Many product-selling websites include a lot of Web 2.0 tricks to convince the Internet surfer that the product is worth checking out.  Heck, even Cheerios has a website which includes a flashy splash intro.  Most product sites seem to be nothing more than an excuse to have a site, like a self-fulfilling prophecy of owning a company:

"Well, if we have a product, we must have a website!"

Certain consumer products have useful and inventive websites, such as this one I recently found: Acne.org.  I found this site through a linked video in YouTube.  The site contains many of these videos, which is a brilliant idea for free advertisement (click on the thumbnails for full-size pics).

The site is massive in content.  From just the home page, a viewer can tell the large amount of information conveyed throughout all of the separate pages.  The top menu bar alone contains more than twenty different sections from which to choose, all separated under broader categories.  Many of these sections include video demonstrations of the tips and tricks that the web master (and product creator) hopes to teach.  These video clips are high quality, short, well-scripted, and have reasonable volume.

Other sections of the site take advantage of a multitude of Web 2.0 tools.  Members of the site can use the forums to voice their complaints and compliments of all of the different acne products and treatments on the market.  Going one step further, members can upload pictures and video, showing their progress to healthy skin.

The overall feel of the site is very personal.  The blog serves mostly to thank people who contributed to the site and to make announcements about upcoming products and updates.  The store section is very thorough and does not pressure the user to purchase.  In fact, the site details various over-the-counter substitutions for all of the products found on the site.  Finally, the About Me page shows everyone why the creator of the site started the product line, and amazingly, the story comes across honest and thought-provoking.  It's a refreshing change of pace from most "why we did this" pages filled with boring, cheesy anecdotes.

Any negatives? 

I found that I couldn't find articles using the search feature as easily as I would have liked (the site needs something more specific than the custom Google search), and certain forums and user-generated content seemed cluttered.  At various times, I felt like my senses were being overloaded with the slew of content on every page.  However, these small complaints were nothing to detract from the usefulness found on the site.

I would love to see more product sites that utilized Web 2.0 tools to both engage and comfort the reader.  I personally felt like I learned a lot from the site and was rarely bored with the presentation.  Other product sites could learn a lot from this one.

Ok. I admit it.  I never really "dugg" twitter.  While I did tweet for awhile, it was simply a different way for me to update my Facebook status.  I killed two birds (not the cute twitter bird) with one stone.  I guess that composing snappy 140-character or less haikus isn't my cup of tea, and I only drink herbal tea…

Beyond that, anyone who simply replied to me likely got ignored due to my ignorance of the rejoinder. No, I don't like desktop applications for twitter.  Half the time this ignorance was caused by twitter birds focusing on hefty the infamous whale instead of processing tweets.  Then there is the seemingly vast cottage industry of companies and products who owe their existence to twitter.  You can upload photos, shorten URLs, track your analytics, and probably submit your taxes via twitter, but nothing piqued my interest that much until now.

While checking someone's twitter feed today, I noticed links to twitter's election page at http://twurl.nl/npo6wl (shortened for mere kicks and giggles).  Through this page twitter displays tweets with specific words.  For instance, you can click on a link to see what people are tweeting about Tina Fey-impersonator Sarah Palin.  Now, I find that interesting and useful.  This service, however simple in theory, aggregates the tweets — from the serious to the snarky — in a way that enables me to quickly check the pulse of how the twitterverse feels about specific topics. 

Granted, I've seen other services that aggregate tweets around specific events and topics, but this is the first time I've seen it on twitter itself.  Hopefully, we'll see more of these useful pages instead of the birdies and the whale.

I was astounded at the amount of different technical venues for the watchers of the debate.  In four years, the Internet has started playing a more vital role in influencing voters' decisions.

Some of the most impressive tools came from an unsurprising source, the website of ‘political giant' CNN.  Not only could you watch the debate live from your laptop but you could also watch the debate live with blogger comments displayed on your screen.  In addition to that, you could watch live analysis from expert political teams.  This means that debate watchers not only had the ability to hear from their peers, but also experienced analysts.

CNN and other channels also gave viewers the ability to go online and check facts related to questions that the moderator presented and gave them the ability to see what their fellow voters thought as the answers were given.  Several channels showed real-time positive/negative charts made from dials given to audience members at Washington University.

Of course, the normal slew of micro-bloggers using Twitter and vbloggers using YouTube were in full force.  I was amazed at how quickly those two particular platforms were filled with opinions.  Amusingly, one video (that has unfortunately been deleted by the time of this posting) that directly followed another video, corrected something said in the first.  Internet users could barely keep up with themselves!

I was nearly overwhelmed by all of these choices.

"Is this too much?" 

Because of my overuse of technology, I felt that it became difficult for me to form uninfluenced opinions.  Other friends and colleagues have different opinions on the issue, but I feel that technology may serve only to distract from the actual debate.

We live in a time when we are able to interact with voters all over the world.  Perhaps I'm wrong, and it's a blessing to have many opinions at our fingertips.

Opinions?  Does all of the information available to us help us or distract us from the debate?

Also concerning technology and politics, check out this overview from Larry Kless about our recent Oovoo chat concerning the 2008 Senate race.

I remember several years ago when Facebook was fresh out of the coding gate, college seniors feared that their employers would look at a certain picture of them at the fraternity mixer holding a can of beer, and that would be the end of their resume.  In those days, Facebook (and some other social networks) was limited to college-aged persons, but now the fear has spread to high schoolers.

An article in the Chicago Tribune states that a recent study done by Kaplan claims that 10% of college admissions boards check the social profiles of their applicants.

Of those, the survey suggests the social profiles had a negative impact on the applicant's success at admission 38% of the time.  Assistant provost for enrollment Dan Saracino of the University of Notre Dame said he and his staff "don't go out of [their] way" to scrutinize students online, but sometimes they come across candidates portraying themselves in a less-than-flattering light.

"It's typically inappropriate photos-like holding up a can of beer at a party," Saracino said.

When I discussed this topic with several peers, many were surprised at how many high school students would post lewd photos, or ones that contained illegal activity.  "It's one thing for employers to see potential legal-aged employees holding a beer at a football tailgate, but it's another thing entirely to see potential students already breaking tons of rules and championing it online," stated my colleague, Naomi Collins.

Admissions faculty from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago were surprised by the survey's results.  They both believed that it was "an invasion of privacy" to snoop at web materials that "aren't intended for [them]".

During college, I remember several students constricting their privacy settings and requesting for others to remove pictures of them for fear of breaking ROTC student rules.  Most students applying for medical or graduate school were likely to do the same thing.  Many simply amped up their privacy settings so that only friends could view the majority of the online content, while others were afraid of the ways to get around the privacy settings.  Those students chose to outright remove most of their content.  In fact, several of my fellow students removed their profiles completely.

Should college admissions boards view and take into account the online social profiles of students?  While I don't believe that someone's online persona necessarily translate into their capability as a student, what's the harm in ‘cleaning it up' a month or so prior to the start of the admissions process?

Two weeks into the season and I wonder… “How many Bivings Report enthusiasts play fantasy football (please, keep your fantasies to yourselves)?” Its popularity has grown to astronomical proportions nation-wide, to the point that even the Wall Street Journal is writing about it. The WSJ reports that, though no hard figure exists, millions play fantasy football and their spenditure numbers in the hundreds of millions. I’ve been playing for about six years myself. We even have a Bivings league of our own going (in which yours truly is currently third out of 10 teams very early on).

Our platform of choice is Yahoo!. NFL.com and ESPN.com are their main competitors. Heck, even Facebook has a fantasy football platform of its own now. The only advantage NFL.com has over Yahoo! is that live scoring is provided free of charge.

I personally find Yahoo! to be the most comfortable to use overall. It’s easy to navigate, takes fewer clicks to get actions done, and seems to have more accurate player rankings than the other guys. Though they aren’t the only ones that do this, Yahoo!’s weekly “start ‘em, sit ‘em” videos are useful as well.

I’m sure you’ve all been in a situation where you weren’t sure if you should risk starting your nicked-up, stud running back or wide receiver over some healthy “hey you” you picked up off waivers. You know, when the guy is listed as “questionable” and all the news outlets tell you he’s “50/50,” “day-to-day,” “a game time decision.” Well this is where Yahoo! scores big points, with Fantasy Football Live - a weekly webcast with the latest advice and breaking roster inactives, as they come in, that takes you right up to the early kickoffs. It’s helped me with a dozen or so start/sit decisions over the past few seasons.

By now we have a pretty good idea of who this year’s up-and-comers are, in addition to the old reliables. So here’s a little advice on five early season pick-ups that could comprise the last spot or two on your roster, from a guy you probably weren’t seeking it from (how do those “fantasy gurus” get their gigs anyhow?).

J.T. O’Sullivan, QB – Obviously not the second coming of Joe Montana for the 49’ers, but he’s a solid pick-up flying under the radar in Mike Martz’s pass-happy offense. Think of him as the next John Kitna, who tossed the rock under Martz in Detroit the past few seasons.

Robert Meachem, WR – This former first-round draft pick was one of my late round, sleeper picks this year. And with Drew Brees’ top target Marques Colston now out for some time with a thumb injury look for more balls to be headed his way. Meachem caught a touchdown with his first-ever NFL reception against the Redskins this past Sunday.

James Hardy, WR – I usually tend to shy away from rookie wide receivers, and for good reason. Not this one though. Hardy was a touchdown fiend at Indiana scoring 16 of them in 2007. The Buffalo Bills will be looking to use that 6’7”, 220-pound frame in the red zone as well. Hardy already has his first NFL TD, scoring in Buffalo’s victory over Jacksonville last Sunday.

Pierre Thomas, RB – With injury-prone Deuce McCallister only seeing spot duty, Aarron Stecker out injured, and Reggie Bush continuing to prove he can’t run the ball between the tackles, Thomas is a player to look at if you’re thin at running back. He won’t be a game-breaker yardage-wise, but he will see his share of goalline carries. He’s already found the end zone twice this year.

Kevin Curtis, WR – “But he’s injured!?” I know he is, and so do the owners that released him. Even if you don’t pick him up now, keep a close eye on this guy’s health. He was the leading receiver in a dynamic offense last year and still their wideout of choice. So you could have yourself a free-agency steal and a good late-season boost if you snatch him up before your league-mates do.

It really surprises me that more political figures and celebrities have not taken Obama's lead and created functional social networking sites that engage users and allow for not only greater transparency, but also general likeability of its moderator.  Leave it to a standup comedian to design a site capable of doing both of those things.

Aaron Karo began writing his monthly column over a decade ago, when he emailed his comedic musings (which he called ‘ruminations') to 20 or so of his closest friends.  Now, the comedian has become quite a success, boasting appearances on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, two books, and subscribers to his column from all over the world.

In August 2008, he launched a new website which aims to unite his fans (and new fans) by allowing them to submit their own ruminations.  The site is awesome in its simplicity.  After signing up for a user account and doing the generic social networking tasks (i.e. uploading a profile picture, typing in some data about yourself), you are allowed to ruminate on any topic of your choosing, trying your best to emulate the genius of the comedian.

You might think that this would result in chaos, but the site has moderators that screen each rumination entry before it's published on the site.  It results in a lot of intelligible and well-written musings as opposed to cussword filled rants.

The site takes a lot of the best parts of other Web 2.0 sites and puts them together.  Users are allowed to rate something "gourmet" which is similar to digging it; users can become "fans" of other users, essentially getting an RSS feed of their latest ruminations.  Users also have the option to receive email every time that one of their writings gets a gourmet rating or someone becomes a fan of them.  It's a nice little pick-me-up during the middle of the day to know that someone somewhere thinks that you are funny.

Beyond the thought-out tools on the site, the site also excels at being simple, clean, and well organized.  Colors are not overused, and the presentation is easy to read.  It's everything you need in a site like this, without anything superfluous.

Perhaps the best aspect of this site is that it accomplishes the goal set out by anyone who starts a personal social networking venture: it connects the star to his fans.  Karo routinely rates user ruminations, comments on them, and sends them the occasional email when he finds something particularly funny.  He also includes a ‘bonus rumination' in each of his monthly columns to ensure that he is attracting his fans to the site.

Overall, it's a well-designed, thoughtful, and fun site from which politicians and other celebrities could learn.  I'm impressed.

UPDATE: It was recently announced that the one problem with the popular site (the sometimes slow load times) has been remedied thanks to the move to a new server.  Well played.

The Bivings Gorup recently launched what is easily, as far as we are aware, one of the most advanced multilingual sites made in Drupal ever built. The International Journalists’ Network, or IJNet can be seen here: www.ijnet.org. The website, built for the non-profit organization International Center For Journalists (ICFJ), leverages Drupal’s built in multilingual capabilities together with a number of custom fixes and changes.

Key challenges included:

• Creating a flexible page layout interface that allowed site administrators to easily create and customize sections in both left and right columns, giving them new colors, any kind of custom or dynamic content, as well as being able to define their own section colors.
• Having full-featured mutilingual social elements on the site, including user profiles, inter-user messaging, user networking, user network activity feeds, user comment posting, user article posting, and many other dynamic social elements.
• Enabling users to easily view the site in right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Persian.
• Creating custom displays of the site for low resolution monitors.
• Creating a platform suitable for managing mutliple mailing lists for use with third party mail systems.
• Allowing the client to easily add new languages to the platform when desired.

The International Center For Journalists administers IJNet and creates its content in five different languages, and counting…

Take a look at the site at www.ijnet.org and let us know what you think!

As if our web developers didn't already have enough standards-fudging and code-juggling to optimize websites for every conceivable end-user browser, Google launched the public release of Google Chrome today — and I was right in line to download it. The Installation .exe file was small (a little over 400 kb), only to connect to the internet and download the entire binary. I am writing this very post using the new browser, and here are some of my initial opinions on the new kid on the block.

Upon installation, I fell in love with its menu bar. I recently purchased an Eee PC 901, which has a maximum resolution of 1024×600 — so screen real estate is of particular interest to me. The menu/navigation is a minimalist's dream: tabs at the very top, address bar, drop-down menus from within the address bar. The extra 50 or so vertical pixels it saves on my screen is quite noticeable on this netbook when compared to Mozilla Firefox.

Each tab in Google Chrome is treated as a different process (at least in Windows XP) when I open up the task manager. I am not really sure what this does in terms of efficiency, but it is a different approach than Firefox (which I have been known to inflate to nearly a gigabyte through the over-use of tabs). If you have an opinion on this technical matter, please, let us know in the comments!

The Chrome's default start page is like the desktop version of iGoogle. It will apparently track the most visited sites, and display them in page previews for easy access. I am not convinced of this yet, but it could turn out to be a great addition to a streamlined product.

I fooled around a bit on Meebo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Gmail, Flickr, and some WordPress installations, all without encountering any glaring errors or compliancy issues.*

Since the blogs and forums I frequent will be all ablaze about this over the coming months, I thought I'd get my limited initial reaction to the product out there with the promise of a full review to come. Something to add? Drop it in the comments.

*Update: The WYSIWYG editor in WordPress doesn't appear to be very compatible with Google Chrome. More comparisons and compatibility issues to come in the full review. 

Yesterday I listened in on a Marketing Profs Seminar titled "Actionable Web Analytics: Unleash the Marketing Power of Your Web Data."  During this seminar Google Analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik gave several straight forward tips on how to better harness web analytics data.

The tip that I liked the most is to look at the bounce rate data for referring pages. Of particular interest are the pages with the lowest bounce rates. A low bounce rate is a good indicator that traffic referred from this site is more likely to convert and accept the site's call to action.

Part of search engine optimization (SEO) is garnering high quality links on other sites that can help drive quality traffic to one's site, and using this bounce rate data is an easy way to identify some great sites to consider requesting more links from.  In fact, this strategy is not only accessible to analytics gurus, even those new to using web analytics programs can quickly find and analyze such data. 

The seminar costs money to view, but you still learn from Kaushik at his blog Occam's Razor.

Anti-drug, non-profit websites have a habit of being either dry or so ridiculously overdone that it can make even a seasoned web surfer's eyes bleed. (Don't get me started on the Sunny Side of Truth website…the left navigation bar still infuriates me.)

Today I have discovered a non-profit website that not only gets direct to the point, but utilizes creative Web 2.0 gimmicks.

Through an advertisement on YouTube's homepage, I found the Full Apologies site, dedicated to stopping drunk driving.  The ad cleverly asked me, "What would you do if you killed your best friend?" and invited me to view someone's apology for doing just that.  Admittedly curious, I clicked on the link.

What I found was a simple, yet effective, site that had taken the time to think of its audience rather than snagging all the latest toys from the Web 2.0 grab bag (which is getting pretty heavy).  Upon first entering the site, there is a view of five teenagers' faces with their biographies under them.  Clicking on one of them will begin playing their "apology" to a loved one for their drunk driving mistake.  The video automatically displays in full screen mode, which design-wise, adds a lot to the overall effect.  It's as if they are talking to me, because there head is the size of my head!

The apologies are…for lack of a better word, intense.  I was expecting the same kind of thing I have seen in tobacco commercials on television, but what I got was seemingly sincere monologues filled with tears, bleeped-out cursing, and emotion.  I had to take breaks in between each of them to gather myself.

After the initial videos, a user is likely to notice the top navigation bar which contains several clever features.  Of course, there are the obligatory help-line phone numbers and information, but the creators of the site got clever with the other parts.

Two digital shorts show what life would be like after you survived a drunk driving accident.  These are just as intense and thought-provoking as the apologies.  A section titled "Visitor Apologies" lets users write anonymous text about their experiences with drinking and driving.  These apologies can be viewed as a list or in a funky 3D format.

Two other notable features that I found unique were the "Responsibility Randomizer" and the "B Safe Txtrs".  The Randomizer allows you the input your cell phone number along with your friends, and the program will send a text message to all the phones, picking someone as the designated driver for the night.  The site claims that everyone will know "who to thank at the end of the night".

B Safe Txtrs is similar to the Randomizer.  The user inputs their cell phone number as well as a message and time.  The program will send that text message to your phone at the designated time, which the creators intend to be something along the lines of "Don't Drink and Drive tonight."  It's simple and mundane, but seems like something that might work.

Thankfully, the site doesn't go overboard with social networking options, which would clutter this simple site.  Users can email the site link to a friend or post a message about it through Facebook.

That's it.  No useless fluff.  No unnecessary style or animation.  Just some jarring testimonies and potentially useful tools.

A few days ago the John McCain campaign launched a new version of their social networking tool, McCainSpace.  Having written about McCainSpace critically before, I figured I’d share some quick thoughts on the tool:

(1) The new version is built using a white label social networking product called KickApps, and features your typical suite of socnet tools: user generated blogs, videos and photos, groups, user profiles, friends, etc.  Kickapps is a nice tool and McCainSpace is professionally done.  However, this is clearly an out of the box solution with generic tools that could be used to power a community of dog lovers or wine aficionados, for example.  There is really nothing about this social network that has anything to do with taking action and winning elections.

The secret of the success of Barack Obama’s social network is that at its heart it is really a social action center.  When you login to My.BarackObama, you are pushed to make phone calls to undecided voters, knock on doors and raise money for the campaign, not to produce content.  Sure, that functionality exists on the Barack Obama website but it isn’t the main point.  The main point of My.BarackObama is to help Obama get elected.  The same cannot be said for the much more nebulous McCainSpace.

Check out these screengrabs of the Obama and McCain tools to see the difference in emphasis.

(2) Even if you disagree with me and like the actual tool set of McCainSpace, I think it is too late in the game to be launching something like this.  Mike Turk summed it up pretty well during a conversation we had with Wesley Donehue on Twitter about the tool:

“Why, oh why? What possessed them to launch a new SocNet with 70 days left? No time to market and they should be beyond that stage.”

Exactly.  Communities take time to build.  This same exact tool launched a year ago might have made a real impact.  This late in the game it seems like too little too late to me.

(3) The McCain campaign’s commitment to their new toy seems pretty weak.  I found out about the new site via an email from the campaign.  However, when I go to the main website and click on the links to  McCainSpace, I’m taken to the old, extremely limited version of the tool people like William Beutler and Mike Turk have been rightly criticizing for the last year.    So there appear to be two versions of McCainSpace running concurrently.I can’t even find a link to the new McCainSpace on www.johmccain.com and there doesn’t appear to be any real integration between the new tool and the campaign website.  Given this, I think the new McCainSpace may  just be a case of the campaign throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, as opposed to a well thought out initiative like My.BarackObama.

What do you think?

Update: Since I wrote my post, the McCain team has updated their site to integrate McCainSpace in a much more cohesive manner.

I'm kind of disgruntled right now with the Obama VP e-mail and text message campaign.  It now seems like a bait and switch scheme to me.

For the last couple of weeks, the political world was abuzz with excitement about whom presumptive (at least for the next couple of days) Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama would select as his running mate.  In a rather smart move, the Obama campaign announced that it would send the news first to its supporters who signed up for e-mail and text message updates.  This encouraged plenty of people to sign up in hopes of getting the announcement before the news broke.

Well, that's not how it really rolled out.  The campaign announced that Obama selected Senator Joe Biden as his choice of Vice President late Friday night/early Saturday morning.  I was up late watching the news coverage of this announcement, but I still had yet to receive my e-mail or text message.  Wasn't I suppose to get the news first?

Let me note that I understand that sending e-mails and text messages to a vast crowd can take some time to complete.  That's the trickle.  In fact, I expected that, but did the campaign and all those who signed up recognize that fact?  Did this delayed release annoy some people?  Maybe that's why the campaign sent this news when many people were either sleeping (particularly those of us in the Eastern Time Zone), drinking, or partying.  We could find out later in the morning after we got some sleep.

Now that the news is out and the Democratic Party is at its convention, it is time for the Obama deluge.  When I signed up for the text message and e-mail list to learn about Obama's veep stakes pick, I simply wanted to get the VP announcement.  However, I've gotten several e-mails from the campaign since the news broke.  Biden sent me a video.  Michelle Obama shared some behind the scenes moments from Denver.  Etc. 

Wait a second!  I didn't sign up for more e-mails.  This is something I didn't expect.  I would think that a campaign savvy enough to collect a massive contact list would understand better than to bombard people who agreed only to receive a single message.  The campaign should have created a separate list for this one-time use.  Hopefully, I won't continue to get more e-mails after the convention. 

At least so far I’ve only got one text message…  The one I wanted.  

Ok, maybe I'm a bad person who relies upon stereotypes too much, but one would think a site for geeks would actually have great features since geeks are so tech savvy.  Wrong.

While browsing through the magazine rack at Borders Books earlier this summer, I came across Geek Monthly with its cover girl, Tina Fey.  Either way, I read the article about her since I like her show 30 Rock and went home to check out the magazine's site.  I was expecting a great site that was graphically designed well with bells and whistles like easy to search sections, forums, great blogs, social media features, and great content.  I expected something like the beautiful site for Backpacker Magazine (since when did backpackers know so much about designing great websites?). However, as you can see in this image, like how the current cover boy (Rainn Wilson from NBC's The Office) is dressed, the site does not look pretty.

Either way, the Geek site has a rather distracting design, no clear navigation, seemingly no access to articles from past issues or from the current issue, no community features, etc.  It does have a blog, but not a great one.  You can also see an article from the current issue, but it pops up as a jpg…  What? 

So, I'm disappointed.  Were my expectations wrong in the first place?

The New York Times ran a story yesterday on the Barack Obama campaign’s aggressive use of text messaging this cycle.  I was interviewed for the article and a few of my quotes made the piece.   The reporter, Brian Stelter, interviewed me via email, so I figured I’d publish my responses in an effort to get an easy blog post out of the deal.  Questions and answers from the interview below.

In general, what do you believe the benefits are/will be to having a campaign reach voters via text message?

The most important benefit of text messaging is its immediacy.  Most people have their cell phones with them at all times, meaning text messages are received by people pretty much right after they are sent, no matter where the person is.  Most people still check their email on their computers, so people won’t get messages if they are out and about.  This means that text messaging is a great way to reach people when you have a timely message that needs to get out right away.  It is great for get out the vote efforts, political organizing, announcing last minute appearances, responding to crisis, etc. 

In addition, many people get an extremely high volume of email messages (spam in particular), which makes a campaign message less likely to be read and acted on, as it gets lost in the pure volume of the dreaded inbox.  Unlike email, most people are only getting text messages from close personal contacts and services they specifically opt in to, meaning there is less noise for the campaign to compete with. 

It is a great way to reach young voters who are heavy users of text messaging and in many cases have turned against email.  For a lot of young people text messaging is a primary mode of communication, supplanting regular phone calls and email.

Text message is still in its infancy as a political mobilization tool.  A lot of people simply don’t use text messaging yet and a lot of the people that do use it are reluctant to sign up to receive mass text updates.  They prefer to use texting solely for personal communication.  Due to this, I would suspect the text message lists of most political campaigns are extremely small.  If Obama or anyone is able to build a text list of a couple of hundred thousand people (or more) that would be a huge asset on election day.

Are there any obvious drawbacks?

Text messages are more expensive for the campaign to send than emails.  Also, depending on plans, people may actually get charged extra to receive the text messages the campaign sends.  I would also guess that people are less tolerant of messages they receive via text than those they receive via email - “don’t text me unless its important.” 

The result of these factors is that campaigns need to be careful not to abuse texting the way they do email.  It should be used judiciously - only send something out if you actually have something important to say.

Recently, we released our 2008 study of the senatorial campaign websites, and there was a particular element that stood out.  Podcasts were being used by fewer candidates than the year before, despite the fact that it seemed to be a very "tech-y" and potentially useful way to get a candidate's message across.

When I inquired to my co-workers about the discovery, one of them replied that he rarely used podcasts, and he believed that they were a "dying Internet art."  At first, I thought that he was alone in his opinion, but the numbers from the Senate report don't lie.

I decided to do a very informal poll of co-workers and friends to see how often they use podcasts.  I simply emailed 50 of my contacts and asked them two questions: "Have you listened to/downloaded a podcast in the last six months?" and "If so, where did you get it?"  All of the people polled were between the ages of 18 and 40, with a balanced gender ratio.

Then, I compiled all the responses and calculated the results.  The graphs (made using ImpactWatch reporting and graphing tools) displaying the data are below.

It's interesting to note that it seems like my co-worker was correct; most people don't really use podcasts.  At least two of the people that I contacted did not even know what a podcast was.

Of those who listened to podcasts, a majority (nearly a 2/3 supermajority) used iTunes to download them.  Several people were unaware of other ways to procure them.  Are users just ignorant of podcasts?  Are they going out of style?  Or both?

I would venture that the rise in the popularity of blogs has killed the podcast.  Reading a blog is quicker than listening to a podcast, and blogs require a MUCH shorter attention span.  Graphs and the spreadsheet of the data follow:

UPDATE: Chuck pointed me towards this report by Universal McCann that displays on page 63 that podcasts in the US are used by 29.5% of users, which is consistent with my poll.

Excel Spreadsheet of Podcast Poll Data

A few weeks ago we unveiled our favorite WordPress plugins. Drupal is another popular CMS platform we utilize here at Bivings. Here's a list of favorite modules we've compiled for it as well. And as always, feel free to signup and contribute to our wiki.

• Embedded Audio Field - Defines a field type for displaying third party music, podcasts, and other audio, such as podOmatic and Odeo.

• Embedded Image Field - Defines a field type for displaying images from third party providers, such as Flickr.

• Embedded Media Field - Provides an engine for modules to integrate various 3rd party content providers, such as Video Neighborhood, Image Neighborhood, and Audio Neighborhood.

• Embedded Media Import - Imports media from certain third providers, such as Flickr.

• Embedded Media Thumbnail - Allows custom thumbnails for Embedded Media Fields.

• Embedded Video Field - Defines a field type for displaying third party videos, such as YouTube and Google Video.

• Active Search - Adds AJAX to standard Drupal search.

• Activeedit - Provides AJAX-based in place editing.

• Activemenu - Adds AJAX-based tree menu to navigation menu.

• AJAX submit - Makes designated forms submit via AJAX.

• Collapsiblock - Makes blocks collapsible.

• JS Calendar - Enables popup calendars for selecting dates using the jscalendar library.

• Tabs - A helper module for creating tabbed pages.

• TBG_NODETEASER - Allows users to write custom teasers for content.

• PMM Main - Stands for Plugable Mass Mailer. Enables users to create an e-mail and pass it along to a mass mailing application.

• Event - Calendaring API, calendar display and export.

• Image - Allows uploading, resizing and viewing of images.

• Image Attach - Allows easy attaching of image nodes to other content types.

• Image Gallery - Allows sorting and displaying of image galleries based on categories.

• Image Import - Allows batches of images to be imported from a directory on the server.

• Organic Groups - Enables users to create and manage their own 'groups.'

• OG calendar - Displays calendars for groups.

• IMCE - An image/file uploader and browser supporting personal directories and user quota.

• Lists - Allows mailing lists subscriptions.

• Private - Allows users to mark content as private, and hide that content from visitors.

• TinyMCE - The most popular WYSIWYG editor for advanced content editing.

• Webform - Enables the creation of forms and questionnaires.

• JQuery Update - Updates Drupal to use the latest version of JQuery.

• Meta tags - Allows users to add meta tags, eg. keywords or description.

• Administrative Menu - Adds an alternative menuing system that makes it easier to access Wordpress admin tools.

People that work in online politics know that a massive email list is the most valuable asset you can have.  A big email list equals fundraising clout and influence.

Yesterday, the Barack Obama campaign announced that they would be revealing his pick for Vice President to supporters via email and text.  The campaign is urging supporters to sign up to receive an email alert to be the “first to know” who the pick is, moments after the decision is made. 

Frankly, the language is a bit vague, as it could be read to mean he will announce his VP exclusively via email and text or simply that they will send an email out as they announce the pick on television or elsewhere, which would be nothing new. 

Regardless, this is a brilliant and novel list building stunt.  The story immediately jumped to the front page of sites like Digg and word of the special VP announcement list is undoubtedly spreading via email and text.  Indeed, after signing up for the list on both text and email you are encouraged to tell your friends and family about the exclusively opportunity to be the first to know about the pick (screen shot below - click for full size). 

I can guarantee you this stunt will help Obama build his list by reaching people who normally wouldn’t sign up for a political list.  A really smart move. 

I read an interesting ebook yesterday titled The Taxonomy Folksonomy Cookbook by Daniela Barbosa of the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.  She's a product manager working with the taxonomy and metadata management tool Synaptica.  In this "cookbook" Barbosa argues that companies should use both taxonomies (created top-down with rigid rules) and folksonomies (created from the top-up with flexible rules) to organize their data.

One place where we see folksonomies in play is on social bookmarking sites like Delicious (now sans awkward periods).

Basically, Barbosa argues that folksonomies help create data structures that are easier for a company's employees to use when searching for specific data.  Used in concert with taxonomies, folksonomies can help logically organize data in a flexible manner that creates additional ways to search and sort data.  It's a good read.

A major point of the ebook is that companies should not fret too much about creating rules for their folksonomies to avoid unruly systems.  Barbosa argues that administrators can edit tags, delete offensive ones, create synonyms and aliases, etc.  Further, the existing taxonomy can place tags with multiple meanings in proper context.  Is "mouse" an animal or computer input device?  When the taxonomy for that data item alludes to hardware, then mouse is associated with computers.

I can see how too many rules imposed on a folksonomy can impair its robustness.  If individuals are forced to use tags that are not natural to them, a company might as well stick with its taxonomy.  However, I reckon that companies should institute some basics tagging rules to help their folksonomies function well.

Some issues that rules should address are:

• Standardization of capitalization ("Daniela" vs. "daniela")
• Multiple words in tags ("mouse pad" vs. "mouse-pad" vs. "mousepad")
• Language (an issue for multi-national corporations)
• Use of numbers ("eight" vs. "8")
• Formatting ("080808" vs. "August 8, 2008")

Many tagging sites already have some of these rules.  For instance, on several occasions I have typed in a multi-word tags on a site that said to separate tags by commas only to have the first word in each tag actually used.  Thus, no spaces in tags on those sites.

Now, if you feel so inclined, what do you think?  Would rules like this hinder the robustness of a folksonomy since they could force individuals to think unnaturally?  If not, what are some other useful rules?

A post on ValleyWag recently announced that file-sharing uber-giant BitTorrent would be laying off 12 of its 55 employees.  This accounts for the entire sales and marketing department.  This decision has been made in light of the recent failure of BitTorrent's staff to sell Best Buy its Torrent Entertainment Network for a rumored $15 million.

Since it's only been a year since CEO Doug Walker replaced founder Bram Cohen, it's likely that the entire company may soon be considering a revamp.  After all, Walker commented on making some changes to the store idea last March.

There is speculation that the deal fell through mostly due to the FCC and MPAA's recent crackdown on file sharing.  Outspoken Chairman of HDNet Mark Cuban freshly criticized the MPAA for combating the ‘problem' with prevention instead of promotion (we've all seen those commercials with the hip teens extolling the virtues of not stealing songs).

He claims that movie theaters need to invest in a positive message about the fun of going to the actual theater to watch movies, especially with the ever-growing price of admission.  Author of The Pirates Dilemma Matt Mason agrees with Cuban, saying that theaters should offer a movie-going experience and quality that will never be surpassed by file sharing.

Can you really ever defeat file sharing programs though?  No matter how great the quality and ‘experience', the fact remains that file sharing is free.  And "free" almost always wins.  Unfortunately for them, BitTorrent also recently learned that it's hard to sell something that's free.