@MentionMachine was developed exclusively for the newspaper and was launched in conjunction with Tuesday's Iowa Caucus, the official start of primary season for the 2012 Presidential Election. The app uses Twitter's streaming API while also tracking mentions in the traditional media.

The launch of @MentionMachine is telling, in that it formally adds "social media success" to polling data, fundraising totals, ad spending and endorsements as ways to measure how well, or how poorly, a campaign is doing. For those keeping score, Ron Paul had the most mentions in the 24 hours preceding this writing, with 44,900 tweets.

Highlights from @MentionMachine's tracking are posted on a dedicated Twitter account, and the app keeps tabs on which candidate had the most mentions in the previous 24 hours and the previous week. But the feature is more dynamic than just simply tabulating the number of times a candidate gets tweeted.

In addition to the Twitter account, @MentionMachine includes a toolbar that overlays on the portions of the Post's Web site that deal with the campaign and updates as spikes or shifts are detected on Twitter. The feature also includes an analysis of individual candidates so readers can track their mentions over time. The app was also developed to give greater weight to top tweets as opposed to retweets.

The newspaper said it plans to tweak and add new features to @MentionMachine throughout the month.

As the election gears up, the site's content will include articles, video series and interactive maps and polls. BBC.com averages 17.4 million unique visitors per month from the U.S., about a third of the site's global audience. Big news months, such as in May, when Osama bin Laden was killed, drew more than 19 million readers.

BBC North America editor Claudia Milne will run the site. It will feature reporting from Milne's colleague, Mark Mardell, as well as Katty Kay, anchor of the BBC World News America TV program. That show will be a platform for cross-promotion with the website.

"We don't expect people to come to the BBC as the first port of call for their coverage," says Milne, "but we offer a different perspective." The BBC wants its outside viewpoint and impartiality to balance out the blood sport in U.S. media. "The way the American media are going to cover this election campaign, there will be a lot of heat," says Milne. "We're going to shed a little bit of light."

The BBC isn't the only British news organization vying for Americans' attention this election season. In September, The Guardian launched a U.S. homepage, and it's staffing up a U.S. newsroom.

Visit BBC.com's U.S. elections page at BBC.com/USelection.

Where do you go for your election news?

The story is interesting because the candidates still purchase TV ad time and appear at various campaign events, but it made me think those many years ago when I first read it how ridiculous our whole political process is. And no matter what party affiliation you might have at the moment, you probably agree that things could be improved. Though I am not sure that a Multivac automating the voting process as Asimov foretold would be much of an improvement.

It does seem as if the computers, or at least the predictive process, has taken a front seat to the actual plebiscite itself. We limit the predictions by the networks until after the polls close in each time zone, with the curious result that at the top of each hour on election night there is a rash of races that have been called by each network's computers. Some of these predictions proved spectacularly wrong, as was the case of Florida during the 2000 election. All that matters is what is produced for our viewing pleasure.

In Asimov's story, Norman, our "typical" voter, has a conflict. He has to tell the truth (Multivac of course monitors his bio-signs to ensure that he isn't lying). He is physically ill the night before the election, realizing his burden is large. His family is terrified, because police surrounds his house. This is to ensure that he isn't harmed on the way to the polling place, where he can discharge his civic duty.

Now, embarrassingly among modern democracies, we Yanks are at the very bottom of voter turnout. Wikipedia lists us below 50% here. There are some countries, such as Australia and Brazil, where voting is compulsory. Austria and Italy, where it isn't, have better than 90% turnout rates. And given the number of governments in Italy, they vote fairly often too.

So think about the Egyptians who are voting for the first time in their lives this week and if you aren't yet registered to vote, take some time to do so. Consider yourself fortunate that Norman and the Multivac haven't replaced you quite yet.

And you can find Franchise in a variety of short story collections if you want to give it a read.

To the south and east, another technological experiment has risen, that one to commemorate the fait accompli of the Rwandan genocide. The Genocide Archive of Rwanda, hosted by the Kigali Genocide Memorial, will document the 100 days and 800,000 lives lost in the brutality of 1994.

Genocide Archive of Rwanda

Today, the Genocide Archive of Rwanda opened at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in that country. A technologically sophisticated collection of the facts and nightmares of that ethnic butchery, the GAR will make the murder of 85% of the Tutsi population the most documented instance of inhumanity in history.

The archive contains video, audio, photos, maps, documents and publications. They can be accessed via a number of different criteria or searched by keyword. (And do be warned. This shit is rugged to look at.) The most important materials are the records of the "gacaca" trials - the "peace and reconciliation" type confrontations of the perpetrators by the victims and the victims' families.

Although it looks like a large sampling of the materials are available online already, the complete archive is accessible on-site only, at the memorial building near which so many victims of the violence are buried. However, all of the materials will eventually be online and available to all.

Sudan Vote Monitor

Built on the Ushahidi platform, the Sudan Vote Monitor is a website to which witnesses can post updates via mobile.

"This technology could be particularly useful in Sudan where long distances and inadequate infrastructure pose a significant challenge. The spread of mobile communications throughout Sudan in recent years offers a unique and feasible opportunity to overcome this challenge. The proposed technology is the closest thing to a real-time observation of what is happening in an election center in a remote part of Sudan."

The SVM was built by Zein, an oil and gas man in Texas who was born in Sudan. In conjunction with his sister, a college professor, he runs the Sudan Institute for Research and Policy. The ability to help monitor the upcoming elections with the use of simple SMS messages may help keep the process honest and violence-free. At least it will document any deviations from that ideal.

Read about the use of mobile and web technologies during the last Kenyan election, the employment of e-readers in Ghana, the use of mapping tech to get inhabitants more services and other ReadWriteWeb coverage of Africa tech.

Other sources: Guardian

The Accountability Project is pretty simple: you can upload and view videos, or track down Republican candidate events. There's no voting or comments; it's essentially a platform for videos to go viral. So far, uploads mostly consist of tepid footage of conservatives criticizing Democrats. But when compared to other political crowdsourcing projects, the site stands out as one of the more potentially disruptive ideas in this midterm election.

Crowdsourcing in politics has become ubiquitous over the last several years, particularly as candidates and agencies have figured out how to use social media well. But this year is the first major election since President Obama so famously harnessed those social tools in his 2008 election bid. Online videos have already played a significant role (one of the most famous involving a Democratic Representative).

Roy Temple, a Washington, D.C.-based Democratic political consultant, says that usually, "When parties or candidates seek activist opinions (like the current GOP effort to crowdsource policy priorities), there is a certain level of cynicism that their opinion will count."

The Accountability Project, he continues, "taps into the belief by party activists that politicians of the opposite party say one thing in front of the press, and quite another when they think no one is really listening. However, all activists can imagine a scenario where what they capture on video could really make a difference in a campaign.

"The projects asks activists to undertake an activity that almost all of them can appreciate the value of, which increases the likelihood that they will take such action. And it offers them a way to be involved that they might not have otherwise thought was possible or meaningful."

That last point may be the most critical part of the DNC's project. In a paper published last month on crowdsourcing [PDF], a researcher at the London School of Economics wrote that, "The needs, aspirations, motivations and incentives of the crowd to participate in the initiative must remain the most important consideration [...] The practitioners must understand the crowd motivation and align their goals according to it." (Emphasis ours.)

That might sound like common sense, but considering the number of projects asking the crowd to do the equivalent of ranking policy initiatives, too many political strategists seem to be confusing the crowd's interests with what will genuinely motivate it.

In other words, if you want to create an effective crowdsourcing project and the crowd is hungry for political blood, then give them the equivalent of an elephant gun.

Photo by Scott Liddell

This year marks the Foundation's second election; last year, Snorri Giorgetti, Nat Sakimura, Chris Messina, David Recordon, Eric Sachs, Scott Kveton and Brian Kissel were elected. Of the current community board members, Messina and Sakimura were elected to two-year terms. Kveton has indicated he will not serve another term.

In a blog post today, executive director Don Thibeau wrote that he envisions changes for how the board and the Foundation will operate in the coming year.

"Organizations that have transitioned from specification development to market adoption (the space we entered this year) have evolved their governance and membership programs to meet operational and financial objectives. In order to improve the core technology product, drive RP adoption, and increase member services, we need to find ways to offer more membership value and create diversified sources of income.

"2010's board members will consider how best to balance competing priorities with still unfolding value in the trust framework and certification work to do with the U.S. government and others. We've been told by experts that demand for certification is a leading indicator of the growth and maturity of a technology standard. How we do certification will, in part, shape our future."

As distributed social networking continues to grow and shape the Web we use, issues such as creating secure, portable digital identities become more and more intrinsic to making the Internet work for users, sites and content creators. Thibeau concluded, "For myself, I believe an open, reliable, trusted identity standard can be the next key operational piece of Internet infrastructure. It can be to the identity layer what DNS is to the Web layer and IP is to the packet layer."

Indeed, the past year has brought lots of publicity and material advances to the Foundation's cause. At the beginning of 2009, we reported that Google and Plaxo had created a simplified workflow for OpenID logins that added OAuth and the Google Contacts API. During the OpenID UX Summit in February, we wrote that one Comcast property reported a 92% success rate with OpenID logins. Perhaps most exciting of all was this May's news that Facebook would be allowing users to log in using OpenID. But no nod of approval carried more weight than the recent decision of the US government to allow members of the public to use OpenID to log in to certain government websites.

We look forward to reporting more good things - including nomination and election results - from the Foundation in the months to come.

In the aftermath of the election, during which a (some say statistically improbable landslide) victory for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced, the social media buzz grew into a roar as a meme began to circulate: Where Is My Vote. A website, several Facebook pages, and now thousands of tweets have ensured few social web users have not yet heard of the controversy and the Iranian government's response of censorship.

"In coordination with Twitter," Stone wrote, "our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran... Our partners are taking a huge risk, not just for Twitter, but also the other services they support worldwide--we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective."

Citizens Had Taken to Twitter to Report and Find News

Although, as noted above, sources cannot be verified at this time, the vast majority of tweets we have seen tell stories of violent military reactions to protesters:

Many more tweets are linking to news coverage and photo or video evidence of what is happening on the ground during these protests.

Iranian Censorship of the Social Web

The Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon that many inside the country have resorted to overseas proxies to continue to use the websites. However, as proxies appeared on the web, they were gradually blocked. Many are now calling for users to stop publicly announcing proxies and use private channels such as email instead.

Blocked Hashtags, Changed Locations, & Other Misinformation

Still more non-Iranian users are changing their Twitter profile locations and time zones to reflect that they are in Iran. These users are often also posting green-tinted versions of their avatars. Some say this is a show of solidarity; other users insist this action will somehow "screw with the government's head."

As one Twitter user said and as several others would likely agree, "Most of the people on Twitter are [expletive deleted] retarded."

Changing one's avatar and location would likely do little to affect the Iranian government; these actions are simply a sign to a user's followers that he or she has at least a cursory interest in Iran current events.

As the conflict continues, Twitter users are reminded that the best, most useful information to share is that which is most verifiable and hence most likely to be accurate. Retweeting biased or exaggerated accounts damages any cause by feeding a hype cycle and drawing attention away from the heart of the matter. At the very least, users should attempt to search for and verify information before passing it on.

Oh and There Was the U.S. Election...

Of course the Web 2.0 Summit wasn't the only thing of interest to happen this week. Barack Obama was elected to be the next President of the United States. Check out our slideshow of the election as seen on the Web.

Also much has been said about the masterful use of social media by the Obama campaign. The people working for the President-Elect were by far the more active - and the more savvy - of the two US Presidential candidates in terms of understanding and effectively employing social media as a way of engaging and motivating voters. Regardless of your political leanings, the numbers speak for themselves.

But was it just a means to an end? Or is this personal engagement - embracing social media as a new way of communicating with the masses - something we should expect Obama to use throughout his presidency? Check out our post Obama's Social Media Advantage, Act II for more details.

Lance Armstrong on Politics, Ego, and Twitter

Cancer survivor, seven-time Tour de France champion - with the potential for more now that he's announced he's coming out of retirement - and Internet entrepreneur Lance Armstrong took to the stage with John Battelle at TechWeb/O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Summit on Wednesday. The topics ranged from Barack Obama and his new administration to Twitter to the power of ego, mind, and body.

A Word from Our Sponsors

We'd like to thank ReadWriteWeb's sponsors, without whom we couldn't bring you all these stories every week!

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Cloud Computing Panel

An all-star panel took a closer look at the implications of the current shift towards cloud computing and discussed the possible business models around it. The panel featured Adobe's CTO Kevin Lynch, Salesfore.com's CEO Marc Benioff, Google's Dave Girouard, and VMware's CEO Paul Maritz. It was moderated by Tim O'Reilly.

Has Current Solved the User Generated Advertising Mystery?

At the Web 2.0 Summit this week Current.tv co-founder Joel Hyatt told the audience that his video site and TV channel has landed multiple multi-million dollar advertising deals with giant companies, based on non-professional commercials created by fans. That's something that a whole lot of companies have been trying to do, unsuccessfully, for years.

Hyatt was joined on stage by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, who once again repeated the "wait and see" answer when asked about his monetization strategy. Side-by-side with Current's success, Twitter's continued stalling seemed more unsatisfying than ever - but success in general felt more possible when we saw what Current has done.

Yahoo's Jerry Yang at Web 2.0 Summit

Yahoo is obviously going through a rather tough period in its history right now. John Battelle interviewed Yahoo's CEO Jerry Yang and asked him about Microsoft's takeover bid, Google's decision to pull out of its advertising deal with Yahoo, and the persistent rumors of a possible acquisition of AOL by Yahoo. While Yang acknowledged Yahoo's current problems and stated that he would still consider selling the company to Microsoft, his overall outlook for the company was quite upbeat.

Mary Meeker at Web 2.0 Summit: There is Hope

One of our favorite parts of the annual Web 2.0 Summit is Mary Meeker's rapid fire data deluge about the Internet economy. You can view her PDF slides here. She started off by discussing the recession, which she said was "a long time coming" - but wondered "how long will it last?". Meeker noted that advertising and technology spending is closely tied to GDP growth. From 2000 to 2002, USA spending fell 27%. Unfortunately, Meeker thinks that the current pattern looks a bit like early 2001. In 2000-2003 tech spending was flat or negative, however Meeker's presentation included some rays of hope for entrepreneurs.

For a related Summit video, check out this discussion with Kleiner Perkins VC John Doerr:

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

While overall blog mentions of Obama and McCain varied greatly during the last year (and we can't say if those were positive or negative posts), close to 500 million blog postings mentioned him since the beginning of the conventions at the end of August. During the same time period, only about 150 million blog posts mentioned McCain (though it would also be interesting to see similar statistics for Governor Palin as well).

Twitter and MySpace

On social networks, Obama also held a clear lead, with 844,927 MySpace friends compared to McCain's 219,404. Just between November 3rd and November 4th (election day), Obama gained over 10,000 new friends, while McCain only gained about 964. On Twitter, Obama gained 2865 new followers between the 3rd and 4th (for a total of 118,107), while John McCain's Twitter account only has a paltry 4942 followers in total.

There are, of course, a lot of reasons for why Barack Obama's campaign gained a lot more traction on social networks and blogs than the McCain campaign. The demographics of social media users tend to fall in line more closely with those of today's Democratic voters, for example. However, looking forward to the next campaign cycle, it seems clear that all political campaigns, especially at this level, will start ignoring social media trends at their own peril.

See also: Obama's Social Media Advantage, Act II

The internet has not only impacted this last election, it has forever changed politics in America.

Please enjoy this flickr slideshow of what we saw last night - the election, as seen on the web:

Generation Y, also known as the millennials, are the young adults composed of the children of Boomers, Generation Jones, and some Gen X'ers. They're the biggest generation since the Boomers now and will eventually outpace them in numbers.

There has been much scrutiny over this generation over the past couple of years as the first set of Gen Y'ers began to enter the business world. The tech-savviness of these "digital natives," as they're called, has some corporations scrambling to adapt their systems to the incoming masses of these plugged in, always-on multitaskers. Consultants who specialize in Gen Y are being brought in to teach the older execs what to expect from the new hires, how to motivate them, how to retain them, etc. It's almost as if the Gen Y'ers were some sort of alien creature that business world was completely unprepared for.

We recently ran down a list of reasons why Gen Y is different from the rest of us. Besides the obvious connection to technology, they also have unique perspectives on marketing, media, the workplace, and society...at least, that's what the pundits tell us.

On paper, the millennials sound like a revolutionary generation dead set on changing the status quo. Their insubordination at work is only due to their lack of buy in - "Generation Why" always need to know "why" something's being done. Their brand loyalty is completely up for sale - they're quick to move to the next big thing. They've cut back on TV viewing so they can listen to music or play video games. They're socially conscious and think they're a force to be reckoned with in politics. Oh yes, surely these kids are different.   

...Or Are They?

But unbeknownst to them, Gen Y is about to be put to the test. Simply put, they're going to be watched closely to see if they show up at the polls. Will they turn out in record numbers? Will the pundits be proven right? Will Gen Y change the world?

The truth is...well, we hope so. But let's be honest here - while the youth turnout will likely be higher than in 2004's election thanks to some savvy web policking and the clear differences between the candidates making the choice easier, we're probably not going to see record numbers. The highest youth turnout ever was 55%, recorded in 1972. If we match that number or go higher, then we know we have a true force of change on our hands. If we don't, then we're going to have to face facts: it may be back to business as usual.

If the pundits have, in fact, hyped Gen Y a bit beyond what they deserve, then this young generation may be less-ground shaking when it comes to the other aspects of their personalities and behaviors, too. People could start to think, "hmmm, maybe they aren't that different after all."

The Future Web Will Be Built By Us...All Of Us

If big business takes a step back and realizes that Gen Y isn't this devastatingly different type of employee, if marketers realize they can catch their attention using more standard methods, if media companies think that Gen Y will happily buy music wrapped in DRM, then the tech world could feel the impacts.

Here in the the tech industry, a lot of folks have been counting on Gen Y to lead the way when it comes to change. Concepts like Enterprise 2.0, social media marketing, Twitter for customer service...these are all movements that have been, at least in part, designed to address the needs of these new, young digital natives.

If this "record-breaking" generation doesn't vote (read: doesn't care), then we may have to face the truth: the kids are alright, but they're still just kids...and maybe they're not as different as we once thought. Maybe they aren't going to guide us to the new world of web 3.0 and cloud computing all on their own. Maybe we'll find the way ourselves...all of us, together.

We may have to realize that the true force of change that's happening both online and off is the same as it ever was: early adopters enthusiastically adopt a product or service and, over time, it trickles down to the rest of the mainstream. This isn't a revolution, it's just par for the course, and it's nowhere near as exciting as a brigade of digitally adept youth who stormed the polls iPhones in hand ready to change the world.

Image credits: miss karen

Over the past few weeks, we've heard of several different ways we can use the web to keep track of the U.S. Election coverage. We can use Google to locate our voting locations, record our voting experience for YouTube, and even Twitter our voting issues. Now that E-Day is finally upon us, it's time revisit those tools as we prepare for the most digitally enhanced election ever.

• Visit Google's 2008 Election site to get voter information, directions to the polls, or your state's voter hotline. (And once you know your polling site, you can catch a ride with the Carpool to the Polls Facebook app).
• Vote411 has a poll finder and other related election information, ideal for last minute information.
• Can I Vote? If you're not sure if you're registered to vote, head over to Can I Vote to confirm your details.
• Overseas Vote Foundation: Information on voting if you're living or traveling outside of the United States.
• Pew Center on the States: Information on poll opening and closing times.
• Election Protection: Monitors voting problems. Place to report issues or track them as they happen.
• Track voter rights news and resources at the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition's 866ourvote.org.
• Check out a map-based overview of voting machines used in each state from VerifiedVoting.org and the Verified Voter Foundation, both run by technologists advocating for reliable and publicly verifiable elections.

Record Your Experience

With Video

• Bring a video camera with you to the polls to capture your voting experience on YouTube's Video Your Vote channel. Google is using Google Maps to track these videos across the country - and to see where polling problems might be occurring during the day.
• Document the irregularities or other problems you encounter with your cell phone camera, Flip videocam, or other device, and then upload that content to the CBS News social-media site CBS Eye Mobile. Alternatively, you can submit by e-mail to the address politics@cbseyemobile.com. The CBS News Investigates team will monitor those submissions, and may then present select ones in election coverage at CBSNews.com or in on-air reports.

Via Twitter

TwitterVoteReport is a Twitter app that will aggregate all the election day tweets that use the Twitter hashtag #votereport. Just include "#votereport" in your tweet in order for it to get tracked by the service. More advanced Twitterers can also include other hashtags like:

• #[zip code] to indicate the zip code where you're voting; ex., "#12345″
• L:[address or city] to drill down to your exact location; ex. "L:1600 Pennsylvania Avenue DC"
• #machine for machine problems; ex., "#machine broken, using prov. ballot"
• #reg for registration troubles; ex., "#reg I wasn't on the rolls"
• #wait:[minutes] for long lines; ex., "#wait:120 and I'm coming back later"
• #early if you're voting before November 4th
• #good or #bad to give a quick sense of your overall experience
• #EP[your state] if you have a serious problem and need help from the Election Protection coalition; ex., #EPOH

From Your Mobile

• Send a text message to 66937 and start your message with "#votereport"
• Download and use the iPhone app for VoteReport
• Find the "votereport" app in the Google Android marketplace

From Your Phone

• Enter a report by calling 567-258-8683 (VOTE), 208-272-9024, or 617-960-8900
• If you have a problem voting or see one, call the CNN Voter Hotline at 877-GOCNN-08 (1-877-462-6608).

On The Web

• If you find yourself having trouble casting your vote, VoterStory.org can help. This non-partisan site is designed to let voters report problems with their local polling place.
• If you have a problem voting or see one, share your early voting experience with CNN's iReport.

Get The Election Results

Videos

• CNN, MSNBC and ABC News will stream their election coverage live.
• MSNBC's feed is already up. Watch it here.
• Watch up-to-the minute election news on Hulu with their MSNBC Decision 08 coverage.
• ABC News will stream using Windows Media Player, but will make its feed embeddable for local affiliates using tech from live-streaming service Ustream.
• Watch John McCain's official Ustream feed to see his final stump speech at 11:30 a.m. MT in Colorado.
• Watch Barack Obama's official Ustream feed at 9 p.m. CT in Chicago to see his concession/victory speech.
• Politico's James Kotecki will stream live on Tuesday evening 7 p.m. to midnight.

On The Web

• The New York Times will publish a dashboard to track results as they come in at the county level. NYTimes.com will also keep track of which races the major news organizations have already called. More on the Times' efforts here.
• Visit TwitterVoteReport.com to see the reports flow in.
• The CBS News Investigates team will monitor video submissions (see above section), and may then present select ones in election coverage at CBSNews.com or in on-air reports.
• Political videos will be featured on the Google homepage all day, including videos made especially for Election Day by both the McCain and Obama campaigns.
• Current is incorporating streams from social media sites, Digg, Twitter, 12seconds.tv, along with music from DJ Diplo.
• Access news and results as they occur on the Google Maps Elections Gallery (you can even embed the results onto your own site), or via the Elections section of Google News.
• Socialmedian is pulling in all sorts of media from tweets to blog posts to Flickr photos, widgetizing all the updates they find, and featuring them on web sites like the washingtonpost.com, guardian.co.uk, and mediadeluge.com.
• Ask.com launched Election Poll Smart Answers that give local polling information in just one click.
• Twitter tracks election-related tweets at election.twitter.com
• Upload photo messages about the election, the candidates and the issues to Giveusahope.com.
• Follow and contribute crowd-sourced election stories and add your two cents on media bias at Skewz.com.
• Take a look at the aggregation of election-related news stories, blogs, polls, video and commentary on Electicker2008.com.
• Contribute election-related news stories and video and blog posts to Politics.com.

Just The Polls

• CNN will post their exit polls here.
• Gallup.com - The election 2008 poll results from Gallup, one of the best known polling companies.
• Pollster.com - Tracks various polls and gives you updated charts on how each candidate is tracking. Also offers an electoral map as well as analysis of what each poll means.
• RealClearPolitics.com - Features poll breakdowns by state. You can also see a national overview that shows you which candidate is in the lead in each state and by how many points.
• USAElectionPolls.com - Brings together information on national and state polls, battleground polls, house & senate polls, and more.
• USAToday.com - While USA Today's map looks like an electoral vote tracker, it is a map of polls with color coding to give you an idea of the percentage of difference between the candidates.

From Your Mobile

• AT&T and Verizon's live mobile TV streaming provider, Flo TV, is offering all manner of coverage of the election, including content from NBC, CBS, FOX News, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and MTV News--such as "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric" and "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams." Flo TV will also offer special Election Day versions of "The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show," along with content from MTV's "Choose or Lose" and recap up through the first 100 days in office.
• Sprint will also have live streams and TV clips on election day, featuring content from ABC News Now, CNN Mobile and FOX News Channel.
• Election 08 application ($0.99)  delivers the latest McCain and Obama polling numbers for every state, graphs historical polling trends, and charts voting patterns in previous elections.
• On your mobile phone, head to m.google.com/elections to locate your voting location as well as access the latest news.
• Get SMS text alerts about the election from the New York Times by messaging 698698 with the text: Newsalerts (to stop, text: Stop newsalerts) or text Elections and your zip code (eg, Elections07407) (to spot, text: Stop Elections)
• Viigo has just added a real-time results for tomorrow's US Election. The Live Election Results Feed will provide both Overall and State By State results throughout the evening as each contender demonstrates a Firm Lead, or is declared a Winner in each State. Results will be updated every 5 minutes. Download it for free from here.

Reward Yourself!

Now that you voted, reward yourself with some free stuff! If you go to Starbucks today and tell them you voted, you get a free cup of coffee. If you go to Ben & Jerry's today and tell them you voted, you get a free scoop of ice cream. If you go to Krispy Kreme today and tell them you voted, you get a free donut.

Thanks to Silicon Alley Insider for video sites, Inquisitr for voter info sites, AppScout for mobile voter sites, GigaOM for voter info sites, Mashable for poll web sites

(Image credit: Zappowbang)

I'm thinking Nintendo. Wii-lections, anyone?

More Noise to Signal

The U.S. Voter Info site was developed in partnership with with several state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others involved in the Voting Information Project. In true Google form, the site appears to as just a simple interface that hides the complicated data processing going on in the back-end. All you have to do to use the new site is enter in your home address in the box provided and click "Search."

Google then returns a host of personal voter information about your location including the number of days left for absentee ballot requests, a link to your local government's page where you can request an absentee ballot form, as well as other links to local government sites providing registration forms and other relevant election info. (The types of links will vary some from state to state). There's even a phone number to your state's voter hotline provided.

On the right side of the screen, a Google map displays. There is a green pin in your neighborhood and a red pin where your voting location is found. Then, with one click, you can get directions from your house to the polling site. This is very convenient, but unfortunately, when plugging in my own address, Google was not able to locate my voting location. Hopefully, others will have better success. (Let us know!)

In addition to the web site itself, Google is offering a "where to vote" gadget that can be customized and added to any web site. More importantly, there's an API available which allows third-party developers access to this data.

We Could Have Used This Sooner!

The only major criticism we have is this: why did they have to wait until now until launching? We realize that there are still several days until the actual Election Day, but this information would have been great to have a bit earlier. Given that absentee ballot forms have deadlines prior to Election Day and many states have already started the early voting process, it's a shame this web site wasn't available sooner. However, now that the site is ready, we look forward to using it for many years to come.

According to Nielson Mobile, a service of the consumer research-focused Nielson Company, 43 million Americans subscribe to mobile internet. Also, 33 million Americans use text messages, 32 million IM, 29 million download wallpapers/screensavers, and 4 million subscribe to and view mobile video.

However, when you break those numbers down by political preference, the following is true of mobile media in Q2 2008:

• Overall, 62% of Democrats are data users who use one or more data service on their mobile phone (compared with 55% of Republicans).
• Democrats are more likely than Republicans to use text messaging (53% compared with 46%).
• Democrats are more likely to use picture messaging and MMS (27% compared with 21%).
• Democrats are more likely to use mobile internet (17 % compared with 13%)

Apparently, someone already told the candidates of this news. It has been widely reported the numerous ways the Obama campaign makes use of mobile marketing for voter outreach. Already, they used SMS to announce Obama's VP choice. Unfortunately, the SMS message came after traditional journalists reported the news, not first, as originally promised. Still, the idea was unique and was the first attempt in leveraging the mobile medium in that way. In addition to the SMS VP announcement, the Obama campaign's mobile web site offers news, videos and ringtone and wallpaper downloads. 

The McCain camp has not been as active on the mobile front, but that's not to say that conservative voters don't use mobile media. Their use just isn't as heavy. In fact, Nielsen reports that the conservative-leaning web site The Drudge Report has a mobile audience of 567,000 uniques per month, for example.

To see how the numbers break down even further by Democrat vs Republican mobile data use, check out the chart below:

Why More Mobile Democrats?

There are a lot of conclusions one can come to from reviewing this data, but perhaps the most telling is that the campaigns really do know their demographics. Statistically, young voters are trending Democratic, and, as we all know by now, today's young voters are what are known as "digital natives." These plugged in, tech-savvy voters (also called "Generation Y") are now coming of age and many are eligible to vote for the first time. By marketing to this group of active technology users, the Obama campaign is hoping to motivate them to go out and vote. The recent launch of the official Obama iPhone app is just more proof of the campaign's efforts to actively engage this particular group of voters.

Many reports about Generation Y make note that they are known to be socially conscious and politically involved, but the election will likely be the first time we see if those generalizations are true. If Gen Y turns out the polls in great numbers, then they will have proven that they are indeed different than the other young generations of voters who preceded them. Typically an apathetic bunch when it comes to voting, young voters have not yet had the impact on U.S. elections that they could if they made the effort.

The Obama campaign seems to know that mobilizing these young voters may be as simple as interacting with them on the platforms they feel the most comfortable - the web, social networks, and their phone.