SOMEWHAT FRANK

Barack Obama: The First Tech President

I recently spoke on a panel about social networking & the 2008 election and at the time I went out on a limb and predicted that Barack Obama would win the election. He was not projected to win by anyone at the time but he was leveraging technology to communicate with people through a number of different mediums. He was using text messaging to contact his army of follower anywhere and at anytime. He was using social network sites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to reach people on the Web. Through the use of these tools the feedback loop is nearly instantaneous. He also used more conventional methods like email to send important messages in the final days before the election. I felt he was out campaigning John McCain in a grassroots fashion similar to how a number of startups have leveraged it to spread the word. Interestingly, John McCain used the Internet in similar ways in prior elections but it seems he was out done in this election.

John McCain is a great man and a great American. He has served this country for a long time and I respect him deeply for it.  But in this Election 2.0, one that will be the subject of a number of case studies, he was battling the tight social connections that technology has brought to this world and so I think Barack Obama has rightfully earned not only the title of President Elect but also the first Tech President. I just hope he continues to connect and listen to the people through these various modes of communications as he tries to bring change to the United States of America.

Google Search Goes Universal, Microsoft Buys aQuantive, MyBlogLog Changes Coming, Enterprise RSS and TcDC1

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by Brian Solis of a video camera recording Sarah Meyers interviewing someone at the May 2007 Girls in Tech in SF.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 05.20.07

Watch TV Stations From Your Web Browser
More and more services are popping enabling users to watch full screen videos right from a web browser. They kind of all have a similar television look & feel. It even looks like some of them inspired by Joost style.

Google Launches Universal Search
Google announced yesterday its new search system intended to bring together all of Google’s broad assortment of searches into format that should be more convenient for users. Google’s vision is to ultimately search across all of googles content and to

Did Microsoft go lose it head over aQuantive?
Just how wacky was Microsoft’s $6 billion bid for aQuantive? GigaOm tries to illustrate it in this article.

Who Will Be America's First TechPresident?
This challenge to all candidates was made on the TechPresident site earlier this week.

Windows Live Gallery partners program
Companies and brands may partner with Microsoft to highlight their Windows Live Gadget offerings for preferred inclusion in the Live.com personal homepage, Windows Live Spaces sidebar, and the Windows Vista sidebar.

TECH cocktail Takes On the Capitol City
Bub.blicio.us reports on the night that was a TECH cocktail in DC.

Google's Defensible Trump Card?
Google is betting the farm on personalization.

Feed Crier climbs into bed with IMified
By becoming part of IMified, Feed Crier will be able to offer more features to our users. Maybe reblogging alerts directly to your blog from your IM client. Or subscribing to alerts from sources other than feeds (think Google Calendar, To Do list reminder, etc.).

Enterprise RSS - 3 Major Vendors Show The Way
Forrester has just released a new report on Enterprise RSS. Specifically it tackles the issue of information overload in the corporate environment, now that RSS feeds are an important source of information in the workplace.

MyBlogLog to Rebrand and Make Significant Changes
MyBloglog is really only known amongst the first adoptors and blogosphere but it appears Yahoo will soon be positioning it for the mainstream.

Election 2.0

With a number of political candidates creating MySpace profiles, YouTube videos and Second Life avatars it appears that the Internet and web 2.0 technology are being leveraged for political campaigning.

TechPresident, a project of the Personal Democracy Forum, launched recently to aggregate the activities of U.S. presidential hopefully on popular web 2.0 social media sites. Aside from a blog which gives perspective on the presidential race, TechPresident also tracks each candidates MySpace friend counts, YouTube videos, and Technorati mentions and Google and Yahoo ads. I would love to see it add Second Life (virtual world) and Twitter (micro-blog platform) to the mix as candidates also appear on these sites.

The video below titled, Election 2.0, explains just how the 2008 United States election will be like no other election as web 2.0 takes on an unprecedented role. My only critique of the video is that it breaks the "context before detail" rule which would have made the message more powerful. Nonetheless, I think it is well done and worth watching.