Viral Messaging: Grassroots Style...

In order to do my own share in the viral messaging department I thought I would tell you about two musical groups who are among the best (or are the best) in their genres.

The Campbell Brothers: If you like Gospel, this is THE band to go see. Atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian or apathetic, these guys will have you thanking Jesus for giving us this music. Seeing them live will leave you shell-shocked. In the words of one of my friends, "I think I want to be a Baptist now..."(they are actually of the House of God denomination) Two pedal steel guitars, a bass, drums and lead guitar, plus a female vocalists, they bring energy, soul and the word of God to anybody within hearing. I highly recommend seeing them live. If that's not possible, I recommend "Pass me not" for a taste of heaven.

Keith Frank: Have you ever spent all night dancing to Zydeco, only quitting when the sun comes up? If not, then you haven't lived. For those that have, they know the energy and spirit a good Zydeco band can provide, and Keith Frank and the Soileau Zydeco Band are a GREAT Zydeco band. Although I like his father Preston more (Preston's style is much more classical, while Keith plays a more modern Zydeco) Keith brings it with style. While something is lost in the transition of Zydeco from live to the recording studio, and therefore good Zydeco CDs are hard to come by, if you have a chance to go see some, do it, and if you have a chance to go see Keith Frank, run, don't walk to the nearest ticket broker.

Micropayments and the future of online flea markets...

Problem: You want to sell something on the internet for less than a dollar, but your customer's all use credit cards and the fee is not worth the transaction.

Solution: Micropayments.

Many dismissed them, and I am still not convinced of their viability. However, I do think that the pre-paid system could work quite well. It is just like an ID card at a university. You pre-pay into the account and the ID can be used to pay for a candy bar at the snack machine, your lunch at the cafeteria, and to print out a paper at the lab.

Instead, on the internet, you pre-pay a vendor, like BitPass and every time you make a transaction it docks your account. This would be great for e-bay, iTunes, etc...

What it means for Politics? Not much that I can see, other than a good web design person should be aware of all the possible ways a donor can give them money!

Was I hoarding these things?

Yes. So I could go to GRASSROOTS!

Still at Grassroots...

It's all about chicken!!!

Gone to Grassroots......

Heading to Grassroots!!!

You would be too if you knew about it.

GRASSROOTS!

I'll tell Keith Frank and the Campbell Brothers y'all say hi!

Technorati is Technorad!

Oof, that title is painful to read.

Anyway, once again using my 'site meter' link, I was able to discover that some people were linking to my site from a search engine called Technorati.

Basically, Technorati is a search engine specializing in blogs. It has a bunch of cool features, like how many blogs link to the blog that comes up in the search.

Give the site a try and look up your own posts.

Why China's filtering system won't appear in the U.S.

Based on a (previously discuss) study (PDF alert!)by the Open Net Initiative, it is clear that China has a very comprehensive and overreaching internet filter, which is regulated by the government (targeted at sites politically opposed to the Communist government). While this is obviously bad for the Chinese, the main question I have to ask myself is whether or not this is possible in the U.S. The main passage:

China has a complex, overlapping system of laws, regulations, and informal methods that attempts to prevent the creation and distribution of banned material. At the technological level, the state employs a sophisticated infrastructure that filters content at multiple levels and that tolerates overblocking as the price of preventing access to prohibited sites.

In order for this to work in the United States, the government would either need to completely take over regulation of the internet, which is highly unlikely, as it would be an incredibly controversial move which would be fought hard by the ISPs (think Bob Barr teaming with the ACLU PLUS Comcast, Time Warner etc.) or major internet companies would need to be complicit in the filtering process. This second option seems slightly more plausible, but due to the nature of a competitive market in the U.S., a company could advertise that, unlike the large internet providers, it did not block content. This could be a huge selling point, and would be a serious check on any company that wanted to block access to certain information.

The recent Supreme Court decision causes a little bit of concern, but with emerging technologies like wi-fi and even Microwave satellite technology, make me less worried.

All in all, I wish the best for the Chinese and their plight against an oppressive government, but for now, in the U.S., I think our access to the internet is pretty safe. For now.

Podcast Popularity Progressing Profusely

So it seems that podcasting is becoming so popular that even the Washington Post has heard about it. In this article (free subscription may be required), the Washington Post discussed how major corporations, especially Apple, are embracing podcasting. Is this a death knell for a passing fad?

Perhaps, although I think podcasting will be around for awhile longer. In the age of TiVo and bit torrent, people are going to want content on their time, not a predetermined schedule, and podcasting is the audio way to do it.

With the introduction of ever larger forces, the grassroots angle will be somewhat drowned out, but podcasting itself should continue to grow.

Politicians, heed my advice, as Tim Kaine already has, start a semi-regular podcast, you have a chance at some free publicity, some young voters, and what does it cost you?

Copyright law, its not just for Americans anymore!

I posted earlier about an article from Lawrence Lessig in which he details how copyright law is destroying the creative capacity of artist throughout the U.S.

Basically, if you want to make a movie or a TV show or take a picture, if that vehicle contains any copyrighted objects or images, you need to get permission to show them. This means that if a director shoots people walking down the street and one of them happens to be holding a clearly visible can of Coke, the director needs to ask the good people of Coca-cola for permission. I see his point.

Anyway, while I doubted that this would have a large impact on the wild frontier known as the internet, I did run into an interesting example of his concerns....in India!
http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2005/1077.html

Turns out, the same problem exist in India as well. Although, if I were the Coca-cola Company, I wouldn't be raising too much of a fuss in India right now (here is their rebuttal).

I wonder when Campbell's Soup is going to sue Andy Warhol's estate?

An AUPspicious future

As a small follow-up to my previous post, I encourage everyone to do an internet search on AUP. Besides the American University in Paris and the Auckland University Press, you get a variety of Acceptable Use Policies from various companies/governments, as well as a variety of vendors selling products to filter and enforce AUPs. One such place is iTech. I recommend searching around the site for a better idea of how these filters work.

Comcasting call

So I know I promised more on Chinese internet filtering today, but in light of my quick dismissal of the likelihood of it happening in the U.S. and this article coming to my attention, I decided to post on internet filtering in the U.S. instead.

So the crux of the article is that the people running the www.afterdowningstreet.com (ADS) website were having their e-mails blocked because of a spam-filter turning away e-mails that contained the text “www.afterdownstreet.com” in the body of the e-mail (seems they were caught in a content-filter). This posed a problem as the co-founder (and organizer) of the ADS website had the address in the signature line of all of his e-mails. The result was that none of them were sent through to Comcast internet users. Why? Because apparently somebody had sent 46,000 complaints about the e-mails.

Now, this is highly concerning, as many cable, and therefore high-speed internet, providers have a monopoly on the region that they operate in (Comcast has Washington D.C. for instance). So, if Comcast wanted to filter e-mails from a certain source, nobody using Comcast in the Washington, D.C. area could receive these e-mails. Troubling, especially if all of the major providers were on the same page about this issue. Then, it would be very difficult to send the same e-mail to a majority of the country.

So I decided to look into Comcast’s policy about this issue, and came across their Acceptable Use Policy (which is less entertaining to read than it sounds), apparently an accepted industry practice. Some key phrases:

PROHIBITED USES AND ACTIVITIES
Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:
transmit unsolicited bulk or commercial messages or "spam." This includes, but is not limited to, unsolicited advertising, promotional materials or other solicitation material, bulk mailing of commercial advertising, chain mail, informational announcements, charity requests, and petitions for signatures;

INAPPROPRIATE CONTENT AND TRANSMISSIONS
Comcast reserves the right, but not the obligation, to refuse to transmit or post and to remove or block any information or materials, in whole or in part, that it, in its sole discretion, deems to be offensive, indecent, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful. Neither Comcast nor any of its affiliates, suppliers, or agents have any obligation to monitor transmissions or postings (including, but not limited to, e-mail, newsgroup, and instant message transmissions as well as materials available on the Personal Web Pages and Online Storage features) made on the Service. However, Comcast and its affiliates, suppliers, and agents have the right to monitor these transmissions and postings from time to time for violations of this Policy and to disclose, block, or remove them in accordance with the Subscriber Agreement and any other applicable agreements and policies.

ELECTRONIC MAIL
The Service may not be used to send unsolicited bulk or commercial messages and may not be used to collect responses from unsolicited e-mail sent from accounts on other Internet hosts or e-mail services that violate this Policy or the acceptable use policy of any other Internet service provider. Moreover, unsolicited e-mail may not direct the recipient to any Web site or other resource that uses the Service. Activities that have the effect of facilitating unsolicited commercial e-mail or unsolicited bulk e-mail, whether or not the e-mail is commercial in nature, are prohibited

So it seems that Comcast has a pretty innocuous user policy agreement, but one that apparently can be manipulated for politcal fighting. These policies are laid, of course, to combat spam, which is what happened to the ADS people. While I do not really believe that comcast went out of its way to ban this particular groups e-mails from getting through, I do believe that they have a vulnerability in their system that can be manipulated for questionable purposes. After all, couldn’t a person simply complain 46,000 times about a RNC e-mail coming to them?

Seems that the fight against spam has overlapped into the arena of free spreech. How can we help solve Comcast’s problem for them so that this doesn’t happen again in the future?

Update: Not a very important one, but one within context. Of visitors to my page, 27% of them are on Comcast. So over 1/4 of my users would have had the ADS e-mail blocked from them.

Internet filtering

This study (warning PDF!) details the state of Internet filtering in China by the Chinese government. All in all, I found it pretty unsurprising. I actually was more surprised to read that they let in a majority of American news sources (doesn't say much for those sources!). However, it is not a stretch to think that the country that gave us Tiananmen Square would also regulate where internet users could go.

I guess I should be a little more worried about whether or not the same could take place in the US (I'm not) or I should be more sympathetic to the plight of the Chinese, but I think that Darfur or Burma or Uzbekistan would be a little higher on the list.

I guess I am suffering from a little bit of blogosphere backlash, I kind of wish everybody on the left and right would just shut up for a little while, but I know it would be far, far worse if the government is what shut them up (or only shut up one side, which would be more likely).

Anyhow, after reading Kos, Atrios, Redstate and Instapundit over the past few days, I guess I am seeing the upside to internet filtering right now.

The future of ideas....

In this excerpt from his book, Prof. Lawrence Lessig worries about the over-arching structure of intellectual property law choking the freedom of the internet. Frankly, I do not share his concerns.

If the RIAA v. Napster/Morpheus/Grokster cases show anything, it is that regulating the internet is a steep uphill battle. With open-source products (Firefox etc.) constantly competing with paid products, and an open source atmosphere constantly challenging any attempts to shut down various peer-to-peer file sharing networks, I don't see any company/corporation being able to enforce their copyrights on any except other large corporations.

Internet amateurs (often much more skilled than professionals) can always stay one step ahead of large companies when it comes to internet innovation. Due to an environment that encourages high quality computer code, and an active dislike for large companies, I don't see how the transformation from an open market of ideas to a regulated 'cable TV' on the computer.

Then again, Lessig is probably much smarter than me...

Courting influentials....

In a fascinating article (pdf format, you will need acrobat reader and it will take a little while to load) on courting influential (an influential is a member of society that others go to for advice on what to buy, who to vote for ect..about 10% of the population) Carol Darr and Julie Barko of IPDI, give a quick list of five things you can do to 'take advantage' of influential in an online campaign.

They are activists, so help them lead.
They are joiners and networkers, so build a campaign community.
They are news junkies, so feed their habit.
They are opinionated, so give them a microphone.
They are busy, so make it easy.

These five suggestions play directly into our rules for how to recruit, keep and develop campaign volunteers. Influential are going to be your cream of the crop volunteers, they will be more informed, bring in more volunteers and take on more responsibility than other volunteers. Therefore it is vital to follow the list above as well as my 3 rules.

How do we blend the 5 with the 3?

Darr and Barko suggest giving influential titles such as eCaptain and ePrecinct Leader, these titles should come with distinct quantified goals such as voter contacts, volunteers recruited etc...the titles should be removed from those who are not getting the job done (after multiple warnings that is).

Darr and Barko suggest forming online communities for them to take part in, and asking them to send e-mails to their list-serves. This is making them feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. If they are an eCaptain they should HAVE to send out e-mails and newsletters to people they know.

This is just the beginning of the useful information in this article. I suggest reading it and blending the information contained in it with topics we have already discussed. Please let me know of any ideas that come up in the process!

Sucks for netscape, good for firefox!

I love Mozilla Firefox, it is an excellent web browser and in my humble opinion, it blows Internet Explorer out of the water (you can download Mozilla here).

Why am I saying this? Well, according to Site Meter, Mozilla is the browser of choice for 26% of visitors to my page. The stats...
Firefox 1.x: 26%
Internet Explorer 6.x: 70%
Internet Explorer 5.x: 1%
Safari 1.x(Macintosh): 3%

No Netscape, how the mighty have fallen! (Mac users, can anyone tell me more about Safari?)

Well, according to w3schools.com, which keeps stats on these things, says the average browser use is:
July 2005
IE 6: 65.6%
IE 5: 8.3%
O 7 : 0.7%
Ffox: 19.6%
Moz: 3.4%
O 8 : 1.2%
NN 7 : 0.6%

IE Internet Explorer
Ffox Firefox
Moz Mozilla (early version of firefox)
O Opera
NN Netscape

So it seems I have more Firefox and IE 6.x users than the general population. My bet is that visitors of my site are slightly more tech savvy than the general internet population and therefore know more about alternate browsers and also have more modern computer equipment. While this doesn't matter for my particular site, this information is vital to anyone who is designing a site for a large audience with many features. You don't want to design a site that can't be fully accessed by 19.6% of your users!

KISS (Keep it simple stupid!)

Jakob Nielsen has some invaluable advice for any web site designer: KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID! Well, Nielsen violates his own rules and writes in somewhat more complicated language, but in this information packed column he describes the benefits of designing a website for low-literacy readers. Summed up quick, design your website at a sixth grade reading level.

Not only does this help with low-literacy users (some 30% of internet users) but it also improves the usability of the site for high-literacy users. This seems somewhat intuitive, but for many of the people I know (almost exclusively high-literacy) writing and designing a website at a sixth grade level would present a challenge. Not only is the way of thinking completely different, but I feel many would shy away from it due to pure pride. They, however, would be losing opportunities to get their message across to 30% of the population, a major blunder for anyone designing a political website.

Some suggestions from Nielsen:
Use text aimed at a 6th grade reading level .
Prioritize information.
Avoid text that moves or changes.
Streamline the page design.
Simplify navigation.
Optimize search.

Employing these simple suggestions can increase a web site's success rate by almost 40% for low-literacy users, and a surprising 25% for high-literacy users.

Its not dumbing-down, its smartening up!

What are teens good for?

According to Jakob Nielsen's article on teens and website usability, they have a lower success rate of website use than adults. Due to, "insufficient reading skills, less sophisticated research strategies, and a dramatically lower patience level." The article also goes on to describe how they are much different users than adults. So why does this matter for a campaign manager?

Well, teenagers make great volunteers. They have tons of free time, are willing to do crappy grunt work (stuff envelopes, make phone calls, walk door-to-door) and a certain segment tend to become deeply involved in causes. So there is a reason for every candidate to court teenagers to their campaign. The only problem, of course, is that they don't vote, so a smart candidate can never willingly design their messages or website to cater to teenagers, they must focus on those who are able to, and probably will, vote.

So if you can't design your website for teens, how can you use the site to draw them in? Nielsen provides a few suggestions that will be appealing to them. First, you should make a section of the site dedicated solely to teenagers. Nielsen writes, "Some websites in our study tried to serve both children and teens in a single area, usually titled something like Kids. This is a grave mistake; the word "kid" is a teen repellent. Teenagers are fiercely proud of their newly won status and they don't want overly childish content (one more reason to ease up on the heavy animations and gory color schemes that actually work for younger audiences). We recommend having separate sections for young children and teens, labeling them Kids and Teens, respectively."

Second, put a lot of interactive, but not reading intensive, activities on it. Particularly effective, "Online quizzes, Forms for providing feedback or asking, questions, Online voting, Games, Features for sharing pictures or stories, Message boards." It isn't hard to picture how all of these suggestions could be tailored to a campaign.

So a rudimentary outline for how to approach the teenage crowd from a campaign website comes into focus.
1.)Don't play to them on the front page beyond a link to the teen section (maybe an online poll, who doesn't like those?) because it is more important to reach people who can vote.
2.) Label the link 'teen' and make the content reasonably mature without being overlycomplicated.
3.) Have the content be highly interactive and community building.
4.) Send 'em out to work on your campaign!

Politicians Practice Podcasting Proficiency!

Awhile ago I posted on podcasting and its potential for use on a campaign website. Well, it is clear that somebody is reading my blog. Tim Kaine, the Democratic nominee for Governor of Virginia has introduced a podcasting feature on his website.

Alright, so maybe he got the idea somewhere else, but it is still a good one. He should link it with an RSS feed so that supporters (and the media) will know immediately when a new podcast comes out. If he does that, then I will know he is listening to me!

Blogging and race

Here are two interesting articles on race online (here and here). The long and short of it is that minorities (especially African-Americans) are not present on the national blogging stage and also report often feeling alone in a white dominated community.

As Henry Jenkins concedes, I suspect that this phenomenon has more to do with class than race, but as he points out, in America, the two are hard to separate. So the two questions that need to be asked in terms of these articles are: How can the minority presence in the blogosphere be increased? How can a politician reach out to minority groups online?

For the first question, there may be no strategy that works from the outside. As Jenkins states, "There are some hopeful signs that racially based gaps in access are closing: for example, Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing population online. As minority groups have developed more economic clout, cyberspace has started to seem less racially segregated." In essence, the blogosphere will even out as economic clout evens out. I also believe that as technology trickles down the economic spectrum and access becomes more universally accessible to people of any means, children of all economic classes will be involved with the internet, and therefore a higher representation of minorities will become present. Besides making technology more available, I have no idea how to bridge the racial divide of the blogosphere. Any suggestions?

For politicians wanting to reach out to minority voters via their internet campaign, these articles present a serious problem. If minorities are underrepresented on the internet, then your internet message targeted at these voters will be much less effective. How does a politician combat this? Advertisements on websites frequented by minorities could be one answer. There are plenty of ways to narrowcast population groups, and internet sites can certainly be targeted as well. A campaign weblog with comment access can also be created around minority issues.

These are two ideas I have, but they are insufficient. I will try to think of some more. Can anyone else?

Friday blogging: Back to the future addition

If you look back several weeks on this blog, you will see that I have discussed ways in which mobile phone technology can be used for political action. Here is a prime example.

Activists are gearing up for a big fight now that Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her retirement. The above link is to a site that is going to use cell phones to contact activists about how they can help the fight. The advantage is instant communication, allowing for large scale political action (like phone calls) being organized and put into action in a matter of minutes.

Warning, standard text messaging rates apply!