What was your favorite moment of 2012? So much happens each year that we often forget to take time to reflect in the moment.
As we embark upon 2013, Jeremiah Warren has pulled together a short video on YouTube looking back on some of the past year’s highlights including events in the Middle East, London Olympics, 2012 presidential election, NASA, Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilms, the Pope’s first tweet, Kate Middleton’s pregnancy, the Mayans and several memorial tweets remembering those we lost.
This year, we will all witness and likely participate in the 2012 U.S. presidential election in an unprecedented manner thanks to social media and rapidly emerging technology. Not only are the campaigns and mainstream media using these tools, but voters will also have unique opportunities that will help inform their vote on Election Day come November. Here are five ways that digital media is changing the modern political environment in the U.S.:
As delegates make their way to Tampa, Florida next week for the 2012 Republican National Convention, staff and volunteers are working diligently to ensure that all Americans can participate — whether in person or remotely. Thanks to advanced technology through partnerships with AT&T, Microsoft and Google along with social media use among participants and viewers alike, they can!
According to a recent video released by convention organizers as part of their “Convention Insider” series, the goal is to make this the “most open and accessible event of its kind.”
The Edelman Global Public Affairs team has released findings from the 2011 Capital Staffers Index, an annual global study that analyzes top trends in global public affairs and communications.
This year’s expanded report is the third annual survey based on interviews with over 500 senior staffers (legislative directors and above) from capital cities in 11 different countries around the world including Washington DC, Brussels, London, Beijing, Ottawa, Mexico City, Paris, Berlin, New Delhi, Buenos Aires and Brasilia.
Although traditional methods public affairs components are still valuable, social media channels have experienced a meteoric rise in their ability to shape and influence policy worldwide over the past year.
We discussed the new Kindle, Apple price fixing allegations, President Obama’s “We the People” petition via WhiteHouse.gov, government and social media, crowdsourcing, ID spoofing and much more.
This week, Edelman released TweetLevel, the latest web-based tool designed to measure one’s “importance” on Twitter.
For those who haven’t given in to peer pressure to join the site yet, Twitter is a “microblog” that enables users to share thoughts, activities and news via 140 character text updates.
Twitter’s founders had a pretty basic, yet novel idea. They wanted to create a platform where users could connect with each other online to answer one simple question, “What are you doing?”
I’ll admit that when I first joined (@almacy), I just didn’t get it. Besides a few close family members and friends, I remember thinking, “Who really cares what I’m doing?” In fact, my first tweet isn’t exactly going to assist in solving global strife.
This past weekend, the Associated Press reported that the White House was moving to an open source content management system (CMS) known as Drupal. Many among the tech set have praised the move including Nancy Scola from techPresident who was among the first to write about the change in her post, WhiteHouse.gov goes Drupal. A good read.
For those not familiar with what this actually means, a CMS is basically the back-end (not visible to visitors) of a website that allows the administrators (owners) of the site — often non-programmers — to easily organize site navigation and add content designed to appear on the front-end.
For most CMS solutions, the user experience is pretty simple, usually consisting of a password protected login, options for varied user permissions for approval and forms with specific fields based on type of content such as text, photos, audio and video. Once entered and saved, the CMS stores the information in the back-end database and displays the content on the front-end when called up by a site visitor.
From Moldova to Motrin Moms, Twitter has become the arena of coordinated, widespread revolution several times over the last year. Still, when we look back on how the microblogging platform has evolved into a low-barrier tool for grassroots organizing, these will only be footnotes to the events of the last few days in Tehran. As protestors took to the streets of Iran to voice their discontent with the 2009 presidential election results, people from around the world were attentively watching updates from the ground on Twitter, long before hearing reports from any major news outlets.
The collection of status updates on Twitter provided the world an inside look on the dire situation within Iran from firsthand accounts, each message deeply personal and compelling to a worldwide audience. But when the masses turned to their favorite cable news network for more information, they were met with Mike Huckabee talking about credit cards or other irrelevant programming. With no recognizable coverage in mainstream media as events unfolded, it led users to cry foul on the news networks, demanding more information than 140 characters could deliver.
Republican Convention President & CEO Maria Cino announced Ustream.TV as the official live video streaming provider of the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-Saint Paul slated for September 1-4, 2008.
“Partnering with Ustream.TV sends a clear message that the Republican Party wants the Internet generation and all people – from Party loyalists to casual observers – to be part of the 2008 Republican National Convention,” said Cino. “Anyone with computer and internet access will be guaranteed a front-row seat to history through www.GOPConvention2008.com, as we formally nominate the next President and Vice President of the United States.”
Ustream.TV co-founder Brad Hunstable was also on hand to explain that in addition to unprecedeted, live access of gavel-to-gavel floor activity, viewers, voters, bloggers and other interested parties will have access to video web chats, online interviews, behind the scenes coverage and other activities leading up to the event.
It’s almost impossible to fight back a smile when Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson go at it in the “lock it up” reception scene in the 2005 comedy smash hit Wedding Crashers.
However, what Network Solutions is doing is no laughing matter. The domain registration mega-site has recently started a new practice which is – well, in my opinion, un-American!
Have you ever tried to purchase a domain name? It’s really pretty easy and there are a number of web based registration choices out there such as GoDaddy, Register, MyDomain and, of course, Network Solutions.
The first basic step is to visit one of these sites and search to determine if your domain name is still available. Chances are that someone out there may have had the same idea and beaten you to the punch.
This year, we will all witness and likely participate in the 2012 U.S. presidential election in an unprecedented manner thanks to social media and rapidly emerging technology. Not only are the campaigns and mainstream media using these tools, but voters will also have unique opportunities that will help inform their vote on Election Day come November. Here are five ways that digital media is changing the modern political environment in the U.S.:
This year’s expanded report is the third annual survey based on interviews with over 500 senior staffers (legislative directors and above) from capital cities in 11 different countries around the world including Washington DC, Brussels, London, Beijing, Ottawa, Mexico City, Paris, Berlin, New Delhi, Buenos Aires and Brasilia. 
For those not familiar with what this actually means, a CMS is basically the back-end (not visible to visitors) of a website that allows the administrators (owners) of the site — often non-programmers — to easily organize site navigation and add content designed to appear on the front-end. 
