Suffire.com | Geek Stuffs, Technology Related

Did you know? Besides sitting on Apple’s board of directors, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been an informal adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. In fact, he lurves Obama so much that’s he not just going to endorse him (shock, right?) he’s going to actually campaign for him next week. And not just ’cause Obama might be good for business! No, he says he’s “doing this personally.” Very possibly because he wants to be the nation’s very first Chief Technology Officer, a position Obama said he would create last year—maybe not-so-coincidentally right before he paid his first visit to Google!

While Schmidt says the Goog is officially neutral, the WSJ notes that “Congress is considering measures that could have an adverse impact on Google’s business” like “rules that would allow telecommunications companies to charge different prices for different levels of Internet service,” i.e., net non-neutrality. Obama has said that he is pro net-neutrality, which would benefit Google. Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, Google employees have donated nearly half a million dollars to Obama’s campaign, and a mere $20,600 to John McCain as of Aug. 31, according to the Journal (which would likely make them among Obama’s top corporate donors, since Verizon employees’ $155,000 for McCain placed among his top 20 corporate donors ever).

Tuesday is the first day Obama and Schmidt hit the trail together, but some speculate he’s been doing some campaigning of his own with Obama for a while—to be Obama’s first tech chief:

Asked at a speech this month whether he would consider entering the political arena, the 53-year-old Mr. Schmidt shouted, “H-, no!” But some tech and media executives speculate that he might desire a role in an Obama administration, possibly the chief technology officer post Sen. Obama has said he would create.

I have to say, there are few more qualified than Google’s CEO, especially since Bill Gates dreams beyond tech now, and Steve Jobs is perfectly happy within his own little world at Apple. Who would be your dream tech chief be? [WSJ via Valleywag, Image: Real Dan Lyons]

How was Mark Zuckerberg’s European vacation? Totally awesome! He met a lot of people who are using Facebook to talk to their cousins in Spanish, protest TV crews, and bring back a discontinued candy bar. If that’s not making the world a better place, what is? Zuckerberg doesn’t mention his major faux pas: Bringing up Facebook users’ staging of protests against left-wing guerrillas in Colombia, an achievement he cited in his infamous SXSW keynote interview. As Eric Eldon recently pointed out on VentureBeat, Colombia has right-wing guerrillas, too, with close ties to the U.S.-backed government. They’re not as popular in Germany as they are in the U.S. Nor, for that matter is Facebook.

A cameraman caught Alex Castellanos, a Republican media consultant tapped by CNN for on-air analysis, checking Facebook in the middle of Wednesday’s presidential debate. Come on, admit it: You were doing it, too.

During the last debate, we caught CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin watching a live feed of playoff baseball while on the air on his laptop. Tonight’s debate? Facebook. Either he’s messing with us (are you messing with us, Toobs?), or he’s really good at multitasking and really bad at being discrete. Either way, that’s some fine reporting. Also: I just added him as friend on Facebook. Approve my friend request, Toobs! [David Cho]

Tonight is the final part of the talent portion of the Mr. President 2008 pageant, which I’ve been reading is like the most important one in our lifetime or something, but I think they say about that about all of them. Regardless, if you’re stuck at your computer and can’t get to a TV, don’t worry, you don’t have to miss this momentous occasion, the final talking points battle between good and evil (which is which is up to you). Feel free to get political and talk about the debate in the comments, but be civil, or we’ll splatter your head with the Maverick Banhammer of Hope. Here’s everywhere you can watch it go down live online.

•Hulu is our most favoritest pick because it’s easy to get to and you can watch Colbert or Tina Fey or Future President Petrelli when it gets dull

•Current’s Hack the Debate is our second favorite, a fantastic mashup of the live debate broadcast overlaid with Twitter messages in real-time, so you can see how everyone else is reacting (or jeering, knowing the Twitter mob)

•C-SPAN has a live stream and their debate hub is super-comprehensive and Web 2.0tastic but it looks like you need the Windows Media Player plugin if you’re using Firefox (you do for their other videos)

•CNN has a bunch of extra coverage like a debate preview (as if you don’t already know what they’re gonna say) though you might need their plugin, like you do for other videos of theirs

•MSNBC seems to have a pretty snazzy player with a nice feature set and big, beautiful widescreen video—getting around their site sucks though, so use our direct link to make your life easier

•Foxnews—I tried to find a feed on their site, I really did. Send it in and I’ll add it if you feel that strongly about it

•CBS

Or you could skip the debate entirely and base your vote on these zany Photoshops of John McCain and Barack Obama (coming later this week). Sounds like a plan to me. [Election Coverage on Giz]

You’re one of those internet-addicted, Obama-loving youngins that’s actually going to vote on Election day. That’s great, since the youth vote has historically been a bucket of fail. But PBS and YouTube want you to take your civic duty even more srsly and bring your camcorder to document the experience—as well as any problems you see, like long lines (horror!), glitchy voting machines (likely) or “overly aggressive” voter ID practices—and upload it to their Video Your Vote channel. The best clips will air on PBS, like legitimately produced journalism. Oh, the fine print:

Clips should be between 30 seconds and three minutes. More importantly, some states have fairly strict laws about filming in or around polling places, so if you get too Michael Moore-y, you might get to document your first cavity search (though that would be more appropriate for RedTube). The Citizen Media Law Project has more details about how to stay out of jail while being a web 2.0 do-gooding oversharer. Or you could just be safe and stick to Twitter to tell everyone who you voted for. [AZ Star, AP, Image: Flickr/Refractionless]

John McCain’s bill to protect the children — Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2008 (KID SPA!) — has been signed by President Bush. According to an episode of Schoolhouse Rock my boss used to watch, that means it’s a law. KIDSPA is based on a half-baked idea by MySpace to create a national database to track registered sexual predators’ email addresses. At least now you don’t have to wait for version 2.0 for fewer pedophiles. [Wired]

The New York Times reports that the economic crisis and U.S. election plus the endless number of sources of information about them—online and off—have people across the country “overfeeding” on news, obsessing about staying on top of the latest stock plunge or poll numbers.

Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University, said people are unusually transfixed by news of the day because the economic crisis in particular seems to reach into every corner of their lives. Usually, he added, people can compartmentalize their lives into different spheres of activity, such as work, family and leisure. But now, “those spheres are collapsing into each other.”

The article explains that keeping up to date gives people a sense of control in a scary, uncontrollable situation; it also helps people bond with one over the latest crisis. Is your TV stuck on CNN all day? Are you constantly checking finance web sites and reading political blogs? Has it cut into your workday or family life? How are you dealing? Tell us about it in the comments.

It’s hard these days to imagine how elections happened before the web grew to popularity. With all the instant-access news, video, data, and social networking available in a few seconds’ time, election season is a prime time to dig in and find out where the candidates are getting and spending money, what’s being by and about them and which of it is true, and how to make sure you get your vote in on Nov. 4. Read on for a roundup of ten tools to get politically savvy this this election season and beyond. Photo by ldcross.

10. Compare the candidates.

Unless you’re working on a campaign, chances are you don’t know where each candidate stands on every issue. McCain’s take on net neutrality? Barack’s stance on school vouchers? SelectSmart’s 2008 Presidential Candidate Selector gives you the skinny on the major-topic stances of every candidate, including most of the third-party contenders. Those are the five-minute takes; for a multitude of quotes straight from the candidates’ mouths on the issues, try OnTheIssues.org.

9. Go poll-crazy at FiveThirtyEight.com.

Nate Silver is a total data geek, but he knows how to apply it to interesting topics. He proved that with Baseball Prospectus, which projects performance by players and teams, and he’s striking out to do the same for election results. Silver’s FiveThirtyEight grabs all the polls it can find, weighs them based on methodologies and past accuracy, projects data for regions where it can’t find polls, then runs thousands of simulated elections to come up with a likely outcome. Silver’s site currently has Obama walking away with it; if nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see, come Election Day, how database projections fared with real people.

8. Get your video fix at YouTube’s You Choose ’08.

Sure, it’s mostly campaign ads, he-said-she-said coverage, and other videos that are, depending on views, reassuring or infuriating. But YouTube’s You Choose ’08 section is a central source of all attacks, scandals, video evidence of gaffes and quotes, and occasionally, informative video. Bookmark it and feel better about fast-forwarding through the ads when they blanket your television in the coming weeks.

7. Follow the money.

Spending’s become a much-debated issue, at least in this part of the race to the White House. Using some cool visualization tools, you can get all kinds of specific data on the wheres and whats of government spending. This Google Earth layer adds pinpoints wherever appropriated money is being sent, although it leans heavily toward military and homeland security bills. The graph-happy folks at Many Works have put together a ton of interactive (and usually Java-required) tools, including this earmarks visualization of per-capita earmark spending. Now you’re not just mad, you’re madly informed.

6. See what the candidates said about your hot-button topic.

Google Labs offers two neat search tools that let you get beyond the basic talking points and read or see the candidates speaking on any topic. In Quotes lets you type a term and see how Obama and McCain referenced it in speeches, interviews, and other places. GAudi, the YouTube-searching audio index tool, does basically the same thing, but points you to specific points in a video where they said it. Oddly enough, neither candidate has said anything so far about Google, Gmail, or YouTube, according to those tools.

5. Find out how and where to vote.

In all the never-ending debate and fervor of an election season, it can be easy to forget that it’s all about, you know, actually showing up and casting your ballot. Google’s Voter Info Map, run as a partnership with the League of Women Voters makes short work of finding out if you can still register (today is the last day in New York and others, for example), where you go to vote, where to grab an absentee ballot, and your local board of elections web site.

4. Vote early with a no-excuse absentee ballot.

You probably don’t know exactly what your schedule will look like on Election Day, or how crowded your polling place will be. In 28 states, you can skip the early-morning/lunch break/after-work jam and vote with an absentee ballot, no excuse required. The Early Voting Information Center runs down the particulars of getting the jump on your right as a citizen.

3. Track developing stories on blogs and news sites.

Political veterans (or just jaded political wonks) always see an “October surprise” in an election year. See what stories and trends are gaining ground and staying there with two search tools: Microsoft’s Political Streams, part of its Live Labs, follows news stories across blogs, portals, and other aggregators, tracking how often, and for how long, it’s getting linked and written about. Google’s revamped blog search is more specific to blog-generated articles and the buzz they generate. Both are worth checking when you’re looking to see how stories are spun, refuted, and propagated across the web.

2 Track fund raising and donations by candidates (and your neighbors).

Want to see what interests, businesses, and individuals the candidates are helping line the candidates war chests? OpenSecrets.org has maps, graphs, and details that can keep you busy for days. But, honestly, it’s more fun to see who in your neighborhood is giving to whom. Luckily, you can get just that specific at Fundrace 2008, a Google Map mashup run by the Huffington Post blog network (you’ll see their left-leaning post links, but the data is straight-up). You can search donations by street, city, company, or occupation.

1. Get beyond the spin at FactCheck.org.

Run by the non-partisan, non-profit Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, FactCheck.org has been a go-to source for years whenever politicians claims that they, or their opponent, did or didn’t so something that just seems a tad bit unbelievable. You can track the latest spins and truths by RSS or email alerts, but the site updates pretty quickly with blow-by-blows after debates, major news stories, and other events that cry out for a little objective double-checking.

How do you track the election, the topics at issue, and the galaxy of data available out there? Share your great election resources and links in the comments below.