Tag: obama
Fool your grandchildren into thinking you were at Obama's inauguration
Unfortunately, the children of the future will be born with a filter in their brain that detects Photoshop tomfoolery, so it might only be your kids that you’re able to fool with this one. FotoFlexer has built a site that’ll let you moosh your face into Obama’s inauguration event.
Okay, you aren’t really going to be fooling anyone seriously with this, but it’s fun for five minutes, and a good marketing stunt by FotoFlexer. Go shop yourself into the inauguration here.
My Inaugural Photo (via TechCrunch)
Related posts: Inauguration 2.0 – Presidents’ speeches broken down into tag clouds
| Spammers take advantage of Obama’s inauguration
Inauguration 2.0 – Presidents' speeches broken down into tag clouds
You can tell it’s the 21st Century. The good folks over at ReadWriteWeb have broken down the full text of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech yesterday into a tag cloud using Wordle.net. The results are interesting – “nation” and “new” come out on top. Click for embiggening.
Just for fun, they’ve also analysed the speeches of Bush in 2005, Clinton in 1999, Reagan in 1981 and Lincoln in 1861 and 1865. You can see the clouds after the jump, but it’s quite interesting to see how much Bush relied on the word ‘freedom’ Reagan on ‘government’ and Lincoln on ‘constitution’ first, and then ‘war’.
Watching the inauguration from space
Watching the inauguration yesterday from the ground, it was almost impossible to get a proper sense of scale of the proceedings. It was clear it was massive, but how massive? Well, click the image above to get a bird’s eye view of the scene in Washington from 681km up in the atmosphere.
You see those brown blobs? Those are massive crowds of people. Millions, in fact. The image is courtesy of Google’s (well, it’s not really theirs) GeoEye-1 satellite. More awesome satellite images over the break.
INQ1 heading to more networks
The INQ1, which I loved just before Christmas, looks like it’s getting a release on other networks, as opposed to Three, which currently has it exclusively. INQ is in talks with “at least two major operators” about launching the ‘Facebook phone’ to a wider public.
INQ head honcho Frank Meehan said:
“Talks with operators are going very well, and we definitely expect it to be available on other networks this year. We’re privately owned and well funded though, so we’re not in too much of a rush. The important thing is to get the right business”.
Promisingly, there’s also more INQ phones planned, including one with a QWERTY keyboard, and one with a touchscreen. They’ll likely show up in the latter half of 2009.
(via Trusted Reviews)
Related posts: INQ1 Facebook phone available from 3 as of today | SHINY VIDEO REVIEW: INQ1 Facebook phone from 3
TOP 10 TUESDAY: Barack Obama novelty gadgets
Come on. How was I going to let today's Top 10 Tuesday pass without theming it President Elect Barack Obama style? Now, I was considering a top 10 ways of how to follow it all but I've a feeling it'd be damn near impossible to avoid it. So, instead I've gone straight to the point and to the most important part of the ceremony, the part where the real difference is made – the merchandising.
Yes, what better way to celebrate the spirit of capitalism in the land of the free than by bringing you the Top 10 Barack Obama Novelty Gadgets…
Spammers take advantage of Obama's inauguration
Later today, Barack Hussein Obama will be inaugurated as President of the United States, and thousands of spammers are using it an opportunity to.. well… do what they do best. Emails are circulating with subjects like “Barack Obama refused to be president of the USA” complete with links to phishing sites and viruses. Symantec warns of one in particular called W32.waledac.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened – the people who run these spam networks are well in-tune with current events and often use major holidays and other big world events as social engineering to get people to click links that they might normally be wise to. So be careful, you hear?
Symantec’s Warning (via TechRadar)
Related posts: Stupid spammers attempt to fool Brits with “Postcode Lottery” win | Opinion: Judgements against spammers are a waste of time, try educating users instead
YouTube trying out video downloads?
If you’ve ever enjoyed a YouTube video and then thought “I want to take this with me wherever I go”, then prepare to be mildly pleased. YouTube appears to be experimenting with offering downloads of videos. The first to gain this feature have been the videos on Obama’s ChangeDotGov YouTube channel.
The videos come in a decent format – MPEG4, using the H.264 codec. That’s the same as the same videos that you get on the iPhone portal. The capability to download video has been offered by competing sites like Vimeo for ages, but YouTube has avoided it – presumably to quieten the intellectual property issues involved, though anyone can download YouTube videos with a simple Google search.
It’s likely that content owners will soon see an option as to whether to allow downloads of their videos or not. I hope that many do, and that those who don’t begin to feel the pressure to allow it. Just don’t expect to be able to download a million music videos tomorrow.
YouTube (via Ars Technica)
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Britney, Obama and Fox News' Twitter accounts get hacked
Last night, the Twitter accounts for Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Fox News, Facebook, the Huffington Post and 28 other decreasingly famous people were hacked to display a variety of messages, from spammy to hilarious.
It started with Fox News, who posted a message about one of their anchors, saying “Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay”. Rick Sanchez from CNN was then hit, with a message saying “i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today”. Then Barack Obama (who hasn’t posted since the election) posted an affiliate marketing survey. Then Britney’s incredible missive came through. Find out that said over the jump (mildly NSFW).
Late night internet traffic in the UK skyrockets on election night
Statistics just published by ISP Plusnet reveal that online TV viewing on the night of the American presidential election hit more than treble its usual levels. It’s the first US election to have been available to millions using the BBC’s iPlayer software.
Between 2 and 3am, Plusnet says that the viewing figures were double what they normally are, but by 5 to 6am, they were more than triple. There were also rises in the amount of TV streaming between 8am and 11am the following day, presumably as people watched back the victory and concession speeches.
Related posts: O’Malley’s Mashup: Prepare for election night! | 5 ways Obama used technology to win the White House
5 ways Obama used technology to win the White House
Today was a good day. At four o’clock this morning our time the polls closed on the west coast of America and exit polls led to the networks calling the Presidency for Obama. What’s phenomenal about Obama is that he came from practically nowhere two years ago, and despite running against established rivals – first Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and then John McCain – managed to not just take the White House, but surfed into it on a landslide. Obviously psephology is phenomenally complex, but one thing is clear: Obama used technology to motivate his base and get the vote out. But just how did he do it? Here are five uses of technology that helped win it.
