Today I sat in the Hilton in Dupont Circle and watched Howard Dean become the new chairman of the Democratic party.

A year ago today, I was somewhere in the backwoods of Wisconsin (sorry, UWW) as his presidential campaign was ending. I still have a message on my voicemail from that time that I've saved for a year now. It's from another campaign staffer, and says "What are we going to do? What are we going to do when we have to go back into the real world?" He was talking about non-campaign life, but you can say the same about politics. more

Photography plus the absurd randomness of the internet can equal a lot of fun. My current favorite website is Drew's Random Livejournal Picture Generator. Before you click, some background information. Background Part I: Livejournal.com is a leading "blogging" site especially among young people aged 16-19 (check out Livejournal's live stats page for more info). A lot of posts are your typical angsty teenage litanies, but the sheer vastness of the livejournal community means that there are some bizarre entries in there--and some equally bizarre photos. more

About two weeks ago, Wal-Mart launched a million-dollar advertising campaign. Full-page ads in major newspapers (annoying small papers in the process), television advertisements, and public appearances by the CEO.

It's absolutely a traditional approach to getting your message out--just yell really loud and hope you'll be heard. PurpleOcean.org (and EchoDitto) are trying something else. We've put together the Wal-Mart Fact Checker, a site that combines facts with a grassroots approach to distribution. Plus, of course, some really cool mapping technology. more

When I was studying at the library in college, I'd sometimes take a break by going to one of the public computers and checking out what people had searched for on Google. I'd email my favorites to friends--everything from "ham recipe" to "who was derrida". Try it on your own computer--type a letter into Google and wait a second. A whole list of past search terms will come up.

I did the experiment on my own computer to see what I'd been searching for and pasted some of the results here--no editing. To be honest, I'm stunned at what an accurate representation it is of my life and activities. In a review of the new A.J. Liebling anthology in Harper's this month, Lee Siegel draws the distinction between a profile and a portrait. more

Every email I receive goes directly to my inbox and stays there till I delete it. I have completely stopped using folders. My decision was based on a simple time calculation:
(time spent creating folders) + (time sent moving emails to folders) + (time spent searching within folders) VS. (time to type in a search query)
The right half of the equation is a much shorter time. When I need to find an email, I do a quick search for keywords. Say I wanted to find an email Michael sent me about social networking data. I search for 'social Michael' and pull up about 40 emails that have both terms. I sort those by sender, bringing my total to about 30, then by date, and it's easy to scan through and pick out the one I want. Total time spent, less than ten seconds.

There are a few actions you can take to make the process easier. First, be efficient about cleaning out your inbox. The second you deal with something, delete it. Second, make a good-faith effort to title your email with what it is actually about--or at least include some keywords in the text. This means not sending an email draft for approval with the subject "attachment" and the body "check out this text". It really doesn't take that long, and the recipient will likely appreciate it as well.

One caveat: Justin Miller made a a convincing argument that some administrative emails (receipts, confirmations, etc) should be filed because it's important that they be viewed as a group. I see his point, although I think that ultimately that demonstrates the need for mail programs to use a "tagging" system rather than a folder system. Just tag the emails with "admin" and you're good to go. Tagging also makes sense because some emails can't be easily classified as belonging in a particular folder. What if my social networking email from Michael also includes a question about a client meeting? more

Check out 43 Things, an addictive site from the Robot Co-op (also an all-Mac company). Its brilliant design shatters some omnipresent myths about user interface and design.

Myth 1: Users need explicit instructions.
This site will not be conceptually familiar to most users. But by encouraging experimentation (you're not afraid that by clicking a link you'll "break" the site), it allows users to learn by doing rather than by reading.

Myth 2: Give everything a name.
Nothing on this site is named with jargon. To go to your list, you just click on "your list"--none of this "Online Goals Chart" or "Dynamically Generated Interest Repository" nonsense.

Myth 3: Establish a clear hierarchy.
What is the "home" of this site? Is it your personal list? Is it the page you enter on? Does it even matter? No, not really. The age of entry pages is almost over. Soon the ubiquity of Google will mean that we find the page we want, not the site we want (and then OWL will mean we get just the piece of information we want...but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself). More power to the user... more

So tonight, Tim and I attended an Internet and Politics panel discussion featuring almost everyone you've ever vaguely heard of talking about The Past, Present, and Future of the Internet and Politics. After finding our seats, we did what any self-respecting EchoDitto staffers would do--started a Rendezvous network, fired up SubEtha Edit, and collaboratively liveblogged the entire event (okay well, the first two panels. Then we went to a bar.). We promised Harish that if he paid for our tickets, we'd blog it, so Harish--this one's for you. Keep in mind that this is a collaboratively written document, so the voice may shift (ie, if it says something dumb, it must have been Tim typing).

1...2...3...TO THE BLOGS!

It's too bad Michael isn't here. He'd really like this.

Julie Barko of Donordigital
Julie says the biggest effect of the internet on this election is the increase in small donors.
I agree. And not just because we've found a new way of making money, but also because giving money truly is a proxy for involvement. When you give twenty bucks, you're more likely to follow the results, to tell your friends, and even to vote.

Democrats.com
Okay...so we just heard from a man who wants to stop spending on TV and radio and pour every dollar into building an enormous email list of Democrats and Democrats-who-don't-know-they're-Democrats-yet--ie, people who agree with us on the issues but don't quite get it. Where will these names come from? Who will be allowed to send emails to it? He doesn't answer any of these questions.

QRS Newsmedia
She just made the claim that Democrats outstripped Republicans in online "small-donor" fundraising 5 to 1. However, she didn't talk about the analysis recently posted on Kos explaining that Democrats sent over five times as many fundraising emails as Republicans. Republicans tended to send GOTV and organizing emails. Well, I guess both parties got what they asked for.

Someone just said that the republican database segments by issue, gender, age, etc, to push personalized messages to their consituents. I think she's absolutely right. Segmenting is the future.
It's in line with what I've read about Karl Rove getting his start as the Texas mad scientist of list-segmentation for snailmail junkmail projects. The Dems have only just started to experiment with this. I think sometimes our righteousness gets in the way of this. There's a feeling that if we just send a True message, then all people will react equally strongly.

Another reason we don't ever do that is because we are completely decentralized. There are so many lists floating around. The Republicans, however, are completely top-down. Every list goes to them. more

This is the first time I've seen art go "viral"--especially installation art.

Title: There Is Nothing Wrong In This Whole Wide World
Author: Chris Cobb
Photos: Pushby.com/tomas
Interview: McSweeney's

This brings up the question different sorts of viral. We generally think of it as an email phenomenon, like Jesusland or even NoIraqDraft. But this demonstrates what I think of as "blog viral," something that gets posted again and again on personal and community blogs. It's really the perfect post, because at the same time it says "check out this cool thing I found" and "I am not merely a slave to technology! I too appreciate Art and Books and Other Such Refined Tastes." I suppose it's the blog equivalent of a coffee-table book.

I hope Chris Cobb does something with this success--data-captures, or even simply puts up a link to more of his work. Opportunities like this are an open door. Thousands of people are suddenly excited about art. Sure, a lot of them will click away and forget about it. But if you can grab a few and start to take them deeper and get them involved in a meaningful way--that's how it should be. more

Chances are in the past few days you've written some angry email about how the hell Republicans have the right to claim the "moral values" high ground when we're the ones who actually care about, you know, CARING FOR THE POOR and FREEDOM.

Now's your chance to tell the world and even be published in the NYTimes...Submit your rants and diatribes to MyMoralValues.com. The best ones will be published in a big ad in the New York Times in two weeks.

My favorite so far, from Jon in Indiana: "Morality is a government that takes care of its people, instead of scaring them into submission. This is not a moral government." more