Hope?

One of the great buzzwords of the Obama campaign last year, "hope". The New York Times did a poll to find out what were the hopes of the American people for the Obama administration. Some lovely visualisation of the results along with sound clips from individual participants can be found here at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/15/us/politics/20090115_HOPE.html

South Park - Obama in Chicago

Election 2008: graphs, charts, widgets & holograms

What an election, not just for it's historic & political significance but how the internet took on such an importance in terms of canvassing for support, raising profile, raising funds and reaching out to millions of people of all demographics. We had a delightful selection of blogs, widgets, feeds, charts, newsletters, tweets, desktop & smartphone apps, etc to chose from to keep in the know on all things election. The Yahoo! election dashboard remained a strong favourite throughout both the campaign for the Democratic nomination and the Presidential race itself. CNN's offering was also quite tasty and likewise the offerings on Newstalk and RTE (same provider NPR), not forgetting the Irish Times offering (not so tasty).

The absolute icing on the tech-widgetry-chartilicious election had to be the delightful CNN 'hologram' news reporter, that even CNN themselves got excited about despite it looking completely ridiculous. But the fact that they had to update their website to explain to people that it wasn't "actual" holography used goes to show it's probably blown some minds while tickling others.

I hope Mr.Obama keeps his rather sexy website up and running into the future, it's too lovely to leave the internet & it would be a shame to see all that fab branding, marketing & design workmanship disappear into the mist.

The huge increase in the number of people registering to vote & actually voting on the day was not just some co-incidence but the results of some seriously effective campaign work that I've no doubt had a massive influence from online channels used by Obama & his opponents - time for the Irish parties to take a good look at how they could learn from this & at the very least attempt to inspire younger voters to have at least an awareness next year's local & European (and how knows maybe general) elections. Once that's achieved then they can work on getting them interested in their policies, if that's possible :)

The really super Tuesday

This is going to be an internetty eleection day. Let the flood of widgetry, feeds, tweets & streams begin!

My mate Jen & someone called Barack Obama

I don't really do the whole Facebook thing as it just annoys the hell out of me but it's the best way for me to keep track of my mate Jen (above) who's been working with the Obama campaign for what feels like forever! I was thrilled to find she'd just posted this when I per-chance logged in today - it's fantastic - she's had me convinced that Obama was the man for the job from about 2 years when she began working on her B.A. Journalism thesis, based on the media representations of his campaign.
I wish I could have been over there for a real taste of this week's madness, if to give her and all the other democrats another bunch of nails to chew on. Tonight I'm going to tempt fate and purchase a bottle of champagne to have nicely chilled for Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Until then, let's hope common sense at least prevails amongst the undecided voters State-side and that those like myself who've been well and truly convinced that Obama should be given the keys to the White House have their votes counted.
Time will tell...

Survival Tips for Election Nerds

My favourite from the compilation of tips and tricks:

3. Don't Donate More Than 25% of Your Life Savings To The Obama Campaign –
Forget what Obama said about still needing donations. Dude has made more money than "The Dark Knight". If you've already made five or more donations, seriously, you've done your part! You won't be helping anybody if the minute after Obama is declared winner you declare bankruptcy.

Full list is here.

Hey McCain, Hallowe'en isn't till the end of the month

via Irish Times

Or maybe McCain has been watching too much Little Britain USA: