Tech Tools for the American Voter and the 2008 Congressional Election

Interesting/useful site...
"This tutorial is a visual walk-through of how to find what you need to know for the upcoming Congressional elections. Use the tutorial to help you find out if you are registered to vote, biographical information on your Congressman or Senator, his or her voting records, and money donations and campaign fundraising for the upcoming election.

The tutorial is divided into five parts – “Can I Vote?”, biographical information on members of Congress, voting records for members of Congress, fundraising and campaign finance activities of candidates, and challenger research. The tutorial shows the different sites and how you can find the information you seek to learn more about the voting process and the candidates."

Common Craft

Hats off to Laura for alerting me to Common Craft...short videos that explain, with exemplary clarity, things worth knowing. Try for example "RSS in Plain English" (below)

USAengage

USA*ENGAGE - in its own words - "is a broad-based coalition representing Americans from all regions, sectors and segments of our society concerned about the proliferation of unilateral foreign policy sanctions at the federal, state, and local level. Despite the fact that unilateral sanctions rarely achieve our foreign policy goals, they continue to have political appeal. Unilateral sanctions give the impression that the United States is "doing something," while American workers, farmers and businesses absorb the costs." Read more

Cue Prompter

Nothing is more annoying than being told, just before addressing a stadium or a rally, that your communications folks have forgotten the teleprompter. Now there's help - with CuePrompter, you just type or paste in a text, and your browser prompts you with big white letters on a black screen, at your chosen speed. Also works for smaller audiences.

Google generation needs knowbuddies

‘Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future’

From resource shelf... "A new report, commissioned by JISC and the British Library, counters the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – young people born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most adept at using the web. The report by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web."

My bet is that this resonates with knowbodies everywhere!

Ideology of Facebook

UK philosopher Tom Hodgkinson takes a very dim view of Facebook in the Guardian earlier this week....

LC and Flickr

Here's an interesting use of Web2.0's "architecture of participation" by the Library of Congress at Flickr...and lot's of beautiful photos without copyright restrictions!

(excerpt)...."the launch of a brand-new pilot project the Library of Congress is undertaking with Flickr, the enormously popular photo-sharing site that has been a Web 2.0 innovator. If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity. In many senses, we are looking to enhance our metadata (one of those Web 2.0 buzzwords that 90 percent of our readers could probably explain better than me).

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images."

Finding People

Lot's of stuff on how to find people from Marcus Zillman

Native American Wiki

Here's a useful resource on Native Americans...see the review at ResearchBuzz

10 library blogs for 2008

LIS News has named the 10 library blogs to read for 2008. Curiously, Knowbodies is not on the list, an oversight...but here they are. Those that are feeds can be sampled on the lib/tech pageflake page.

The Annoyed Librarian (Feed)
David Rothman (Feed)
iLibrarian (Feed)
Judge a Book by its Cover (Feed)
Law Librarian Blog (Feed)
Library Stuff (Feed)
Marylaine Block (Email list)
Off The Mark (Feed)
ResearchBuzz (Feed)
Stephen's Lighthouse (Feed)

Prosumers and future scenarios

Here's another future scenario for the information age, introducing the term "prosumer" which I encountered today for the first time.



And here, if you missed it, is EPIC 2015 Interesting despite unbearable music...

Buying of the President, 2008

From the Center for Public Integrity comes "Buying of the President 2008", the Center's quadrennial investigation of how money shapes presidential campaigns. "This website is a companion to The Buying of the President 2008. Like the book, this site explores the roles that money and special interests play in presidential politics. But unlike the book, which will provide a behind-the-scenes examination of how big money influences the presidential election process, this site is a work in progress — a continually updated window into the 2008 race that’s also richly supplemented with details, insights, and revelations from previous campaigns and, where feasible, those who engineered them."

From here to there

Google Map's from here to there is amazing. Just enter your departure and destination points in the here and there boxes, and hey presto...up comes a map with your route marked clearly, and step by step driving directions on the left. If you run into detours...or are instructed to change your route to see some sights on (or out of) the way, just put your cursor on the route marker and drag it to the desired destination.

Hyplets

Hyplet is a neat web2.0 application that allows you to create nifty digital business cards and other promotional materials that can be pasted into emails, blogs, websites, etc. Fun to use!

Get your own Hyplet!

Wikia search

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is launching Wikia search today. Here's the "about" page, and here's a New York Times article describing the service. In a comment to a very negative review at TechCrunch, Wales himself emphatically points out that Wikia Search is "a project to *build* a search engine, not a search engine."

2 election sites

Congressional Quarterly has released a 2008 Primary Guide - read more about it here. For questions about historical election returns, Philip Lampi's A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825 is a treasure trove. Read more about it here

Search trends/zeitgeist

Knowing what interests people is a key to success in marketing and public relations, and presumably also in librarianship and public diplomacy. Google Zeitgeist's annual review of search trends is now available for 2007, and particularly interesting is the breakdown by country. For years I've been lobbying for more funny pictures...

Community election site

"Why08.org is a conversation community dedicated to Election 2008. To have a voice, you don't need to be a media mogul, a talking head, or even a blogger. There's an audience waiting for you at Why08.org"...and further...
"All of us at Why08 are political junkies and we've always wanted a better way to talk politics with friends and others on the web. Message boards are fine but they could be so much better with social networking, community voting, and more. We always assumed somebody would build a site for us. No one did and we got tired of waiting."

Rich States/Poor States

In the "tough reference questions" department, I recently fielded this one: "What two states, which begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet, are ranked 1st and 50th?" Instead of getting annoyed and barking back "What do you mean ranked 1st and 50th - in WHAT?" I checked the American Legislative Exchange Council's new report Rich States/Poor States which provides a wealth of interesting data on the comparative economic competitiveness of the 50 states - and was able to answer politely, and without further ado, "Utah and Vermont".

Finding government information

The OMB watch report Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Important Government Information Cannot Be Found through Commercial Search Engines discusses why Google, Yahoo and other commercial search engines sometimes come up short when looking for government information...and what searchers and government website managers can do about it.

Knol

Google is now dabbling in wiki-type knowledge sharing, as announced in this article about "knols" - ie. units of knowledge - last week at the Official Google blog. Here's an excerpt..

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

This sounds a lot like Wikipedia, and naturally there are comparisons

so long ircworld....hello knowbodies!

Ircworld is being retired...and reborn as knowbodies.blogspot.com. There are a couple of differences; while posting to ircworld was limited to the IRC community, anyone may post to knowbodies. Ircworld was never an official USG site, but some people at the State Department may have worried that it was perceived as such. By opening it up to the general audience, and removing all mention of ircs, embassies etc., there should no longer be any cause for concern of that kind.

Ircworld featured a list of rss feeds on the right hand side of the page - loading them slowed things down terribly, so those feeds have now been redirected to pageflake pages ("pagecasts") in (so far) three categories - libraries and technology, public diplomacy, and government information.

If you are receiving this via email - and would like to continue receiving knowbodies posts via email - please visit knowbodies.blogspot.com and enter your email address in the designated window.

(the painting is Carl Spitzweg's "The Bookworm")

Association of Religion Data Archives

here is a post about a useful resource from Virtual Library Cat:

"ARDA, The Association of Religion Data Archives, is a fascinating goldmine of information from researchers, polling and census data, and other reliable sources. ARDA provides free access to quality data on American and world religions. In easy to view format, it quickly presents national profiles and American city statistics, religious group membership and religious freedom data, and recent survey results on beliefs and practices, replete with maps, charts, and reports. The site is fun to explore and an easy way to better understand demographic trends and the current role of religious groups and beliefs as a factor in today's world. It's also a great place to take a study break and learn some interesting and often surprising facts at the same time."

I am America (and so can Hughes)

Here's a post from PR watch about Karen Hughes's swansong:

As one of her last acts as Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Karen Hughes unveiled a new short film that will be shown in "the waiting areas of more than 200 American embassies and consulates around the world." Titled "I am America," the film was commissioned by the group Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), created by the Omnicom-owned ad agency GSD&M Idea City, and donated to the U.S. State Department. The State Department explains that "the idea for the film emerged from brainstorming sessions involving ... Karen Hughes, her staffers and BDA. U.S. officials wanted to correct misperceptions of the United States as an unfriendly and insular place." Walt Disney recently donated a similar film to the State Department, called "Welcome: Portraits of America," which is being shown in the international arrivals areas of major U.S. airports.

What else is on? Pageflakes!!!

Seinfeld once quipped "Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is onTV." The joke says something about the sense of unfulfillment, attention span deficit, and profound restlessness that motivates not only channel flipping, but also web browsing... and I guess, by extension, that insatiable acquistiveness that keeps the economy going - especially at this time of year! If any of that resonates with you, you may share my enthusiasm for Pageflakes - in just a few minutes, you can assemble a page full of "flakes" - widgets displaying rss feeds from your favorite blogs - and see what else is on, without even switching channels! It's almost like having that bank of TV screens you also wanted but couldn't afford for your home! A page full of pageflakes is called a pagecast, and can be reserved for your own private viewing, shared with selected individuals, or published on the web for anyone to see. The layouts of individual "flakes" can be customized independently of each other. You can select from a variety of themes for your pagecast, or create your own, as I've done here. For an example of a page that presents an enormous range of information harvested from many different sources, see the the Dublin City Public Libaries pagecast.

The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0

This report from the IBM Center for the Business of Government "examines the phenomenon of blogging in teh context of the larger revolutionary forces at play in the development of the second-generation internet, where interactivity among users is key." Although this is a report on blogging by men in suits for men in suits (regrettably, the word "blogoneers" is used to describe pioneering bloggers), it is serious, thorough and substantiated, and addresses matters that might be neglected elsewhere in the "blogosphere", e.g. "The ROI of blogging". A good report to hand to the ambassador, whether you're trying to persuade or dissuade her/him from blogging.

The Blogging Revolution: Government in the Age of Web 2.0

This report from the IBM Center for the Business of Government "examines the phenomenon of blogging in the context of the larger revolutionary forces at play in the development of the second-generation internet, where interactivity among users is key." Although this is a report on blogging by men in suits for men in suits (regrettably, the word "blogoneers" is used to describe pioneering bloggers), it is serious, thorough and substantiated, and addresses matters that might be neglected elsewhere in the "blogosphere", e.g. "The ROI of blogging". A good report to hand to the ambassador, whether you're trying to persuade or dissuade her/him from blogging.

President's Daily Brief

For those of us who do not have the time or permission to read the President's Daily Brief (PDB), a highly classified intelligence report prepared daily for the U.S. president, this post at the FAS Secrecy News blog provides some fascinating insights into the production and use of the document.

Howjsay

Howjisay is "An English Pronouncing Dictionary with Instant Sound" for Americans and others who need help with parodying British accents. Brits and others who need help with parodying American dialects are directed to this post

Future of bibliographic control

The Working group on the future of bibliographic control has released its draft final draft report for public comment. The group addresses the future of a core, if not defining, function of the librarian profession. The group's mandate is to:

• Present findings on how bibliographic control and other descriptive practices can effectively support management of and access to library materials in the evolving information and technology environment;
• Recommend ways in which the library community can collectively move toward achieving this vision;
• Advise the Library of Congress on its role and priorities.