politics
Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | He might not be too keen on Facebook, but our Prime Minister clearly didn’t want opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull to steal an advantage from being the most visible Australian politician on Twitter. Kevin Rudd has launched his own Twitter account, though so far there’s been no posts of substance. I’m sure he’d appreciate a direct message or two!
Kevin Rudd PM [via ZDNet]
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PM Kevin Rudd Joins Twitter
9:00AM Angus Kidman | He might not be too keen on Facebook, but our Prime Minister clearly didn’t want opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull to steal an advantage from being the most visible Australian politician on Twitter. Kevin Rudd has launched his own Twitter account, though so far there’s been no posts of substance. I’m sure he’d appreciate a direct message or two!
Kevin Rudd PM [via ZDNet]
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Communicate
3:00PM Angus Kidman | In the spirit of the infamous Fake Steve Jobs, Fake Stephen Conroy has arrived on Twitter, making a mockery of our Minister for Communications. As Dan Warne reports at APC, the faux feed is actually the work of Electronic Frontiers Australia, as part of their campaign against the government’s clean feed proposal. If you’re opposed to that proposal, it’s a great addition to your Twitter friends.
Say G’day to Fake Steve Conroy [APC]
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Fake Stephen Conroy Arrives On Twitter
3:00PM Angus Kidman | In the spirit of the infamous Fake Steve Jobs, Fake Stephen Conroy has arrived on Twitter, making a mockery of our Minister for Communications. As Dan Warne reports at APC, the faux feed is actually the work of Electronic Frontiers Australia, as part of their campaign against the government’s clean feed proposal. If you’re opposed to that proposal, it’s a great addition to your Twitter friends.
Say G’day to Fake Steve Conroy [APC]
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Communicate
US Election Day Post-Mortem, Geek Edition
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Google’s official blog rounds up yesterday’s top searches, with interesting oddities (cassoulet forever?). Our sibling site Gizmodo explains how CNN’s hologram interviews work. And CNET offers a humorous/insightful look at last night’s fervor through ten election night tweets worth remembering. More »
Fix
11:28AM Angus Kidman | Earlier this month, we explained how to get rid of Twitter’s US Election 2008 bar. Twitter made some interim tweaks to the bar, but has now recoded it so that once minimised, it stays minimised — a useful result if you’re looking to save screen real estate and don’t want to mess with AdBlocker. If you do want to kill it altogether, reader Mike Campbell points out that you need to change the original AdBlocker code to read as follows:
twitter.com#div(class=elections-promotion) More »
Twitter Fixes US Election Bar Glitch
11:28AM Angus Kidman | Earlier this month, we explained how to get rid of Twitter’s US Election 2008 bar. Twitter made some interim tweaks to the bar, but has now recoded it so that once minimised, it stays minimised — a useful result if you’re looking to save screen real estate and don’t want to mess with AdBlocker. If you do want to kill it altogether, reader Mike Campbell points out that you need to change the original AdBlocker code to read as follows:
twitter.com#div(class=elections-promotion) More »
Communicate
Spinspotter Puts Group-Edited Bias Markers On News Sites
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Spinspotter, a free toolbar plug-in for Firefox 3, gives anyone who sees opinions masquerading as objective reporting a kind of little red pen to note the spin with. After installing the toolbar, signing up and logging in, you’ll see red-highlighted lines and sections of stories that other readers saw a bias or other problem with. Luckily, when visiting lightning-rod sites like the New York Times or Fox News, you can turn the marker-viewing off. You can also mark your own passages and describe what you see on Spinspotter’s site. It’d be nice to be able to mark spin with a bookmarklet instead of having a toolbar constantly present—and it looks like that could be hacked up—but it’s an otherwise neat exercise in wiki-style peer review—keeping in mind, of course, that anything group-edited can produce unexpected results. Spinspotter is a free download, works wherever Firefox 3 does. Spinspotter [via New York Times] More »
Communicate
4:30PM Angus Kidman | The US presidential election is attracting a lot of attention for the role that technology is playing in the campaign, but the most interesting approach I’ve encountered recently comes from a lot closer to home: New Zealand. As Google’s official blog points out, Helen Clark and John Keys (the two contenders for the PM’s job in the forthcoming New Zealand election) will take questions submitted on video via YouTube and answer them as part of the televised debate on October 14. That certainly beats selling yourself via Facebook then banning your staff from using it. More »
New Zealand Leads The Globe In Tech Politics
4:30PM Angus Kidman | The US presidential election is attracting a lot of attention for the role that technology is playing in the campaign, but the most interesting approach I’ve encountered recently comes from a lot closer to home: New Zealand. As Google’s official blog points out, Helen Clark and John Keys (the two contenders for the PM’s job in the forthcoming New Zealand election) will take questions submitted on video via YouTube and answer them as part of the televised debate on October 14. That certainly beats selling yourself via Facebook then banning your staff from using it. More »
Communicate
In Quotes Displays What US Politicians Said About A Keyword
1:00AM Gina Trapani | Google Labs launches an addictive little webapp called In Quotes, which searches and compares things politicians have said in the news by keyword. So you can see what Obama and McCain have said recently about Iraq, health care, or energy. Hit the “Spin” button to get another quote (with a link to the source news story), or hit the politician drop-down to get quotes from the vice presidential candidates and others, from Hillary Clinton to Ron Paul. In Quotes [Google Labs via Google Blogoscoped] More »
Communicate
6:20PM Angus Kidman | Members of the Australian Senate often seem remote compared to House of Representatives members — in part because they represent a whole state rather than a more tightly-defined area — but in the current Federal Parliament the lack of a dominant party means that the Senate’s review function is more active than ever. Project Democracy makes it easier to track the activities of the Senators that represent you, offering news coverage, extracts from Hansard, electronic contact forms and discussion boards for every member of the Senate. The site is running an email campaign to try and encourage people to “track a senator” (you get a weekly email update, they get told how many people are watching them). I suspect a lot more people will be looking at Senator Nick Xenophon and Senator Barnaby Joyce — but it’s still good to see Internet-era political information sites with a more sophisticated approach than adopting Facebook as a campaign tool but then banning your staff from using it.
[Project Democracy]
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Watch your Senator with Project Democracy
6:20PM Angus Kidman | Members of the Australian Senate often seem remote compared to House of Representatives members — in part because they represent a whole state rather than a more tightly-defined area — but in the current Federal Parliament the lack of a dominant party means that the Senate’s review function is more active than ever. Project Democracy makes it easier to track the activities of the Senators that represent you, offering news coverage, extracts from Hansard, electronic contact forms and discussion boards for every member of the Senate. The site is running an email campaign to try and encourage people to “track a senator” (you get a weekly email update, they get told how many people are watching them). I suspect a lot more people will be looking at Senator Nick Xenophon and Senator Barnaby Joyce — but it’s still good to see Internet-era political information sites with a more sophisticated approach than adopting Facebook as a campaign tool but then banning your staff from using it.
[Project Democracy]
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Track Tonights Primary Results with Google Maps
3:00PM Adam Pash | Keep a watchful eye on the results of tonight’s primary results with a Google Map mashup directly from the folks at Google. The map displays the results of already held primaries and will help you stay up-to-date with tonight’s primaries (which, given the close race, are very important). Google Maps Primaries [via Mashable] More »
