Craig Newmark committed what he termed a "crime against nature" at last week's Government Web Managers Conference when responding to a web manager who asked if he could use the free section of Craigslist to advertise his agency's free government information and services.
"Drill Here, Drill Now" will give you gas, MyBO gets people riled up with new scoring system, McCain will announce a tech policy, more video-generated content
I've been on the road since Thursday, first at a working meeting of the National Conference on Media Reform (NCMR), where I moderated a panel on the same topic, and today in Houston at a miniconference at the Baker Institute on the internet and politics. A couple of times over the last two days, I managed to pull out the N95 and shot a couple of fun, Qik videos with some of the folks I bumped into at NCMR. Check out Jane Hamsher, Susan Crawford, Robert Greenwald, Deanna Zandt, Craig Newmark and Tom Steinberg.
A Facebook group tries to recapture the Spirit of '92 but gets obsessed with privacy instead; another Facebook group finds a million people who dislike George Bush; Tom Hanks posts a video in support of MySpace; Lamont Williams, where art thou?; Craig Newmark also supports Obama; Ron Paul publishes a book; and Bob Barr is set to run for president and launches a YouTube channel to prove it.
According to a new poll 45% of voters think the next president will get the tubes as much as they do; the internet also makes you smarter; Patrick Ruffini hustles to get the GOP nominee some funds in the aftermath of Super Tuesday; a fun interview with Craig Newmark; Karl Rove sends down tablets listing the new rules of politicking and and the still applicable old rules; the HuffPost's Fundrace now lets you map the political contributions of celebrities, friends, and neighbors; John McCain is one potential GOP nominee who actually understands tech policy; and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton offer gracious notes to John and Elizabeth on their sites, with absolutely no ulterior motives.
The FEC recommends that John Edwards not receive matching funds for the $4.3 million he raised on ActBlue, and DailyKos protests; a single Republican activist has a list of 71 million Christian voters, prompting the left to grasp for their own; Craig Newmark co-hosts an Obama fundraiser; Glamour magazine launches a group blog about the race; Barack Obama ba-reaks the 200,000 MySpace barrier; Chris Dodd speaks at Google, asks them to write his tech policy; and Matt Lewis says negative blogging is just hitting its stride.
Here's my semi-verbatim but not for direct quotation transcript of this morning's fascinating panel on how the web is changing political journalism. The players: Moderator: Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine, Speakers: David Plotz, Slate; Jim Brady, WashingtonPost.com and Jay Rosen, NewAssignment.net.