Tag: politics
Tweetminster lets you follow your MP on Twitter
It’s nice to see Twitter going from strength-to-strength, and I genuinely believe that it’s got the potential to do for status updates and IM what Facebook did for social networking. The latest application to sit on top of the service is a TheyWorkForYou-style service called Tweetminster that lets you search for your MP and see whether or not they’re on Twitter.
Unfortunately my MP, Jeremy Corbyn, isn’t Twittering yet, but he’s the kind of guy who might, so I’m hoping he picks up on it soon. In the meantime, I now know that Jude Robinson [Lab] “is steaming over the Lib Dems’ Airport Inquiry” and Jo Swinson [LD] is “so heading home to change and go into Parliament”. Exciting stuff.
Tweetminster (via @jordanstone)
Related posts: Micro-blogging citizen journalism toy Twitter beats granddad Digg in traffic war | First photo of Hudson air crash surfaces on Twitter
Winter: the survival-horror Wii title that was canned for not being a kid's game
Do you ever wonder why every Wii game takes about ten minutes to play? It’s because long-session, “adult”, games are being denied funding for the console. With very few exceptions (Twilight Princess springs to mind, but there are few others) the console’s games are all short-play affairs that focus on bright colours and cutesie avatars.
Well, IGN has an extensive look at a very promising game called “Winter” that never made it, thanks simply to its more ‘adult’ nature. Despite being a hit with publishers, the sales and marketing departments found the idea of a ‘survival horror’ game on the Wii to be “simply too big a leap for them, regardless of the enthusiastic support of the PD department and the Wii’s total domination in the marketplace.”
BNP membership list leaks – Google map mashup created
Last night, a full list of the British National Party’s members leaked out to the public at large. Obviously, that’s a huge data breach, as a person has a right to privacy of their political beliefs, but many believe the BNP to be an extremist organisation. Members of the BNP are banned from the police force, and they’re refused a platform in many students’ unions.
Aside from looking up family members, several enterprising geeks have been doing some scary stuff with the data. One of the most popular mashups is a Google map that displays where the BNP members near you live – though the map appears to have just been taken down. It was just based on postcodes, so it’s not accurate down to the household – just the general area. Even so, the addresses are in the full list, so it doesn’t take much effort to track down a particular person in your town.
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.
O'Malley's Mashup: Prepare for election night!
I can’t articulate just how much I’m looking forward to Tuesday night. For most people, it will probably be a fairly normal Tuesday evening, but if you’re a politics junkie like myself, its going to be like watching the World Cup final. The stakes are high, the build up extensive and somewhat tiresome, and it has all come down to this one evening to decide who will be the next President of the United States. But how can you maximise your enjoyment of this media circus? By embracing technology, of course.
Obama goes for in-game advertising
American Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s success is in large part due to his mobilising of the youth vote – they think he’s great. In a bid to push them even harder, to the point of actually voting for him, his campaign have struck a deal with EA to advertise in nine of their best selling games. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time games have been used for advertising in political campaigns – Obama’s Republican rival, John McCain, pioneered this form of advertising during his run for the sentate in 1896, advertising on the original version of Jumanji.
YouTube trials speech-to-text function, making videos more searchable
YouTube has developed technology to automatically transcribe speech from a video’s audio track, and then embed that text into the video.
The process has been tested on speeches by John McCain and Barack Obama, and allows users to search for key words (such as “Iraq” or “free trade”) which will then bring up the exact position in each video where that phrase is spoken. The transcript is then available in the timeline underneath the video…
Samsung use Facebook to stir-up some excitement for the Beijing Olympics
I hate Facebook apps. Writing about them requires me to login to Facebook, which I hate doing as much as I hate Facebook apps. That’s one for you to ponder. Currently the link for this particular application is down, so all I can relay to you is hearsay and conjecture.
Conservatives launch Friction.tv video channel… but what about Webcameron?
The Conservative Party has launched a branded channel on video debating site Friction.tv, in what it says is an attempt to engage with the public about key issues.
YouTube Video of the Day – John Kerry questioner gets tasered by US police
It happened a couple of days ago, but this video is already causing a big stir on YouTube. A student at a John Kerry forum asks a few testy questions and as a result, is arrested by US police and tasered. Remember when US colleges were the hotbed of political debate? Not anymore. For a news report on the incident click here and for another angle from someone in the attendance, click here.
