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This belongs to you. Take it back...
Twitter 
Wed Jul 06, 2011 at 12:38:40 PM EDT
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So I'm at the White House of all places today for the first ever Twitter Town Hall with the guy who lives here, the President of the United States.
Weird, right? I just took a tour of the place and saw the East Room where they are all set up for this thing. There looks to be about 40 chairs in there.
Yikes, y'all.
Anyhoo, follow me on twitter this afternoon for live commentary on the event. Starts at 2pm and you can tweet questions to the President using the #askObama hashtag.
Should be a hoot.
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Thu Apr 14, 2011 at 05:57:09 AM EDT
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So Arizona Senator Jon Kyl went and did a stupid thing the other day by claiming on the floor of the Senate that 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is related to abortions, and that, by God, we need to cut that Federal funding for abortions, and we need to cut all Federal funding for Planned Parenthood-and we need to do it today.
Of course, that 90% claim was total hooey; it turns out that only 3% of Planned Parenthood's work relates to abortions. (The Federal funding for abortions part is, too; the Hyde Amendment made such funding illegal decades ago.)
When confronted, Kyl's office released a statement claiming the Senator's comments were "not intended to be a factual statement".
Sir Rev. Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, DFA, decided to have a bit of fun with Kyl, and he challenged his audience to Tweet their own "Not Intended To Be A Factual Statement" about Kyl.
I decided to compose a Tweet of my own...and then another...and before I knew it I had an entire story's worth; that's why, today, we'll be taking a taking a short break from the daily grind to have a bit of fun with a man who truly deserves it: Jon Kyl.
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Fri Aug 14, 2009 at 17:51:59 PM EDT
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It has been a fun time at this year's Netroots Nation. We still have two days to go, but the convention thus far has been a great experience.
I will have a lot of pictures and video later, including posts about the panels I have attended so far.
There have been plenty of things to talk about here. One of which was the opening keynote given last night by former President Bill Clinton. I thought he gave a passionate address to the gathering. He definitely made us wait, but it was worth the wait.
The Howard Dean town hall meeting this morning was excellent. I thought Dean detailed why it is important for us to get health care reform done now. He also said something I found interesting: Instead of starting with a public option and working from there, we should have started with single-payer. I have heard this before and I believe that should have been the way to go. Instead of starting at the middle, start at one end or the other.
While this isn't relevant to New York politics, I found the Pennsylvania Leadership Forum featuring Sen. Arlen Specter and Congressman Joe Sestak to be very telling. Specter basically used the experience card over and over again, detailing his relationships with long-time senators, including current Vice President Joe Biden. Sestak had a different focus. He isn't trying to run on how many years he's been in Washington D.C., but rather what he can do and hopes to do if elected senator in Pennsylvania.
The forum also served as a great example of why some primaries are necessary.
So far, this event hasn't disappointed. I'm actually on my way to the Meet the Candidates event. Should be a lot of fun.
If you're interested, follow my Twitter feed if you want to know what's going on at the convention.
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Thu Aug 06, 2009 at 10:22:12 AM EDT
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Is today the day social media dies? Twitter and LiveJournal (yes, they still exist) are down and Facebook is struggling mightily.
What's going on? The good news is, as TechCrunch notes:
Work productivity surges around the world.
UPDATE: A very smart friend of mine is baffled as well. She asks:
Some kinda network/backbone outage? Having random sites go down, traceroutes showing timeouts everywhere...
North American traffic report doesn't show anything super crazy, but there has been a dip in the index
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Wed Jun 24, 2009 at 23:24:54 PM EDT
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I'm kind of wondering if Governor Paterson's twitter feed got hacked, but I see there:
The leadership from both the Republicans and Democrats has notified my office that they will attend tomorrow's Extraordinary Session.
I guess we'll see!
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Tue May 19, 2009 at 18:19:33 PM EDT
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The state Republican Party held a tech seminar today that was "dedicated to ensuring Republican elected officials and campaigns from around the state are educated and trained in the latest cutting-edge technologies available."
Liz has more on the story:
Some 100 Republican county chairs, operatives, and past and future candidates for elected office are gathered in Albany today to attend the state GOP's first-ever "Politics Online Seminar," an event designed to help train party members in "the latest cutting-edge" political technologies.
According to Niagara County GOP Chairman Henry Wojtaszek, who organized the seminar at state Party Chairman Joe Mondello's request, this includes tools that have come to be considered fairly standard in political circles - things like Twitter and Facebook, for example.
The fact that this is the first time the New York Republicans have ever held an event like this underscores just how far behind the eight ball they are in this realm, particularly when you consider how tech-savvy the Democrats have become.
I'm sorry, but if you consider Facebook the "latest cutting-edge political technologies" then you are definitely far behind. I have been a Facebook member since 2004. That is a full five years before the state Republican Party caught up with the rest of the world and decided that they wanted to talk about "the Google."
I can't say that the national Republicans are that far behind the Democrats, but Democrats all over the country have dominated the Internet this decade. In New York, the gap is wider. The Republicans lack a strong tech foundation. The number of pro-Republican blogs in New York is very low. That alone tells you the story of the state GOP's Internet operations.
In 2008, the blogosphere and Internet proved to be key at the state and national levels. In New York, the takeover of the New York State Senate by the Democrats was aided by a strong blogosphere and tech presence.
There is always room for improvement, however. I believe that the Democrats can widen the gap by including technology more and more. Whether that means Tweets from the Senate floor or Facebook groups for ALL Democratic senators and their respective campaigns (some of them already do this, but all of them should be), we can increase our lead on the Republicans by simply doing what we do best.
While the Republicans are still educating themselves on how to create an account on Facebook or learning what a blog is, we can better ourselves. Remember the saying "more and better Democrats?" Well, why not more and better tech savvy Democrats? It is possible and we can do it right here in New York.
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Thu May 14, 2009 at 21:54:16 PM EDT
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I happen to think this is pretty awesome and not just because one of my awesome new colleagues has been pushing for this kind of thing for years.
First Twitter Message From Space Sent
Astronaut Mike Massimino has boldly gone where no man has gone before: He sent the first Twitter message from space.
Massimino began using the microblogging Web site a few months ago, updating his followers on the day-to-day life of an astronaut and his training for the upcoming mission.
Massimino and the other six members of the space shuttle Atlantis' trip to service the Hubble Space Telescope launched Monday. His first Twitter message (called a "tweet") from space communicated his excitement about the launch - in under 140 characters (one of the site's constraints).
"Launch was awesome!!" Massimino tweeted Tuesday via his Twitter alter ego @Astro_Mike. "I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"
Since then, he's sent a couple more messages through the social networking technology. Massimino transmits his messages to Mission Control on the ground, and NASA posts them to the Web at: http://twitter.com/astro_mike.
"Rendezvous and grapple were great, getting ready for our first spacewalk," Massimino tweeted Thursday.
Massimino is a veteran spacewalker making his second trek to Hubble. He took up Twitter at the suggestion of NASA's Public Affairs Office, as a way to give the public a peek at life as an astronaut.
"Being an astronaut's a cool job, we're very fortunate to have it and day-to-day we get to do some fun things," Massimino said before flight. But the busy schedule can make it hard to reach out to people, he said. "The opportunity to use Twitter has been great, because by definition it has to be short."
Tweets from space, y'all. That's pretty cool.
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Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 09:37:25 AM EST
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"I don't see myself necessarily as a Republican," Tedisco said. "I see myself as a public servant, of the Republican affiliation."
- Jim Tedisco.
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Wed Feb 18, 2009 at 15:15:24 PM EST
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Jimmy Disco and Scott Murphy will debate March 19.
Tedisco and Murphy have confirmed they will do the Times Union/WMHT debate March 19. The live, televised debate will be hosted by WMHT's Susan Arbetter and TU editor Rex Smith.
The League of Women Voters of Saratoga, Rensselaer and Columbia counties announced a debate today in conjunction with NewsTalk 590 WROW. The debate, which will also include Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall, will be held at the Latham Holiday Inn Express. Sherman Baldwin, host of "Afternoon Drive" and WROW program director, will moderate the debate.
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The LWV debate will be town hall style. The hotel is not in the 20th Congressional district but it is centrally-located.
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Thu Feb 05, 2009 at 18:53:18 PM EST
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This is just too delicious. I so love watching the poor sad sacks from the GOP try to catch up tech wise. Was there anyone on stage during the debates of the RNC chair candidates that didn't profess a deep love of Twitter? They all seem to think they can Twitter themselves back to respectability. It's really adorable.
But they're still mostly clueless where it counts. They certainly know they are years behind and even have a few pretty smart folks on their side. Fortunately for everyone, those folks don't seem to be getting the attention they probably should and those calling the shots over there still seem to farm out projects to folks who really don't know what the hell they are doing.
The latest example is the website for Jim Tedisco's congressional campaign. It seems someone decided it would be soooo awesome to scoop up every Tweet tagged "#ny20" and dump it directly to their front page. Apparently they believed no one would ever make them pay for that. Either that, or they really have no idea what Twitter actually is or how it works. Check out the top entry at the bottom of this screen shot:
One word: FAIL.
I would never encourage you to have fun with this at Tedisco's expense. Really.
Wouldn't be sporting.
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