Netflix for the Trusting

My parents have never been very popular with their neighbors.

It’s not that they mow their lawns at 6:30 a.m. on weekends or hold loud parties into the wee hours of the morning. It’s not even that my father works long hours and isn’t around much – my mother the housewife is home all day. My guess is that in a northern New Jersey town brimming with Italians, they are WASPS.

Stereotypes are a bad thing, yet name any stereotype of a middle class WASP, and sadly my parents probably fit it. Reserved and seemingly standoffish. Check. Emotionally distant. Check. Mum on personal finances. You bet. Unlikely to share their political views with neighbors. Absolutely.

It’s with this upbringing that I can’t help but wonder, who the heck are these people who open their doors to campaign volunteers and let them pop a campaign video in their VCR?

Let’s pretend for a minute that my neighbors spoke English (our current interactions are limited to friendly waves and smiles). If they knocked on my door and needed to use the phone, sure I’d let them in. If they wanted to borrow a cup of sugar I’d think it was strange, but I’d share. But if they wanted to talk politics, or horror of horrors, pop in a Bush or Kerry video, I’d think they were nuts.

Where are these places and who are these people who allow strangers with campaign videos into their homes? I'm really curious to find out.

Winning Today & Tomorrow

The Republican MTM strategy, through its active engagement of citizens and remarkable organization, helps Republicans in ways beyond helping elect a candidate in the here and now.

The Republican model also creates a farm league of future candidates. Volunteers are given responsibilities within the party and spent a great deal of time networking and building party loyalty. While working to elect the president, the Republicans are also cultivating the next generation of candidates, something the Democratic Party is certainly lacking.

Whether or not this two-pronged strategy of promotion and preening was planned or not, it should continue to be an asset to the Republicans, especially if Democrats continue to lag behind in their organizational efforts.

Narrowcasting Needs No Windex

Narrowcasting, as effectively used by the Republican Party as a volunteer organization tool, does not reduce political transparency, as Purpura, Karczewski and Hanson argue.

Yes, “campaign finance reform was to increase transparency in the political process — to help people know who is supporting specific positions,” and while efforts such as the “multi-tiered marketing strategy” do allow Republicans to reach more voters through more convincing mediums (i.e. their friends and neighbors), the source of the Republican message is in no way veiled.

People know their friends and neighbors. They know whether they are active Republicans and whether that person is someone who shares their values and beliefs. When, as part of a Republican outreach effort, the neighbor spreading the message isn’t just a pawn of the party – it’s someone who feels strongly about a particular candidate enough to share the message.

Whether the party is helping encourage that person to speak out or not, the speaker is still sharing his or her own beliefs. She is not a paid lobbyist or hired gun.

Wrestling with the Internet

The Internet is full of firsts. But one of my favorite firsts involves e-mail newsletters and a certain candidate for governor of Minnesota.

In 1998, Jesse Ventura became the first victorious candidate for a major office whose win was partially attributed to a successful Internet campaign. One of Ventura’s most effective tools were personality-packed missives sent out to his 3,000-member list (aka JesseNet) to help mobilize volunteers. An example follows:

Friday night we will be going from bar to bar in the Northern Metro area: Champps on I-35E and Larpentuer, the Eagles Club in New Brighton, the Mermaid in Moundsview, and the Be-Bop in Blaine. Jesse will spend 20 to 30 minutes at each stop. No drinking and driving if you are with us on the caravan. We mean it... If you do, you will likely find yourself spending the night in jail. If that happens, and since you won't have much else to do anyway, see what you can do to get your arresting officer and detox cell mates to vote for Jesse on Tuesday!

In the end, experts attributed 3 to 4 percent of Ventura’s votes to his Internet mobilization. Perhaps Kerry and Bush would have made better use of their newsletters had they been a bit more colorful or had they featured punchy headlines.

Robitussen for My Ideavirus

The idea of ideaviruses is especially relevant to me today, as I am home sick with a cold. (If only we had HTML tags to punctuate sneezes and sniffles).

While Seth Godin’s ideas about sneezers don’t really sound any different than the concept of early adopters or any of a number of names meaning the same thing, I do think he has a very valid point that ideaviruses are most likely to thrive in a vacuum, like in his Audi example. Ideas, like viruses, survive best when there aren’t others to compete with.

The Bush administration took advantage of this concept during the 2004 election cycle. John Kerry was an unkown entity for many Americans. The Kerry team had the opportunity to build an image, but took their time deciding on a message. In many ways, no solid message was ever developed.

The Bush team capitalized on the image void took it upon themselves to fill the canvas and paint Kerry as cold, overly cerebral and, most notoriously, a flip flopper.

Future candidates would do well to remember this lesson and not leave the sort of voids where an opponents idea virus can thrive – or they may end up feeling sick to their stomachs.

Moving Onto a Cleaner Inbox

Jakob Neilson’s piece on newsletter usability inspired me to unsubscribe from MoveOn.org

I signed up for MoveOn’s electronic newsletter for dubious reasons. The organization’s PAC was holding a Vote for Change Tour where REM, one of my most favorite bands, was set to perform. Tickets were going to be hard to come by. As I recall, you had to sign up for the MoveOn newsletter and based on a lottery system, you would be e-mailed a code to buy tickets.

So I joined MoveOn and bought my tickets. (In an aside, my best friend ended up coming to town on business that day, so I sold the tickets for what they cost me on Craig’s List – scalping is bad karma – and never got to see the show.)

Since that time, I’ve gotten all sorts of e-mails from MoveOn. I’m not even sure what most of them are for, since I stopped opening them. And I felt guilty about canceling my membership since it's an organization that’s trying to do good, even while flooding my inbox.

Today I cancelled my newsletter subscription. I get the impression I’m not the only one who feels this way. When canceling, MoveOn presented me with several reasons why I abandoned ship:

Receiving too many emails from MoveOn
Too busy to read emails
Was only interested in election-related efforts
No longer interested in efforts covered by the emails
Intended to sign a petition, but not to receive emails
Already receiving MoveOn mail at a different address

I think MoveOn understands the faults of its newsletters. But at least it’s easy to unsubscribe.

Hoping It's the Local Boy Gone Bad

In discussing the assassination of President William McKinley, one statement by Vaidhyanathan really stood out to me:

Seeking greater meaning in the event, reporters and officials immediately labeled Czolgosz [the native-born assassin] an anarchist - and just as significantly - a foreigner. Many people express relief that McKinley's murderer was not an 'American.' (page 6)

In today's globalized society, people seem relieved when a terrorist is a native (and therefore a somewhat known entity), as opposed to a foreign national.

Think back to the Madrid train bombings. Many people hoped the tragedy was the work of the ETA, a familiar, albeit dangerous organization, instead of Al Queda or a terrorist Muslim group opposed to Spain's involvement in the war in Iraq. Even the government wanted to believe it was the ETA.

Today the idea of local "crazies" or a group that is easy to identify makes life seem so much simpler. Technology has brought new sophistication to terrorist groups. These organizations, often comprised of people with different religious and cultural values than most Americans, seem much scarier and threatening than a lone gunman or even a local entity like anti-government extremists.

Gossip as a Sticky Medium

According to Siva Vaidhyanathan, “Gossip is uncensored, unmediated, unfiltered, peer-to-peer communication...Unmediated and decentralized, gossip was anarchistic in structure if not in content.” (pg. 1) Vaidhyanathan was speaking specifically of the gossip in the salons and parks of Paris in eighteenth century Paris.

Gail Collins, author of Scorpion Tongues: The Irresistible History of Gossip in American Politics offers her own fascinating insights into what gossip is and it’s role in politics and life. To Collins, gossip is unverified information, often salacious and about one's private life, that the subject would probably prefer be kept secret. Gossip helps bond the teller and the listener, makes the teller feel important, helps reinforce cultural norms and explains the way hidden society works.

Most important, politically speaking, are Collin’s idea that gossip is most likely to hold traction if it resonates with societal fears. For instance, rumors of presidential homosexuality in the 1850s didn't stick because the idea of homosexuality was too unthinkable. Meanwhile, rumors that Warren Harding had black descendents stuck because many whites were afraid of and thought themselves superior to black people.

Combine traction with the Internet age, and gossip can flies at digital speeds. From the travel gossip of Australian backpackers to the Drudge Report, gossip is moving faster than ever before.

Just Stick It On There

One of the most effective ways to increase the number of donations to a candidate’s site is to publicize the site via radio, TV, direct mail and print media, if budget allows. (Ireland & Nash, page 166)

That’s why I was so shocked to see a candidate for office who didn’t bother to mention his website on one of the cheapest campaign materials out there – one that every campaign purchases – the campaign sticker.

Walking the aisles of the Celebrate Fairfax county fair Friday night, representatives from every party handed out materials. There were Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians. Candidates for attorney general and lieutenant governor were there, too.

And then there was Republican candidate for governor Jerry Kilgore. His aggressive volunteers stood near the gate handing out free stickers. Somehow they managed to get through my husband’s defenses and hand him a blue campaign sticker, which he promptly applied to our fair map, where I got a good look at it.

The first thing I noticed, of course, was that it didn’t mention Kilgore’s web site even though there was plenty of room on the sticker.

Clearly it didn’t affect Kilgore in the primary as he won by a significant margin, but as he faces off against Democrat Tim Kaine this fall, it might be a good idea to add the URL to the stickers.

Donating $199.99

One of the suggestions for making the contribution process more interactive on donor web sites in The Political Consultants' Online Fundraising Primer, is to display the names of contributors and allow the list to “be searched by name, contribution amount and date.” President Bush used this technique during the 2004 election.

While I am sure there are many people who would get a kick out of seeing their name on the president’s home page, I can think of others who would be horrified if that information were public.

I think of my father, a man who refused to tell me or anyone who he voted for in any election ever. Though he’ll admit to leaning Republican, he believes a person’s vote is a private matter not meant for public consumption. If he were to donate to a candidate, I doubt he would appreciate that candidate publishing it on his web site.

Then there are others, who whether due to their jobs, the community they live in or some other factor, don’t want to go on record as endorsing a certain candidate.

FEC regulations require only the names of those who donate more than $200 be reported. I think web sites should follow suit with the same limitations.

There may be a very good reason why someone chooses to donate $199.99.

Ads That Pay for Themselves

While many consumers tend to ignore banner advertisements on web pages (Ireland & Nash, page 176), just as viewers have learned to ignore other interruption ads like television commercials, candidates for office can still reap value from the ad expenditure.

During the 2004 election cycle I remember seeing John Kerry banners run across the bottom of the Washington Post home page. These ads even took up some of the screen space generally designated for news, although an ‘X’ in the corner offered the option of closing the box.

Apparently I was not the only person to notice these ads, as this article What John Kerry taught us about online advertising shows.

In just a few months, Kerry and the DNC managed to raise more than $3 million from people clicking on banner ads asking them to "Contribute $25 Today!" or "Give $50 Now!"

There is definitely an argument for banner advertising, especially when it can essentially pay for itself. Though not every vistor to a web site notices the ads, it evident that enough do to justify the cost.

Fun with Digital Signposts

With so much discussion given to methods for attracting web traffic to a site, I thought I’d point out this neat article from CNN.com.

The article talks about a new frontier in graffiti - web-related tagging. Artists tag an e-mail address with the blue/underlined look of a hyperlink in public places. Users with web-enabled cell phones can send a message to the address and receive an image like original art or a promotional message in return.

Other similar set ups include yellow arrows with codes that return messages about a person or object and signs that offer a number people can dial to learn more about historic sites.

My favorite use of the technology was an art teacher in Australia who made a scavenger hunt where each image led to the location of the next e-mail address. It reminded me of the hobby geocaching where people hide little silly treasures in hidden locations, post the coordinates on a web site and people use GPS technology to find the caches. When the cache is found, the treasure hunter can take an item from the cache, but must leave a little treasure of his own.

The political uses for such technologies seem limited, excepting perhaps only the most technologically savvy campaigns. I could see using the graffiti type technology (more likely of the yellow arrow variety) in campaigns in technologically advanced cities like San Fransisco and Seattle, or on college campuses, but don’t think it would be very effective in a place like Washington, D.C.

Crawling Out of the Gate

A month and a half after the London Times first broke the story of the Downing Street Memo, the Washington Post is finally addressing the story.

I think its outrageous how the story is written as though it were breaking news. Only at the very end of the story does it mention the Brits had published it a month ago.

I wonder if the Post even considered mentioning the controversy already existing here in the U.S. through bloggers, Sen. Conyers and other who have been pushing to make the American public more aware of U.S. intentions in entering the war with Iraq.

I suspect the only reason it was covered was revealed in a line near the end.

Last week, it was the subject of questions posed to Blair and Bush during the former's visit to Washington.

This begs the question, if Reuters reporter Steve Holland hadn’t asked President Bush about the memo, would the Washington Post be writing about it?

Game On: Reaching Out to Gamers

In the good old days of Packman and the Super Mario Brothers, the message to players was simple – there wasn’t one. People glued their eyes to their televisions, manipulated their controllers and tried to make it to the next level, all in the name of fun.

But some of that fun has been sullied, and not just by the violent and overtly sexual games devoured in today’s marketplace. Advertisers, lured by the young male video game-playing demographic that has been disappearing from the ranks of television viewers, now work to include advertisements within video games.

Industry experts estimate spending on in-game advertising at nearly $200 million. Marketers pay anywhere from a few hundred to a few million to be featured in video games. In Need for Speed Underground 2, players can race past electronics chain store Best Buy and see billboards for Cingular Wireless, Old Spice and Burger King. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow features a board where the player has to figure out how to work a Sony Ericsson P900 smartphone to make it to the next level of the game. Red Bull gives a character wings in a game called Worms 3D. Drinking the beverage enables a power to increase energy and jump higher.

It used to take a year of development for a product to find its way into a video game, but new technology is quickly changing that. Thanks to services like Xbox Live, players with high speed Internet connections can sign onto a gaming network for the purpose of playing with both friends and other enthusiasts across the globe. (Think of it as going over your friend’s house to play video games, without leaving your living room.) Now the same technology that allows friends to play video games remotely will allow advertisers to update their product placements within a game.

Studies indicate that 30 percent of in-game advertisements are recalled in the short-term and 15 percent are recalled after five months – remarkable for an advertisement.

As a presidential candidate Bill Clinton made headlines by appearing on MTV and answering a question about boxers or briefs. Today’s candidates could benefit in much the same way by becoming the first to advertise in a top-rated video game. Imagine speeding past a “Hillary 2008” or “Vote Republican” billboard in a racing game. New messages could be uploaded on a regular basis.

It’s certainly one way to reach out to young, male voters and earn some cool points.

Don't Borrow a Terrorist's Sweater

Howard Rheingold, in his interview with Jesse Walker, expounds the virtues of cheap, miniscule microchips placed on products. Consumers would be able to read information from those chips with portable computers and could make better decisions with access to peer reviews and general manufacturers information.

"Every object has a story; it’s just that citizens and consumers don’t have access to what that story is. Soon we’re going to have lots of little chips in lots of things, and those chips are going to communicate, and we’re going to read information from those chips, and in some cases the chips can read information that we can send to them." -- Rheingold

While there are definite advantages to knowing whether a restaurant you’re about to walk into is well reviewed, the costs are greater.

Let’s say I buy a sweater encoded with a microchip. I can read other’s opinions of it, perhaps see if it is in any magazines and how it can be best combined with other clothes to make an outfit. And then I go home.

Will retailers or manufacturers be able to track where I go? Would they be able to cross-reference my sweater’s signals with other products I buy and build some sort of ChoicePoint database, a Machiavellian take on a grocery store’s loyalty discount card database? How would this information be regulated?

What would the government do with this information? I can just see an amendment to the Patriot Act allowing the government to summon my, or someone else’s sweater file, without a judge’s permission.

Maybe in the future we’ll have to be a little more careful about whose sweater we borrow.

Illegally Sharing Music Is Illegal

Grimmelmann makes a ridiculous argument in Peer-to-peer terrorism.

Comparing the MPAA to the FBI and arguing that the "Gestapo tactics" of the MPAA in tracking down those who steam creative property is equivalent to the CIA's hunt for terrorists in Afghanistan is a stretch to say the least. And at no point during his comparison point out that both terrorists and trading music and movies one doesn't own are both illegal acts (albeit on a completely different scale).

Grimmelmann sounds like a cranky college sophomore whose peeved it's harder to get free music. But the thing is, music isn't free. There are costs to produce it. It's a commodity.

It's also silly to criticize the MPAA or RIAA for developing techniques to hunt down those that illegally swap files. Those two associations do not have a monopoly on forensic networking. Software and techniques banks and vendors use to hunt down identity thieves can just as easily "be turned against the forces of democracy."

Unless of course Grimmelmann wants to give identity thieves a free pass, too.

Let Hear it for Steve Holland

Today Reuters Washington correspondent Steve Holland asked President Bush question many in the online community had been hoping a mainstream journalist would ask - did he "fix" the justification for going to war with Iraq as the Downing Street Memo suggests.

For his efforts, a blogging community has offered Holland a reward of $250. On May 28, Democrats.com announced a prize of $1,000 to the first mainstream journalist to ask the president about WMD and the British memo and receive a substantive answer. Because Bush essentially blew off the question and Holland did not mention WMD, it was decided he should receive only a quarter of the prize.

Not surprisingly, Holland knew nothing of the prize before he asked his question and has no intention of claiming the reward, according to his wife.

Even if there aren't too many journalists who would take such a reward, I wonder how many journalists are influenced by the persistence of bloggers and other online activists who refuse to let issues like the Downing Street Memo die.

Blogger ate my entry

Oh, how technology hates me.

Cell reception anywhere - except my living room

Cell phones don't ring in my townhouse living room.

Despite presence of a giant cell tower just down the street (I'm talking less than a mile away) and no neighbor on the three walls of my house closest to the tower, if I want to make a call through Verizon Wireless, I need to go upstairs.

Living with shoddy reception in Fairfax, Va., it blows my mind when countries we consider "third world" are completely wired, or wireless as the case may be, and citizens there can text message and make phone calls to their heart's delight.

My favorite example is North Korea. The government allowed cell phones for about a year in 2003, but banned their use in 2004 due to fear the devices would allow negative information to leave the country and citizens to plan escapes.

Of course, this doesn't stop people from using their phones. Cell recepetion was intially limited to areas that bordered China, but apparently now much of the country has access as long as the user is willing to climb a mountain for a 10-minute phone call.

I love how cell phone technology can reach international borders to reach the oppressed, and possibly help organize them. If only Verizon Wireless could reach my living room, too.

Downing Street Memo

Investigative journalists are always looking for the smoking gun - that one stunning piece of evidence that proves a hunch or theory and allows a newspaper to publish a story.

But what happens when that smoking gun appears two or more years after the fact. Such is the case of the Downing Street Memo, a July 2002 memo from the British government which states that President Bush planned to go to war. “Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”

Press reception to this damning document was lukewarm at best. Some have even called it a dud.

I think the reason the story didn't resonate is because the press knows the American public has no appetite for it. Bush's team did a great job selling the reasons for invading Iraq, just like his father did for the Persian Gulf War with the help of Hill & Knowlton. Picking up on the 'Saddam is Hitler' imagery foisted upon the public during the previous War, George W. Bush framed the current military operations as a war to free the Iraqis from a dictator who had the power to hurt both them and us.

After the regime was toppled and it was revealed that Saddam has no WMD, a large segment of the population didn't care. Many Americans didn't even belief the reports. I think the press has realized WMD and Bush's motivation and reasoning behind going to war aren't going to draw readers or viewers. That ship has sailed and there more popular and profitable stories to cover.

Thus Always to Tyrants

Sic Semper Tyrannis. That means "Thus Always to Tyrants," thus apparently meaning death, according to Wikipedia.

I learned this important bit of information on the official homepage of Rep. Tom Davis. I also learned the official state beverage of Virginia is milk. It must do a state body good.

Despite the presence of these golden nuggets of trivia, Davis's Virginia facts section seems woefully inadequate. There is no mention of Captain John Smith or the many presidents born in the state. If the point of a congressperson's official web site is to connect the representative with his or her constituents, wouldn't it be valuable to help that site visitor feel they have something in common with their leader? Pride in one's home state seems like something every demographic can appreciate.

Web Sites That Suck

In helping my sister find a place to crash in the Poconos for a night or two, I stumbled upon this little gem of poor design, Stroudsmoor Country Inn.

The special effect that causes the page to reload and then slowly scroll down to reveal the subcategories off any given link is awful. It took forever to find out the rate structure.

At the bottom a company called Jenagraphics takes credit for the poorly executed design. Kind of reminds me of the signs saying "We use Lysol Products to clean this bathroom" in the restrooms on I-95. That's the kind of thing you really don't want credit for.

Serving It Up Quickly

Jakob (Nielsen)'s Law of the Web User Experience “states that ‘users spend most of their time on other websites.’

This means that they form their expectations for your site based on what's commonly done on most other site. If you deviate, your site will be harder to use and users will leave.”

But what if all those other sites are making some of his top ten mistakes in web design? If popular sites are offering up PDFs for their online reading and opening new browser windows, is it better to violate a consensus in design convention or buck the trend and follow a more academic design theory, hoping others catch on?

As a user in a hurry, I'd rather have a page mimicking one that I have seen before, which I can quickly understand, than spend time thinking about navigating something new. It may make me lazy and might prevent the advance of best practices, but those are sacrifices I'm sure some are willing to make for increased web traffic.

Besides, there is necessarily a "right way" to design a web site. With new technologies making PDF files more searchable and allowing for easier printing (it's so frustrating when the ends of sentences fit on my screen, but are cut off the edge of a sheet of paper), Nielson's rules don't necessarily hold fast.

Event Driven Advocacy

In his book Information and the American Democracy, Bruce Bimber argues that increased access to information and communications technology is driving down the cost of information and allowing more people to move from latent to active groups. Unlike the traditional activist, trade and interest groups, these technologically gifted groups are event-driven and come from a broad base of individuals with tenuous links to the organizers.

The Internet, including e-mail, message boards and Web sites, has been a critical tool in uniting such individuals, eliminating geographical constraints and allowing previously marginalized people to join forces. Grassroots organizations are finding the Internet a more fertile area to set up virtual shop and reach a diverse membership base, Bimber has found. Such was the case of Million Mom March, an organization of mothers in favor of stronger gun control begun when one mom sent an e-mail to another. Organizers were able to bring hundreds of thousands of women from across the country to the National Mall to march on Mother’s Day, with only e-mails, listservs and a Web site to coordinate planning.

Further technological developments will likely escalate this trend of an increasingly active citizenry. As text messages and web-enabled cell phones increase in use, messages will be able to spread even faster and more participants will be able to organize and act quickly. Some call this the beginning of a thumb revolution.

Contact Us

My pet peeve in web design is when a page fails to have a “Contact Us” link on its homepage.

As a journalist, I’m always researching sources, and often I find promising leads on the web. It’s very frustrating to find an excellent site chock filled with fantastic academic research or clear expertise and no way to contact anyone.

Just as bad is when there is a “Contact Us” link that only allows the user to send a form e-mail. Giving the user a phone number, fax number or even a physical address would be nice.

Take for instance Nubank, a firm that specializes in forming de novo banks. They want an awful lot of information from the person e-mailing them, but don’t even offer an e-mail address.

Whether it’s a journalist who wants information or a potential client, the form just gives the impression that a formulaic message is being sent off into cyberspace. One can’t help but wonder if they have something to hide if they can’t offer up basic contact information. Don't they want us to contact them?