Han first showed off his wall at an entertainment and design conference known as TED, where he charmed the CNN crew enough to take his product mainstream. The crew bought an eight-foot long version of his wall, which became an instant hit—garnering about as much screen time as Wolf Blitzer and inspiring parodies all over the place. But what I want to know, and what the article unfortunately doesn't touch on, is... where do I get my own? [CNN]

CNN's holographic election coverage is fancy pantsy, but how did they manage to send 3D 360 degree footage of virtual correspondent Jessica Yellin from Chicago all the way to the station's election center in NY? As Arthur C. Clarke says, Magic. A magic made possible from technology Vizrt and SportVu with the help of forty-four HD cameras and twenty computers. Here are the details.

On the subject's side:
• 35 HD cameras pointed at the subject in a ring
• Different cameras shoot at different angles (like the matrix), to transmit the entire body image
• The cameras are hooked up to the cameras in home base in NY, synchronizing the angles so perspective is right
• The system is set up in trailers outside Obama and McCain HQ
• Not only is it mechanical tracking via camera communication, there's infrared as well
• Correspondents see a 37-inch plasma where the return feed of the combined images are fed back to them. Useful for a misplaced hair or an unseemly boogar
• Twenty "computers" are crunching this data in order to make it usable

On the HQ side:
• Only used on two out of 40-something total camera feeds that CNN has
• Wolf Blitzer really loves it (or loves Jessica Yellin):

It's still Jessica Yellin and you look like Jessica Yellin and we know you are Jessica Yellin. I think a lot of people are nervous out there. All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram.

• The delay is either minimal, or we've gotten used to satellite delay that we don't even notice now
• An array of computers takes the crunched info feed from the subject's side in order to mesh it with the video from Wolf's side.
• Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the images are actually "projected" onto the floor of the CNN studio so that Wolf can actually talk to the person, you know, in a face to face. So it's not quite Star Wars just yet. Only after computers merge the video feeds together do you get a coherent hologram + person scenario

Technically Astronaut voters cast an electronic Absentee ballot that is prepared by the County Clerk's office in Harris and Brazoria counties. The secure document is then transferred to Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, while an email with login instructions is sent to the astronaut. The astronaut logs in, votes and beams the ballot back down to mission control. The completed ballot is then sent back to the Clerk's office to be tallied. The first astronaut to do this was in 1997 when Michael Wolf voted from the Russian Space Station Mir and—OH MY GOD DID THOSE COMMIE RUSKIES GET TO WOLF AND HIS BALLOT AND CORRUPT OUR SACRED DEMOCRATIC PROCESS?! [Space.com via MSNBC]

The dude being beamed across the country next to Wolf will have 44 cameras trained on him, with 20 computers in his location crunching the video feeds to produce 360-degree imaging data. All of that stuff is sent to New York, where the images are processed and projected by another array of cams and comps. then, plasma TVs back in Chicago and Phoenix will let the interviewees see Wolf and the other CNN people. CNN can project two different views from each city, so Wolf can be flanked by two different holograms.

Man, I so know where I'm watching the election coverage. The future. [USA Today via The Guardian via Waxy via BBG, Whew]

I'm not suggesting you have to use Twitter—or know what Twitter is—to make sound judgments as a leader of the free world. It's not about being pro-net neutrality, either. These things are trivial. It's the long view—can someone who doesn't know how to read a newspaper online by himself truly comprehend just how connected the world is? (How can someone who can't read newspapers online function at all when they cease to be printed on paper?)

How can the techno-illiterate appreciate that technology is both the cause and the cure for our bruised economy, from the globally connected financial crises at hand to America's potential economic revitalization through a charge into green energy systems that spur innovation, create jobs and help to shatter our dependence on oil? Temporarily cheaper gas is a not a means to economics growth—and we will run out in our lifetime. US entrepreneurship is driven by technology and innovation, and it's key to maintaining our superpower status. A green energy—i.e., technology—economy would reboot all of that.

Technology constantly redefines the way we wage war, but it also aims to assuage the global food crisis. It will heal sick people who couldn't be cured before better. Hell, it's what will make flights finally arrive on time. The person at the wheel should know how to use a GPS—and Google, online newspapers, maybe even a smartphone.

That's a small list, but there's a big point. No, I'm not naïve enough to think this will change anyone's mind—in fact I hope your decision is not made so lightly that it possibly could. But I wanted to be clear: The future of this country, on many fronts, is tightly tied up with technology and what we do with it. I don't think it will ever again be possible to vote for someone who doesn't understand that. So why do it now?

[Left Image: Giz Photoshop Contest; Center Image: Thirty30 Photography; Right Image: Gary He]

VoteReport: This app ties in directly with the Twitter Vote Report project, which is aiming to keep track of the situation at polling locations nation wide on election day via Twitter to make sure all goes smoothly and no nastiness happens (Florida, we're looking at you). You can send canned updates regarding the status of your polling place, write your own or record an audio message and join the crowdsourced goodness. It's free.

Classics: After filing your report, you'll need something to do while you wait in line—Classics is an e-book reader that comes with a limited library of public-domain old timers like Huck Finn, Alice in Wonderland, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc, but presents them beautifully—some even with illustrations. If you were planning on reading any of the books on its list soon (more are coming via updates) and are cool with e-readers, this is pretty neat. $3

PanoLab Pro: Now it's time for a panorama of happy smiling voters filing out of the polls! If you liked the free version of panorama-generator PanoLab, the Pro version for $5 adds more features for making better panos—enhanced export settings at higher resolutsions, auto exposure adjustments for individual photos, etc.

EasyWriter: Useful on election day and beyond, EasyWriter is another free app that lets you write emails in landscape mode which does a few more tricks than the other free one, Firemail, like resizing your composition text with multitouch zoom. Plus, nicer icon. Free.

Fake Calls: Change of heart? "It's Jobs! Oh, man! I gotta take this! [runs off]" - you get the idea. Free.

Labyrinth: And finally, having nothing to do with election day but adding an interesting twist to the ol' tilt a marble through the hole game, a recent update to Labyrinth lets anyone create a custom level in a web browser and then download it to the game with a PIN code, a process demonstrated above. Excuse the music here—pretty cool feature though. Free/$7

This Week's App Coverage on Giz:

•Square Enix Making Final Fantasy Based iPhone Game

•John McCain Finally Gets His Own iPhone App

•Microsoft Office Documents Editing Coming to the iPhone

•Google Earth for iPhone Puts Whole World in the Palm of Your Hand

•Opera for iPhone Ready To Go, If Not For Apple's App Store Policies

•Apple Really Wants You to Rate Apps in iPhone 2.2

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

When you go to the polls next Tuesday, no matter who you vote for, you will be motivated by words, images and videos you picked up online. There are some voters who don't use the internet to gather information about candidates, but that number is dwindling, while the number of ways candidates can reach you online is growing. Sometimes 2004 is referred to as the first "internet" presidential election, but back then, social networking was in its infancy, YouTube was just a glimmer in some kids' eyes, and Live Xboxes were few and far between. This year, candidates used text messages, videogames, satellite broadcasting and a highly contagious amount of viral video to broadcast platforms, hear from constituents and raise cash. This year we got the first real look at how races will run in the net age, titans clashing bit for bit over your very soul.

You might automatically think that the more youth-friendly Obama whomped McCain on the internet, but it's not totally true. According to the Pew Research Center, Obama and his fellow Democrats did reach a wider audience over the internet—In April, 65% of likely Obama voters got election news online compared with 56% of McCain's supporters—but following the VP picks and conventions, as we near the general election, both numbers have presumably skyrocketed. Obama also raised more money online, with liberal democrats three times more likely to donate than their conservative republican counterparts. But the scrappier McCain campaign managed to do some tooth-and-nail fighting using Web 2.0 magic themselves. Here's how both contenders wriggled their way into the series of tubes:

BARACK OBAMA
When Barack Obama announced his intention to run for president in January 2007, he was a virtual unknown on the national stage. Barely six months later, with just two debates under his belt, he was a viral sensation. Perhaps above all else, he has Obama Girl to thank for this bump. The video for her song "I Got A Crush...On Obama" was an instant online hit, rebroadcast all over television, written about in newspapers, spawning several spinoffs and currently sits on YouTube with over 10 million views. Countless Obama-centric sites flourished, as his name became synonymous with traffic, but it was the campaign itself that made the biggest contribution to his grassroots online popularity, showing its tech chops and putting them to good use.

Since the beginning, Obama's campaign has relied on fundraising through online donations. Instead of courting bigwigs with deep pockets, the campaign reports that it has received an average contribution of $86 per donor from 3.1 million people—online. Using the internet for donations has proven successful in an age where even grandmas buy stuff online, but the Obama campaign has broken records for most money raised in a day and most in a month. Obama even raised enough to opt out of the public financing every presidential candidate—including McCain—has received since 1976.

Obama's people have spent this cash in the most technologically advanced ways they could think up:
• Buying space within Xbox games
• Renting entire satellite TV channels
• Building iPhone apps
• Sending (and receiving) text messages
• Reaching out to supporters on Facebook
• Streaming video of campaign events
• Broadcasting the candidate's whereabouts on a heavily followed Twitter feed

Though the campaign obviously also allocates plenty of dollars to the usual TV ads and mailers, it's even got a website that's garnered praise for its accessible design. Perhaps drunk on their success there, the Obama people even launched a second site, FightTheSmears.com, to respond to attacks levied the candidate's way, which has been used effectively to shut down false criticism from the opposition.

But Obama wasn't totally guilt-free when it came to smearing his opponent. While his use of technology has allowed him to compete in states that Democrats wouldn't think they could before, he has made missteps. The most blatantly techy thing thing the Obama campaign put out was an ad blasting McCain for lack of computer know-how. The ad fell flat on it's face and was even criticized by his running mate, Joe Biden.

On another tech front, Obama received flack for—until very recently—accepting donations without proof of citizenship. This has led to some of the shadier ones getting refunded.

JOHN MCCAIN
John McCain wasn't able to get his fundraising game to Obama's level, and did accept the public financing and the $84 million cap that goes along with it. But perhaps that thrift has inspired McCain's more tech-savvy people to use technology effectively—and efficiently.

The McCain campaign has used YouTube as its most effective advertising weapon. The site has acted as a video press-release machine, where McCain's people will post an ad that runs a few times in a cheap media market, but due to some inflammatory or interesting attribute, gets blasted on cable news channels all day, for free. This approach was especially effective in the summer when the race was tighter. Obama, strangely, never counter-attacked with a similar strategy.

McCain hired Matt Lira, a top Republican "eGuru", to run his blog, which receives a good amount of attention and is well updated. Besides the blog, the most notable thing to come out of his website was a pencil for students with a grammatical error. McCain's Twitter feed only went up in September, and has been updated a paltry 25 times—that's one tenth of Obama's tweets.

The McCain camp has also taken to using some old-school tech known as robocalling, the same thing that George Bush used to tank his candidacy in 2000. Today, though, people recording those robocalls have uploaded them to blogs and other sites, so that they robocall strategy has a tendency to backfire. turning into rhetorical fodder for left-leaning sites.

Unpaid Republican supporters have been the brightest spots in McCain's thrifty march to the White House. Andy Martin is the man responsible for the wildest email rumor ever, a thread suggesting that Barack Obama was a Muslim who concealed his religion. That lie, originated in 2004, found a life of its own this year, spreading across the farthest corners of the internet. Somehow, the reddest people in the reddest states all heard it. This inadvertent campaign tactic (strategy?) shows the power of e-mail, though it too is dangerous power: The ugliest moment of the 2008 race was when McCain had to directly confront a supporter and explain to her that Obama was not an Arab, but rather a "good family man."

Some go so far as to say McCain's vice presidential pick came directly from a suggestion by a young, influential right-wing blogger Adam Brickley, whose site's title, "Draft Sarah Palin for Vice President" is cheerfully out of date. (Cuz, like, she was drafted.) The blog now serves as an unofficial but "endorsed" McCain-Palin site and news service. On the flipside, it's also true that Palin was vetted more thoroughly by bloggers than by the campaign itself, thanks to stockpiles of information easily available over the internet.

Still, like Obama's tasteless attack ad said, McCain is an admitted technophobe, not accessing e-mail or any website besides the Drudge Report. Maybe if he—and his campaign—expanded their horizons, they could have figured out how to do even better playing the internet game. Of course, many of McCain's supporters are offline, and the election's not until Tuesday.

To make matters worse for McCain, Thompson points out that France, the scourge of Republicans and veterans alike, now has broadband that's four times as fast—and half the price!

Admittedly, there's a bit of fuzzy matching required to join McCain's vehement opposition to the 1996 Telecommuncations Act and his subsequent statutory castration of its powers with the slow increase of our cable modem's actual download speed. However, there's no disputing the fact that McCain has done nothing to grow broadband penetration. (Even that comedic allegation that he helped invent the BlackBerry doesn't do anything to support any kind of breaching of the digital divide.)

In fairness to anyone who thinks we're reporting this lopsidedly, we have previously shared reports about Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden's opposition to net-neutrality legislation, and his Hollywood-backed war against citizen-pirates. And the reason we haven't discussed Sarah Palin's stance is simple—she's a clean slate, baby. Not a word on any of this.

But as you might imagine, Thompson uses his main point—McCain's consistent and ongoing hampering of the kinds of technological innovation that are commonplace in other countries—as a good reason to repeat what we have also recorded on Giz, that Barack Obama's attention to these matters will not be so blas&#233, that in fact he has interesting ideas, not just that America needs a cabinet-level CTO or that there should be true neutrality on the internet, but that, for instance, rural-phone subsidies are used to provide rural broadband (which would basically includes free phone service anyway).

Thompson makes the point that Silicon Valley has gone O, saying that 555 employees of Google have donated to Obama, compared to 26 for McCain. He says the market freedom that McCain wants is "freedom for his country to fall further and further behind as AT&T and the other telecom leviathans sit back, ignoring your customer service calls and just watching the $90 monthly checks roll in." That's harsh, Nick, but it also sounds pretty damn accurate. [Washington Monthly]

The NYT points out that both candidates agree that global warming exists, though McCain would like to see carbon emissions drop by 60% while Obama aims for 80%. Similarly, both agree that genetics research is promising but frightening in its implications, assuring to fight workplace discrimination based upon one's genetic code and continue the genetic modification of crops.

The biggest difference I noted was McCain's interest in space. It's one of the few responses where McCain's opinion is lengthier and more policy specific than Obama's, assuring continued NASA funding and naming space exploration as a "top priority" while citing project goals like shortening space shuttle redesign turnaround. Obama feels it's more important to delegate the responsibility/policy, opting to reinstate a White House Space Council.

But there's lots of interesting stuff we haven't even mentioned here. [Science Debate 2008 and NYT]

When Todd placed McCain and Obama bobblehead dolls on the Surface, the national map would change colors to show each candidate's specific chances. Put on the Obama bobblehead, and the map turns varying shades of blue. Use McCain, and it turns red. Then he turned Dark Helmet and made the bobbleheads fight each other, revealing the true reason he ordered them up in the first place. The off-screen newswoman didn't seem too impressed, quipping, "Now the five-year-olds are glued to the television," but I'm 22, so the joke's on her! [MSNBC]

Barack Obama looks to be diving into this whole "Web 2.0" thing head first, what with his own Facebook profile, Flickr account, and YouTube account. In addition to all this stuff, he also has my.barackobama.com, a social networking type site for his supporters to create profiles, network, and make blogs all about how great Barack Obama is.

It's clear that the internet is going to play an even larger role in the election this year, for better or worse. Do you think all this buzzword bandwagon hopping is going to help, or is this still politics as usual? –Adam Frucci

Barack Obama [via NotCot.org]