Election Day freneticism is the norm for the likes of candidates, journalists, poll workers, campaign staffers, and commentators. But this time around, an unlikely tech entrepreneur and his employees entered the fray.
Jeff Han demonstrates his company's multitouch system.
(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)Jeff Han is the man behind CNN's "Magic Wall" multitouch electronic wall map, the one reporter John King has been using all campaign season to illustrate election information and that was the target of a recent Saturday Night Live spoof (embedded at the end of this post). Han's company, New York-based Perceptive Pixel, has also provided its technology to Fox News Channel (Bill Hemmer's "Bill-board") and to ABC News, which unveiled its version of the map Tuesday night.
Han--a crowd favorite at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference in 2006 and 2007--even equipped, trained, and collaborated with SNL staff for the spoof skit in which cast member Fred Armisen gets carried away drawing a green cat over the country and moving Minnesota on top of Virginia.
CNN's John King shows off his "Magic Wall" election map that's built on Perceptive Pixel's multitouch system.
(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)"It was a ton of fun to be there and to work with creative people," he said of his time at SNL.
The TED show "was the launch of this whole thing," he said, noting that a video of his 2006 presentation quickly spread around the Web. That, of course was before the launches of Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's Surface, both of which also take advantage of touch technology.
Another key moment in Han's company's 2.5-year timeline was a military trade show where CNN executive producer David Bohrman just happened to be walking the floors. He took notice of Han's technology, which unlike traditional touch screens allows you to use more than one finger--or the fingers of multiple users--at a time.
A demo of Perceptive Pixel's multitouch screen using two hands.
(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)"He saw the technology in a different way than anyone else had," said Han, 32, who never conceived of his product's application in television news. "I hadn't thought of it that way, but I wasn't disagreeing," he said.
The result, in the case of CNN's map anyway, has been the ability to zoom in and out of states, change them to different shades of blue or red, quickly tally electoral votes under different scenarios, and more.
Han's employees were stationed at CNN, Fox, and ABC Tuesday night to help their graphics departments make sure things ran smoothly. But amid the frenzy of the day he said he was confident it would all go well--they had been working long and hard with the TV networks in preparation for the big night.
The applications for Perceptive Pixel's technology run the gamut--from defense and government to private companies--depending upon how the software toolkit is used. The TV news applications are actually a small fraction of the current uses, Han said, although they are the most challenging and have the highest visibility.
Perceptive Pixel founder Jeff Han
(Credit: Perceptive Pixel)With his background in computer graphics, Han said at one point it hit him that what he liked about the field was not so much the pretty, photo-realistic presentation of information, but interacting with the information, manipulating it, and moving things around. That's what led Han--who conducted research for and is still associated with New York University's computer science department--to start working on his multitouch system about six years ago.
So far, Han said his company is weathering the economic downturn and its user base continues to grow. He wants all new clients to see the SNL skit, which he said relays the important message that technology is just that. What matters is using it appropriately. Same for multitouch specifically, he said; there are times when it's the perfect solution. There are also times when other technologies are more appropriate.
"In the wrong hands, it doesn't work," he said, thankful that King was the one presenting his technology for the first time to much of the world.
Long lines, broken voting machines, and citizens who can't vote because their names don't show up on the registration rolls. A group of software developers and designers have teamed up with the blog techPresident to make it easier for voters to broadcast such issues far and wide--fast.
The Twitter Vote Report, as its name suggests, lets voters share experiences and resources via the popular microblogging service. The messages will then be aggregated and mapped so followers can "see" voting problems in real time via state-specific Google Maps, like the Colorado map at the top of this blog.
Twitterites can post to the Twitter Vote Report in a few ways:
• By Twitter: post a tweet that includes the hashtag #votereport and then other predetermined tags ("#wait:90" means that the wait time is 90 minutes, for example; #machine would indicate machine problems).
• By text message: send a text message starting with #votereport to 66937 (MOZES).
• By phone: call the automated hotline at 567-258-VOTE (8683) or 208-272-9024 with any touch-tone phone.
• By iPhone/Android phone: download the iPhone App or find the "votereport" app in the Android marketplace.
Of course, the Twitter Vote Report is only one of many online election tools. From polling widgets to iPhone-based countdown clocks, election apps are more plentiful than California electoral votes.
Update at 5:55 a.m. PDT: Additional TV stations airing the debate live have been added.
This is Hulu's new election hub.
(Credit: Hulu)Last year, it was all about "remixing" debate footage. But this year, it's about seeing it live.
Video content hub Hulu has secured the rights to stream the remaining two presidential debates live on the Web. The next debate is set for Tuesday night.
The news was first reported by PaidContent that Hulu has launched Election '08 hub for the live debate, as well as past election-related footage. That includes footage from political satire talk shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, the only two MTV Networks shows currently on Hulu.
This is the first-ever live broadcast for Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.
Cable channel Current, co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is streaming all presidential debates live on the Web as part of its "Hack the Debate" partnership with Twitter.
Most major television broadcasters and news channels are airing the debate live, of course, including ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, and Telemundo.
Hulu will also, according to PaidContent, also be the venue for the debut of Crawford, a documentary about the town best known for President Bush's ranch.
Joost, the video content site that everyone thought would be a runaway success, began offering live TV for the first time this past spring, starting with the NCAA "March Madness" basketball tournament.
The new Yahoo News beta.
(Credit: Yahoo)Yahoo News has realized that there's a lot of information out there on the Web and that people just don't have time for all of it. That's why the new opt-in beta of a revamped Yahoo News, which went live on Thursday, tries to cut to the chase.
"Essentially, we've found that news consumers want only the first few paragraphs of a news story, and then they move on," an e-mail from Yahoo representatives explained. "Given the short attention span of today's audience, we modified the site to present only the first five paragraphs, and we're now offering relevant links to other stories much higher on the page."
The interface of the new Yahoo News is also wider, fitting in more without the need to start scrolling. And in anticipation of the upcoming election, Yahoo has enhanced its "political dashboard" for 2008 election news headlines and poll tracking. As with many current politics sites, the centerpiece is a red-and-blue electoral college map--and Yahoo users can create their own scenarios. The latest update allows a given candidate's poll performance to be tracked over time.
In February, Yahoo debuted its Buzz social news site, which propels the most popular headlines to the main Yahoo News page. The main Yahoo News site has more than 40 million users, the company said.
This post was updated to clarify what's new with the Political Dashboard.
Google has taken a public stand against Proposition 8, an anti-gay marriage measure on the November ballot in California.
Co-founder Sergey Brin, who made the announcement in a blog Friday afternoon, acknowledged that it is unusual for his company to take stands on issues outside the tech realm. The company "especially" avoids taking stands on social issues, he said, because of the diversity of its workforce.
However, Brin said, "it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8."
"We should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love," he said.
Brin did not mention whether Google will do anything else to oppose the measure, other than taking a stand.
The official site opposing the proposition includes a long list of backers. No companies are listed there. However, on Thursday, Levi Strauss & Co. and PG&E became co-chairs of the No On Prop 8 Equality Business Council. And in July, PG&E donated $250,000 to the campaign.
Continuing our special Web coverage of the 2008 presidential election, CBSNews.com and CNET are once again teaming up to offer special online programming for the debates, starting with Friday night's showdown between John McCain and Barack Obama in Oxford, Miss.
Be sure to tune into this CBS News link not only to watch the 90-minute debate live, beginning at 9 p.m. EDT, but also for follow-up live network coverage and then an exclusive Web-only show featuring Katie Couric and the CBS News political team.
On the Webcast, slated to begin at 11 p.m. EDT, Couric will talk with special guests and undecided voters, and the political team will answer viewer questions. You can submit questions now, or during the live debate coverage.
Later, we'll post the full Webcast, and will also offer audio and video debate coverage for download via iTunes.
And come back for the vice presidential debate on October 2, the second presidential debate on October 7, and the third presidential debate on October 15. All start at 9 p.m. EDT and will be followed by Webcasts with Couric and company.
Updated at 1:50 a.m. PDT to reflect official announcement.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has selected Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, one of the longest-serving members of the Senate, as his vice presidential running mate.
Delaware Sen. Joe Biden is touted as bringing foreign policy experience to the Obama ticket.
(Credit: U.S. Senate site for Joe Biden)"Barack has chosen Joe Biden to be his running mate," Obama's official Web site announced early Saturday. "Joe Biden brings extensive foreign policy experience, an impressive record of collaborating across party lines, and a direct approach to getting the job done."
Obama was expected to break the news of his selection via text messages and e-mails to supporters on Saturday. While supporters who signed up for the announcement still received them, the Associated Press reported the selection of Biden late Friday. ABC News reported that the U.S. Secret Service had sent a protective detail for Biden to his residence late Friday and that family members appeared to be gathering there.
Biden, 65, is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and considered one of the leading Democrats on foreign affairs issues--an area in which Obama has been criticized as lacking experience. Although he voted for the Iraq war in 2002, Biden has since become a vocal critic of U.S. involvement.
Twice a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Biden has acknowledged a tendency to talk too much. Earlier this year, while announcing his own candidacy for the White House, Biden referred to Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. "
Biden later apologized for the remark, telling The Daily Show's Jon Stewart that he was attempting to be "complimentary. This is an incredible guy, c'mon! He's a phenomenon."
However, a spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain pointed out late Friday that Biden had previously criticized Obama's lack of foreign policy experience.
"There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama's lack of experience than Joe Biden," McCain spokesman Ben Porritt said in a statement. "Biden has denounced Barack Obama's poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing--that Barack Obama is not ready to be president."
Watch CBS Videos Online
CBSNews video: Obama selects V.P.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has unveiled his
vice presidential running mate, veteran Sen. Joe Biden, who has
served in the Senate for over 35 years. Dean Reynolds reports.
"This is not exactly a 'safe' selection for Obama. With over 30 years of baggage accumulated in the U.S. Senate, Biden is not the kind of running mate you would think of for someone who has campaigned on a pledge to change the way politics is done in Washington," said Vaughn Ververs, CBSNews.com senior political editor. " But it does signal that Obama may be more of a realist than his rhetoric suggests and shows that the 'change' candidate has decided that a wealth of 'experience' may be important to an administration after all." (See Verver's analysis of the Obama/Biden ticket.)
Biden also ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, but withdrew after rival Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis distributed a videotape that showed Biden had plagiarized parts of his speeches.
First elected to the Senate in 1972, Biden is one of the youngest senators elected. Biden, who was 29 at the time of his election--younger than the legal age of 30 to serve as a senator--was of legal age when he was sworn in.
Other reported contenders for the ticket included Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
McCain, who has yet to announce vice presidential nominee, is widely expected to name a running mate on August 29--his 72nd birthday. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney are reported to be his front-runners.
See also: Memeorandum for more coverage of the Biden selection
It's a fundamental rule of journalism: let the facts speak for themselves.
An Atlantic Monthly article published online Monday presents the facts of Sen. Hillary Clinton's failed presidential bid in the form of dozens of e-mails, memos, and other pieces of correspondence collected from inside the campaign. The magazine also makes a complete index of the documents available.
While the memos largely reinforce earlier reports of internal disputes in the campaign, it is sometimes surprising what one learns (Bill Gates apparently at one point asked Clinton strategist Mark Penn to make him "more human"), and what one doesn't learn from the documents (correspondence from Bill Clinton is conspicuously absent).
"As a journalistic exercise, the 'campaign obit' is inherently flawed, reflecting the viewpoints of those closest to the press rather than empirical truth," the article, called "The Front-Runner's Fall," says.
The documents show Clinton's key strategists' insights on the Democratic primary, for better or worse. "(Barack Obama) may be the JFK in the race, but you are the Bobby," Penn wrote in a March 2007 memo.
The communications take some unexpected turns, such as when Penn wrote, "A word about being human," in a December 2006 memo. "Bill Gates once asked me, 'Could you make me more human?' I said, 'Being human is overrated.'"
Joshua Green, who wrote the article, said he collected "stacks" of material from unnamed sources. He notes in the article that "paranoid dysfunction breeds the impulse to hoard. Everything from major strategic plans to bitchy staff e-mail feuds was handed over."
Green said none of his sources expressed any concern over breaking any sort of disclosure agreements they may or may not have had with the campaign over their correspondences.
"I know it's something campaigns are thinking more and more about," he said. "The general sentiment (after this article was published) was, 'Wow I'm going to be real careful about what I put into writing in the future.' One person in particular said, 'You're going to do for e-mailing what the 'Macaca' video did for George Allen.'"
Some politicians have already made moves in recent years to cut back on sending easily retrievable communications. New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine in July 2007 announced he would no longer be using e-mail, after state Republicans filed a lawsuit forcing him to release his e-mail correspondence with a union president.
One figure from the Clinton team noticeably absent in the communications published is Bill Clinton. "There isn't a lot of published correspondence that he was a part of that was leaked to me," Green said. "Apparently he doesn't send e-mails, whereas Hillary has three BlackBerrys and is a prolific electronic corresponder."
The 150-year-old Atlantic has been modernizing its content by offering videos, podcasts, and other supplements on its Web site. "Now that even magazines like ours have a platform to give this stuff to our readers and let them take a look, why not?" Green asks.
"It's just amazing what getting and publishing these documents can reveal," he said. "Stuff like finding out about Bill Gates' quest to be a human being was not something we expected to discover."
Sen. Barack Obama has already proven himself to be the most popular presidential candidate on the Internet, what with his more than 1.3 million Facebook supporters and lofty aims of 2 million online donors. Now the presumptive Democratic nominee is not only outshining other politicians on the Internet, but also the very stars of social networking--Obama has just overtaken Kevin Rose's spot as the most followed person on Twitter, according to Twitterholic.
By Twitterholic's last count, Obama stands at 56,661 followers, compared with Rose's 56,442. Obama also has the second highest number of friends on Twitter--59,338--according to Twitterholic, which calculates individual statistics for each Twitter user a couple of times a day. The candidate's Twitter page offers up such rousing tidbits of news as "Holding a town hall on economic security in St. Petersburg, FL."
But for all those followers, there just may be a few who don't feel sufficiently networked with the candidate. For those who want to be in-the-know about all things Obama--like his VP choice--a millisecond before millions of others, the candidate reminds us to sign up for his text message alerts.
Between 2,000 and 3,000 liberal-leaning bloggers are getting some face time this week, in hopes of gathering strength before the fall election.
The four-day Netroots Nation 2008 conference, which started Thursday in Austin, Texas, will feature more than 150 speakers and 125 panel discussions and events.
With the presidential election less than four months away, the conference is attracting the attention of a number of Democratic heavyweights--with the major exception of presidential candidate Barack Obama himself. According to the Austin American-Statesman, Obama apparently bowed out due to a planned trip to Europe and the Middle East.
Keynote speakers include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and two former presidential hopefuls: Howard Dean, who now leads the Democratic National Committee, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and founder of Change Congress, will also speak.
Panels include "Pundit Project: How To Outtalk The Talking Heads," "Sunshine Laws For Bloggers," and "Measuring and Managing Your Online Paid Advertising Campaigns." There are also caucus meetings such as ones for Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans, "geeks," "moms," "street prophets," and Mother Jones readers.
This is the third annual such conference, which was previously known as YearlyKos, and the first one that could help influence the outcome of a presidential election. Netroots Nation, a site where liberal bloggers converge, was originally part of the Daily Kos blog--thus the previous name of the gathering.
"Bloggers want to be involved in the election of the next president," Matt Glazer, editor of the Austin-based blog Burnt Orange Report, told the Austin American-Statesman. "Networks of bloggers aren't just talking to one another; they are making very strategic decisions about the issues they want to discuss."
At the same time the liberal bloggers are meeting, their conservative counterparts are gathering in Austin as well. The Texas Defending the American Dream state summit will be markedly smaller than the Netroots Nation gathering, with about 300 expected, according to the Statesman. But its speakers include Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr.
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