq equal time at home with their families between deployments.
The liberal netroots group escalated its attack on the Iraq War with more personal attacks against those who support it in a new TV ad Thursday. The latest one accuses Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Republicans of a "betrayal of trust" for their vote against the troop deployment amendment from Sen. James Webb, D-Va.
MoveOn announced the additional add buy about an hour after Senate Republicans pushed Democrats to denounce MoveOn for its New York Times ad with the headline "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" that ran earlier this month. Today the Senate passed a non-binding resolution condemning MoveOn for the newspaper ad targeting Gen. David Petraeus that passed 72-25. (link: http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1465
Earlier in the day President Bush weighed in at a news conference Thursday in which he called the original MoveOn.org print ad "disgusting" and said he was disappointed more Democratic leaders did not criticize it.http://http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/09/presidential-pr.html (link: http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/09/presidential-pr.html)
Two of the leading presidential contenders will spend quality time on the Internet tonight -- one to talk health care and the other to take questions on an array of topics.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton released a healthcare plan yesterday and will make that the focus of a webcast at 8 p.m. The plan, which would cost an estimated $110 billion a year, includes health information technology provisions. In fact, Clinton expects to pay part of the cost of the plan with savings achieved by modernizing the American health system.
If you want to ask Clinton about that or other tech aspects of her plan, though, you'll have to RSVP for the webcast.
On the Republican side, meanwhile, candidate Mitt Romney will hold his first "Ask Mitt Anything" online chat at 7:15 p.m. So if you're curious about Romney's "Ocean" ad and his plan to cleanse American culture by attacking Internet pornography and videogame violence, register to ask him a question.
More than 1,700 people already have registered and submitted questions, according to the campaign.
National Journal has partnered with NBC to embed reporters with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states, Iowa and New Hampshire. This is the latest report from the field. Check "Tech Trail 2008" for other tech-related campaign developments.
By Adam Aigner-Treworgy
The campaign kickoff of Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson has certainly generated a lot of media attention, and in the Southern primary states of South Carolina and Florida, it has generated a fair amount of voter attention. But how much of that attention has translated into much-needed donations to Thompson's campaign?
Following the candidate's big announcement speech in Des Moines earlier this month, his communications staff was diligent about releasing numbers that touted the success of Thompson's Web-based announcement strategy at attracting visitors and donations on its Web site, Fred08.com. The campaign bragged that it raised more than $300,000 in 24 hours online.
But after that, nary a word has come from the Thompson campaign on fundraising tactics until Friday, when the campaign announced a new gimmick meant to get Thompson devotees more involved in the campaign. In an e-mail sent to supporters, the campaign announced the "Kick-off Challenge," a program that encourages supporters to make a fundraising commitment and fulfill it by the end of the month. Successful fundraisers then will be dubbed Kickoff Champions and will be eligible for special merchandise commensurate with the amount they raise.
PoliticsTV points out that Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of former Sen. George Allen's "Macaca" comment. According to the site, on Aug. 11, 2006, S.R. Siddarth taped the Virginia Republican's fateful comment during a campaign rally.
Unable to get any TV station to use the footage, Democratic challenger Jim Webb's camp put the video on YouTube and the rest is history. Allen ended up losing what some thought would be a pretty safe race.
"In just one year, YouTube has gone from an obscure Web app to a household word and a political force," PoliticsTV stated. Can you imagine what fun is in store for the 2008 presidential campaign cycle?!
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the self-described "constitutionalist" Republican candidate for Congress, has arguably the most loyal Internet following of all of the 2008 candidates, so his visit to the campus of the Google Internet firm was a bit hit earlier this month.
Now, courtesy of the Paul campaign, you can get the condensed version (less than 15 minutes) -- and a catchy tune titled "If You Google Ron Paul" that promises "hope for America."
The song has plenty of red-meat lyrics for the civil liberties crowd. Here's a sample: "If you Google Ron Paul, you will find the man who will save us ... from the PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security. ... If you Google Ron Paul, you will find a man who will ... protect our privacy, stop the national ID card."
As virtual worlds become more complex, should the government, or can it, regulate virtual life? National Journal's Neil Munro dissects this complicated issue in the June 30 issue of the magazine.
Here's a snippet:
How do you regulate people's digital fantasies? When fantasy intrudes on reality, what do you do about it? These, in essence, are the two urgent questions facing Internet companies, and government regulators, as online fantasy sites grow into huge second worlds, teeming with millions of "residents" whose virtual behavior can range from the innocent to the bizarre to the criminal. In these burgeoning "virtual worlds," people are engaging in all sorts of activity that would be regulated, limited, controlled, or taxed in the real world.
Read the full story here. The same issue has a cover story by Carl Cannon called "Surviving the Information Age," which is worth a look as well.
Reprinted from June 21 PM Edition of National Journal's Technology Daily
Web Radio Plans 'Day Of Silence' To Protest Rates
By Andrew Noyes
Webcasters around the country are planning to silence their audio streams Tuesday to draw attention to a recently proposed hike in music royalties that they believe could harm their industry if implemented.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based KCRW was among the first to announce its involvement in the "day of silence." The station will pre-empt its online channels to loop a one-hour special about dangers posed by the Copyright Royalty Board's March ruling, General Manager Ruth Seymour said.
The public radio station's program, called "D-Day for Webcasters," will give listeners information about the industry's fight against the rate hike, which takes effect July 15. They also will trumpet a bill introduced by Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., that would reverse the board's decision.
The protest "will give Americans a small taste of what could happen if we don't pass legislation or have the parties negotiate a solution," Inslee said. "It'll be a bitter pill that the 70 million Internet radio listeners won't want to swallow."
When I got a press release from the Commerce Department on Friday afternoon congratulating the 2005 National Medal of Technology Laureates I thought it was a typo since it happens to be 2007. I asked an agency spokeswoman about it and she explained that the White House determines the timing for such announcements and the ceremony dates.
In any case, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez congratulated the recipients. "Invention and innovation are the hallmark of our 21st century knowledge-based economy," he said. "We honor these pioneers in their pursuit of new knowledge and its application to improve the human condition here in the United States and around the globe."
Award-winners include: Alfred Cho, a semiconductor researcher at Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs and Dean Sicking, a civil engineering professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A team award was given to Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, whose researchers were honored for the development and manufacturing of a vaccine to prevent the deadly and disabling consequences of Streptococcus pneumoniae infections in children.
When the YouTube video-sharing site co-hosts its first presidential debate with CNN in about six weeks, Tech Daily plans to be in Charleston, S.C., to cover it. For a glimpse into how the debate will be structured, here's an excerpt from an article in Advertising Age:
As CNN's Anderson Cooper put it to viewers, "I'm going to host it, but, basically, it is going to be your questions and your YouTube videos the candidates are going to have to sit through and watch. So make them creative."The Time Warner-owned network is expected to make an announcement this week about the format of the first Democratic National Committee-sanctioned debate, asking users to upload their questions to YouTube with the promise that several of them will be put to the candidates that evening.
Reprinted from Thursday's PM Edition of Technology Daily:
By Gene J. Koprowski, for Technology Daily
MADISON, Wis. -- Political campaigns are now relying on blogs to "test market" new messages with small, niche audiences before transforming them into full-release commercials and press releases, Republican and Democratic consultants said Thursday.
The trend started on the state level but is going national with the 2008 presidential campaigns, experts said here at the Online News Association's regional conference.
Wisconsin Republican strategist Brian Fraley indicated that statewide blogs are an excellent tool to "test ideas -- and see if they are press release worthy." He said campaigns overall are now devoting more staffing and money to monitoring and cultivating bloggers and online sites.
Fraley cited this week's example of Fred Thompson, a possible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, releasing an online video in response to a recent trip to Cuba by liberal filmmaker, author and activist Michael Moore.
Thompson previously had criticized the trip, and Moore challenged him to a debate. Thompson answered the challenged in a video released through the Internet rather than the mainstream media. In the video, Thompson noted that another documentary filmmaker had been put in a mental hospital in Cuba. "He made quite a point of emphasizing the words 'mental institution'" when speaking to Moore through the video, Fraley said.
Democratic consultant Ted Osthelder agreed that the Internet video had a dramatic impact on Thompson's visibility as a potential player in 2008. "I don't think campaigns are going to spend $100 million on YouTube.com" like they might on traditional campaign ads, Osthelder said, but more people may well remember Thompson's inexpensive video.
MADISON, Wis. -- Joe Trippi, the Democratic political consultant, who powered now-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean to prominence with an Internet strategy in 2004, was scheduled to speak at an Online News Association event here but canceled at the last minute by telephone.
His new role on the presidential campaign of Democrat John Edwards created a conflict. "He phoned in his apologies," said Jeff Mayers, president of WisPolitics.com, which helped host the event. "He had some sort of high-level meeting he had to attend today for John Edwards."
-- Gene J. Koprowski, for Technology Daily
Some of the greatest minds in Internet politicking will attend Friday's Personal Democracy Forum at Pace University in New York City. Our own Heather Greenfield will be reporting from the event. The annual conference draws a bevy of technologists, campaign organizers, politicos, bloggers, activists and journalists.
Some key questions being asked at this year's summit include: How is voter-generated content changing election campaigns? Why should advocacy groups adapt to the connected age? What new technology tools and practices are on the horizon? How are new technologies democratizing the political process? Which political leaders "get it"?
Scheduled speakers include: Peter Daou, Hillary Clinton '08; Becki Donatelli, John McCain '08; Esther Dyson, EDventure; Mindy Finn, Mitt Romney '08; Thomas Friedman, New York Times; author Seth Godin; Facebook.com's Chris Kelly; pundit Arianna Huffington; author Lawrence Lessig; Kim Malone of Google AdSense; Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo; Craigslist founder Craig Newmark; Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; and Joe Trippi, John Edwards '08.
It has the makings of a quiet early April with the House and Senate gone for their annual spring recess -- but last week was pretty lively, especially in the area of new legislation. As reported in Theresa Poulson's Friday bill round-up, a slew of tech measures were introduced. Here are a few:
H.R. 1739 would require the approval of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge or a U.S. magistrate judge for subpoenas on telephone, e-mail and financial records.
H.R. 1758 would authorize H-1B visas for highly skilled workers at workplaces contributing to college financial aid.
H.R. 1689 aims to combat illegal downloading on college and university campuses.
H.R. 1788 would redirect unused spectrum to promote the deployment of commercial, high-speed Internet technologies for public-safety communications.
H.R. 1694 would give state, local and tribal governments more flexibility in using federal funds for information- and intelligence-sharing activities.
S. 1065 would review and expand telecommunications programs for health and mental health in the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments.
H.R. 1685 seeks to protect consumers from identity theft and require notice of security breaches that could lead to ID theft.
H.R. 1775 would amend the Freedom of Information Act to require the disclosure of certain information related to federal contractors.
Two major Hispanic groups have reportedly broken journalism rule #1 -- double-check how names are spelled, especially when the name in question belongs to the man at the center of the Bush administration's biggest batch of controversies in recent memory.
According to the Potomac Flacks blog, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Latino Coalition, which is headed by Hector Barreto (who ran the Small Business Administration during Bush's first term), issued a joint press release backing embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last week.
But Patricia Guadalupe, a reporter for the Washington Hispanic Newspaper, says the groups misspelled the AG's name. Neither organization has the press release (original or corrected) on their Web sites. A quick Google search for Alberto Gonzales (correct spelling) showed 2.9 million hits, PF says. The most common way to misspell his name is "Gonzalez" and a Google search turned up 883,000 hits.
In this morning's AM Edition of Technology Daily, we cited and linked to a Huffington Post blog entry by Phillip de Vellis, a worker at the political technology firm Blue State Digital who created the "Vote Different" online video about presidential candidate and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.
De Vellis said in his post that he resigned his job at Blue State Digital because of the ad. His statement implied that the decision to leave the firm was his. "The company had no idea that I'd created the ad and neither did any of our clients," de Vellis wrote. "But I've decided to resign anyway so as not to harm them, even by implication."
A statement posted on the front page of the company's Web site tells a different story. "Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise," Managing Director Thomas Gensemer said, "Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effective immediately."
Gensemer added that the company does software development and Web hosting for the campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, one of Clinton's foes in the Democratic presidential primary and the candidate that de Vellis' "Vote Different" video endorsed.
"Mr. de Vellis created this video on his own time," Gensemer said. "It was done without the knowledge of management, and was in no way tied to his work at the firm or our formal engagement [on technology pursuits] with the Obama campaign."
UPDATE: TechPresident has a "Vote Different" edition that rounds up reactions to the news about the man behind the ad. The roundup includes a link to National Journal's own Hotline On Call, which poses some as yet unanswered questions.
The Homeland Security Department's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee convenes for its quarterly meeting on Wednesday. The confab comes on the heels of a report that shows the agency has not built adequate privacy protections into a data-mining program under development.
Government Accountability Office investigators said the lack of safeguards increase the risk that innocent people could be tagged as terrorists. The program, widely known by the acronym ADVISE, is sure to fuel controversy between officials who defend data-mining tactics and privacy advocates who say the government is overreaching, according to Technology Daily's AM edition.
A major topic for discussion at the meeting is the so-called "REAL ID" requirement that states develop driver's licenses based on nationwide standards. The committee will hear from government experts as well as outside sources from the National Governors Association, American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Later in the day, the committee is slated to discuss IT initiatives to enhance citizen and immigration services as well as agency-wide data integrity and records retention. DHS Chief Privacy Officer Hugo Teufel and Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker are also scheduled to speak.
National Public Radio aired a piece yesterday on the trend of presidential candidates trolling for votes and money at online social networks, and it cast the social-networking efforts of Sen. John McCain in a positive light.
But David All, a new media adviser for Republicans, questioned that conclusion. He said at techPresident that the McCainSpace online community will be a detriment to the campaign of the Arizona Republican.
McCainSpace is/was/has been/will continue to be a total disaster and continue to drain time, resources, and technology from the online campaign," All wrote. He added: "[Y]ou're too late. And you're trying to add another profile to my life which I have to monitor, update, add pics, find friends, etc."
The National Journal's online edition capped off the week with this bombshell:
Probe May Have Targeted Gonzales
Had it not been quashed, a Justice Department inquiry into the domestic eavesdropping program likely would have examined Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The magazine reports that President Bush intervened to sideline the probe. Subscribers can read more here.
Unrelated Shameless Self-Promotion
Just in case you haven’t read enough on this blog and in Technology Daily about the C-SPAN copyright policy flap, don't miss my lengthy story in the new issue of National Journal magazine that serves as an overview for more general audiences who don’t eat, sleep and breathe intellectual property issues. Subscribers can also read it online here.
Despite a $100,000 settlement with the New York Attorney General's Office, Cingular Wireless and Travelocity.com have failed to sever ties with vendors of secretly installed computer spyware, Harvard University researcher Ben Edelman says.
On his Web site, Edelman shows six examples of how the companies continue to receive spyware-originating traffic, including traffic from some of the Internet's "most notorious and most widespread spyware." The companies, along with Priceline.com, settled with the state in January.
While I await reactions from the firms involved, it's probably a good time to mention a House Commerce Committee hearing on the topic of spyware slated for Thursday. Witnesses include: the Center for Democracy and Technology's Ari Schwartz; the Direct Marketing Association's Jerry Cerasale; TACODA founder Dave Morgan; TRUSTe's Fran Maier; and attorney Christine Varney on behalf of Zango.
Update 1: In an e-mailed statement, Travelocity said the company "does not use adware or spyware" and has terms and conditions that specifically prohibit third parties from placing its ads in those channels. When the firm finds out about such ads, it immediately suspends the campaigns identified, officials said. Travelocity is "aggressively investigating" Edelman's claims to determine if a distributor is in the wrong.
Update 2: The spyware hearing was interesting but pretty predictable. The legislation in question has been introduced and passed by the House twice before, so I feel like I've covered the same hearing twice before. The witnesses agreed that something has to be done to stop Web wrongdoers but each expressed concerns with portions of the bill. It will be interesting to see if the measure moves forward as-is or if lawmakers try to appease some folks before asking the Senate to take similar action.
The man behind a series of online copyright complaints has agreed to withdraw the claims, take a copyright law course and apologize for interfering with the free speech rights of Internet magazine 10 Zen Monkeys.
The agreement settles an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit filed against Michael Crook on behalf of the magazine's editor Jeff Diehl. Under the threat of what EFF calls "meritless" takedown notices from Crook, Diehl modified an article about Crook's behavior in a fake sex-ad scheme.
Crook claimed to be the copyright holder of an image used in the story, which was later found to have come from a Fox News program and legally used as part of commentary. You can see Crook's videotaped apology here.
"Crook's legal threats interfered with legitimate debate about his controversial online behavior," EFF attorney Jason Schultz said in a press release. "Public figures must not be allowed to use bogus copyright claims to squelch speech."
A decade after Congress enacted Internet age amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, only one in five federal agencies (21 percent) comply with the law, according to a new survey released during Sunshine Week by the National Security Archive. About 6 percent post all 10 elements of essential FOIA guidance; 36 percent provide the required indexes of records; and 26 percent make online forms available for FOIA requests.
In addition, the study showed that many agency Web links are missing or inaccurate (one FOIA fax number checked rang in the maternity ward of a military base hospital). "Federal agencies are flunking the online test and keeping us in the dark," said the Archive's chief Thomas Blanton. "Some government sites just link to each other in an endless empty loop."
Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs, AP chief Tom Curley and others will testify on the status of FOIA on Wednesday morning at the Senate Judiciary Committee.
YouTube has become even more popular since the Google-owned video-sharing site took down about 100,000 videos that Viacom claimed infringed on its copyrights last month, according to the search giant's general counsel Kent Walker. "We think that's a testament to the draw of the user-generated content on YouTube," he said in a statement.
As reported in Technology Daily's PM edition, Viacom filed a lawsuit against Google and YouTube in a Manhattan federal court asking for $1 billion in damages and an injunction barring further alleged infringement.
Meanwhile, Google has been successful at forging "thousands of successful partnerships with content owners" like Warner Music, Sony/BMG, Universal Music and others, Walker said. The partnerships offer users access to a wide world of entertainment, sports, politics and news "and we're only getting started," he said.
Update: The 463 Blog has a nice round up of what some in the Internet community are saying about the Viacom-Google lawsuit.
Google Watch: A rundown of Viacom's arguments
Jeff Jarvis: Viacom has an issue with their own viewers
Fred Wilson: Hopes the suit doesn’t settle
TechDirt: Ponders the supposed damage in question
Paid Content: Timeline of Viacom/YouTube interactions
Henry Blodget: It's not a big deal
Mark Cuban: "Gootube" has no idea who their users are
Civil libertarians cheered the introduction of a bill by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on Tuesday aimed at improving transparency and accountability in the federal government. Technology Daily's PM edition has the full story on the measure.
The legislation, which coincides with Washington's annual Sunshine Week, builds on legislative efforts that the Vermont Democrat and Texas Republican John Cornyn began two years ago. The bill would update the four-decade-old Freedom of Information Act for the first time since the 1990s.
Caroline Fredrickson, the American Civil Liberties Union's top lobbyist, criticized the Bush administration as being "the most secretive administration" since Nixon's. "A vibrant democracy depends upon concerned and active people who use tools like FOIA," she said. "We need FOIA to shine light into the darkened corners of government agencies."
The House could make broadcast-quality downloadable video of all hearings and floor debate a reality by the end of the 110th Congress, Internet watchdog Carl Malamud said Tuesday in a new report sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In it, he offers a number of reasons why he thinks Congress should take advantage of the "network effect" of having data available in bulk for others to work with. "Technically speaking, this is a 'no-brainer.' This is simply a matter of will, Malamud said.
His report was issued in the wake of a recent loosening of copyright controls on digital video by the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, commonly known as C-SPAN, and a controversy involving Pelosi's posting of digital video on her Web site.
The physical infrastructure will soon be in place to provide systematic, comprehensive coverage of each hearing, Malamud said. Plus, government-owned video cameras installed on Capitol Hill are good and there are no technical obstacles to offering better quality, he added.
If lawmaking doesn’t pan out for Pennsylvania Democrat Mike Doyle, he could always take his act on the road. During a House Commerce Committee hearing on the future of radio, he told "a little story about a local guy done good."
That guy is Gregg Gillis, who works as a biomedical engineer by day and DJs at night under the name "Girl Talk." His music mash-ups have topped the charts of Rolling Stone and Spin magazines. The man can blend Elton John, Notorious B.I.G. and Destiny's Child all in the span of 30 seconds, Doyle said.
But Gillis' schtick relies on remixing copyrighted material so legitimate audio service eMusic.com took his content offline for possible infringement. Now he's flying all over the world opening concerts and remixing for artists like Beck, Doyle noted.
He said he hoped his fellow congressmen would "take a step back and ask themselves if mash-ups and mix tapes are really different, or if it's the same as Paul McCartney admitting he nicked a Chuck Berry bass riff and used it on the Beatles hit 'I Saw Her Standing There.'"
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said Doyle's remarks were about as clear as mud. He joked that his colleague had given up drinking alcohol for Lent but might want to get back on the sauce because he used to make more sense.
Update: Doyle said later in the hearing that he did not give up alcohol for Lent. He gave up Brussels sprouts.
Radio is, at its essence, a communications tool and is the most democratic of media because it reaches virtually all of the American public, Geoffrey Blackwell told the House Commerce Committee panel on behalf of the Native Public Media and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.
While commercial radio is fundamentally about getting the largest possible audience, non-commercial programming is a platform for conversation, he said. "This conversation can range from a wide diversity of music to features on local political issues, high school sports to a pow wow," he said.
The dialogue is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Commerce Department's Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, he said. Both are important programs that "deserve as much support as possible" from Congress.
Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., said at the House Commerce Committee panel hearing that he is skeptical of the proposed merger between satellite radio providers XM and Sirius. "Do we throw anything that makes noise into the world of competition so that we don’t define this merger as a monopoly?" he asked. Some have argued that Internet radio, iPods and terrestrial radio provide plenty of competition in the audio entertainment marketplace.
Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., was "not sure that Congress has a distinct role" in the actual merger approval. "Perhaps our responsibility is more into looking at whether this merger will provide greater localism on a combined service or not," he said. Another question is whether the local, differentiated programming on satellite radio will undermine free, over-the-air radio.
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted the radio market is "not easy to define." While there may be plenty of services that compete for listeners' ears, he is worried that the proposed Sirius-XM union could "start us down a slippery slope" of approving mergers by other players like satellite television providers EchoStar and DirecTV. The FCC denied a request by those two companies to merge several years ago.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce's Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, is concerned about the "abysmal lack of broadcast licenses" held by minority- and women-owned businesses. His remarks came at a hearing Wednesday on the future of radio.
While many licenses were given out decades ago, it is important to remember that the country's population is half female and 35 percent minority, he said. Lawmakers and the FCC can find "creative ways" to remedy the situation, Markey added.
Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who chairs the full committee, also tackled the topic. He said minorities own about 4 percent of radio stations nationwide and it may be part of a "downward trend." He called for "full representation of minority broadcasting" on American airwaves and said the law and federal agencies "should encourage that."
I'll be filing a story for Technology Daily's PM edition from Wednesday afternoon's House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee hearing that examines the future of the radio (hence the Donna Summer song lyrics).
Witnesses include Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin; Geoffrey Blackwell on behalf of the Native Public Media and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters; Robert Kimball of RealNetworks on behalf of the Digital Media Association; the Consumers Union's Gene Kimmelman; and Greater Media's Peter Smyth on behalf of the National Association of Broadcasters.
While I anticipate that much of the discussion will revolve around the proposed XM-Sirius merger, experts will likely share their thoughts with lawmakers on a host of other issues that are pertinent to 21st century radio. Stay tuned…
The White House Web site has a new look this week. Visitors will find an updated design with improved access to information about the president's speeches, events and policies. Additional features include: news feed subscriptions, weekly e-mail updates, podcasts and on-demand video.
According to White House Web guru David Almacy, the upgrades were made to streamline the code, refresh the design and better highlight features. He's hosting an "Ask the White House" Q&A online on Thursday at 4 p.m. to discuss the new site.
The quote of the week in today's "People Column" (subscription only) is from Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a Democratic presidential candidate. But the quote -- "You need a president with no strings. No strings, no strings, no strings." -- is more telling if you see the actual video that prompted it, so here it is, as remixed by Jeff Jarvis of PrezVid:
This article -- written by Heather Greenfield, one of our senior writers at Technology Daily -- is being reprinted with permission of National Journal magazine.
The story was published in Friday's edition and revisits the report about "Google bombs" that Heather broke for Tech Daily and MSNBC last fall. Numerous media outlets reported on the topic after Heather broke the news.
The magazine article leads with an account of how bloggers and others also are using Google AdWords to attack the political candidates they oppose.
Information Wars
by Heather Greenfield
In a Senate race that hinged on 9,329 votes, 315,508 people saw a Web page with a Google ad that read "Learn about George Allen. Did George Allen use racial slurs?" Nearly 1,000 people clicked on that link, which took them to a CBS News article about the Virginia incumbent's alleged racism.
The ad was targeted to computer users in Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, and West Virginia, in hopes of reaching Virginia voters at home or at work. Although it's impossible to gauge whether the small advertisement that popped up in response to Google searches on "George Allen" played a role in the defeat of the Republican senator from Virginia last November, liberal blogger Chris Bowers is delighted with his $326 ad buy.
"I certainly think the money we put into the search-engine-optimization campaign was well spent, and other campaigns would be wise to [copy] it," said Bowers, a regular contributor to MyDD, a popular liberal blog.
Campaign consultants who specialize in so-called new media were aware of the tactic's potential even before the 2006 mid-term elections. Asked to identify the most effective tool or strategy that a candidate could use in the final weeks of a campaign, both liberal and conservative consultants cited search-engine ads tied to key words or phrases.
Mark SooHoo, vice president of Campaign Solutions, an online strategy company serving conservatives, said that buying Google AdWords or the equivalent on Yahoo or MSN reaches voters ready to pay attention. Advertisers choose key words and create ads around them. When people search online for information on that topic, the ads appear to the right of the search results.
"It's a good, low-cost, low-barrier entry, easy-to-set-up way to get involved," SooHoo said. Candidates get name exposure free of charge, he said, and their campaigns pay only for the number of times their ads are clicked on.
New Media
Online Politics
Tech Policy
