Gizmodo: democrats

Geeks Support Obama

matt buchanan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:50:00 EDT

If you weren't already convinced that Obama is the candidate of choice for geeks, there's now an entire website dedicated to preaching his tech merits to nerds everywhere. Yeah, essentially Tech for Obama is a bunch of techie talking heads—the CEOs of Craigslist and Real Networks, Googlers, former Wired editors, among others—explaining why you should vote Obama. (Which we already did.)

It supposedly tracks Obama tech news and events, but it does a pretty crappy job at it, even though there's a ton of stuff to cover, which would go to their whole point—no mention of the Dems' digital billboard at the Palin rally, the fact that the $3 million dollar projector he supported is sweetass, or most surprisingly, the Obama iPhone app.

They don't talk about the fact that Joe Biden sucks on tech stuff, either, but that's kind of expected. He's, like, old and stuff.

Update: Here's Wired's take on both candidates. [Tech for Obama]

P.S. Please keep all flaming to a low smolder, thanks.

Democrats Still Most Tech Savvy, Rent Digital Billboard to Text Message Sarah Palin at Rally

matt buchanan — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:20:00 EDT

Need more evidence that Democrats are more grassroots tech savvy than their elephantine counterparts? At a Sarah Palin rally in LA on Saturday, the California Democratic party rented a digital billboard across the street which displayed questions for the veep candiate sent by text message. Granted, even if Palin did read them, she wouldn't be able to recall which ones she read specifically. But still, quite awesome—I hope both parties get creative with tech like this, it's a fantastic way to reach voters. [CA Dems via Online Video Watch via Textually]

The Technology Behind the Democratic National Convention

Mark Wilson — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:31:00 EDT

Denver's Pepsi Center and Invesco Field are just fine for their concerts and professional sporting events. But when the Democrats come into town for their National Convention this week, the two buildings are getting technologically gutted. In fact, Qwest, Microsoft, Cisco, Google, AT&T, Level3, Comcast, EchoStar, Hewlett-Packard, and Symantec all teamed up to give the old venues a new digital backbone. Here's the snazzy list of upgrades:

Improvements include:

• 3,344 miles of fiber optic
• 140 miles of copper and coaxial cable
• 2,600 additional data lines
• 3,400 voice grade circuits
• New "video equipment" in both venues capable of handling 130 simultaneous feeds
• AT&T and Verizon both "upgrading coverage" in area
• And network security from Qwest, Microsoft, Cisco and Symantec

In many cases, workers simply laid the new data lines beside the old ones. The Democratic National Convention's new data network will drive 50 billion bits per second, or pass around an entire HD movie in just moments. We'll have to wait and see if the Democrats get as technologically pwned on stage as they did by the Republicans in 2004 who used a massive rear display to look about a century ahead in gadgeteering. [CNET][image]

Democrats Hate America: RIAA Flack Hired for DNC

Matt Buchanan — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:00:54 EDT

The Democrats decided to deal with the devil and hire the Director of Communications for the RIAA, Jenni Engebretsen, as their Deputy CEO of Public Affairs for the Democratic National Convention in Denver. For a party with two of its major candidates for the presidential nomination positioning themselves as populists, the move is a bit off, to say the least.

Cory at BoingBoing describes the range of malfeasance perpetrated by the RIAA in his post, as well as Ms. Engebretsen's day job pretty nicely:

It has been Engebretsen's job to sell these initiatives to the American public. She's failed to sell this to the American public. Not only does she take a paycheck for selling gangsters to the public — she's not very good at it!

Maybe she'll better at selling evil politicians than she is at selling evil record execs. If you feel particularly incensed, you can get a hold of the DNC here. – Matt Buchanan

DNC appoints RIAA shill to run Public Affairs for convention [BoingBoing]