"El Wed-2, Algeria"
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El Wed-2, Algeria
01
Oct
2008 Presidential Candidate Donations
01
Oct
In an effort to better understand the patterns within the 2008 presidential candidate donations, the authors produced this interesting diagram, mapping all donations made between January 2007 and July 2008, to McCain (left in red) and Obama (right in blue). The two inner circles represent the total amount of donations for both candidates, while the outer segments illustrate variations in the amounts donated. The top-most bracket is any donation between $1 and $100, the second: $101 - $500, the third: $501 - $,1000 and the final: all amounts over $1,000. The size of each bracket represents the percentage amount that bracket constitutes in a candidate's total donations, and the hair-like lines coming out of them are the names of each donor, which produces a useful visual reference to the density of each category.
The distinction between candidates is immediately perceived with this visualization. As the authors explain: "What is most striking to us is how much more of Obama's donations come from the $1 to $100 bracket. We found a high number of students, artists, unemployed and self-employed people who fell in this bracket. One can speculate that these are the younger-generation individuals who will be voting for the first time or they are a struggling class of lower income workers. Probably more significant: this shows how much internet contributions have helped the Obama campaign, assuming the smaller amounts were made online. This data also shows that a majority of McCain's donations come from the $500 to $1000 bracket of donors. The amount is still smaller than Obama's, but this makes up almost two-thirds of his donations".
Since the donation information must be disclosed to the public, the authors turned to the Federal Election Commission to find a data set containing all donors, the amount they donated as well as other information they may explore in the future (e.g. occupation, zip code, employer). The data set time span is currently from January, 2007 through July, 2008, but the authors will be updating this information every month, as new data is released.
Need Your WordPress Fixed
01
Oct
chrisbrogan via chrisbrogan.com
shared by 5 people
My friends at ContentRobot launched a neat site called We Fix WP. Simple, direct, and easy to understand. They fix WordPress. Need your theme tweaked? They can help. Want a few little bits and pieces made pretty? That’s them. Karen and Dana are two really nice, unassuming people who work with the likes of Stephanie Agresta and a whole host of Internet personalities. If Steph likes them, then that’s good enough for me.
But honestly, in my experience, I find that Karen and Dana have been at most of the cool geek events and are always ready to help out.
They’re another resource like Nico Pin that I know I can count on if I’m in a bind. You should count on them, too. Why get too deep into the nitty gritty when you can have your own robots?
Check out We Fix WP for more information.
Create a Wow Technology Conference With Word-of-Mouth Marketing
01
Oct
This is a guest post written by Jennifer Leggio, who writes about enterprise trends around social media, including security, privacy and reputation issues, for ZDNet.
You’re a thought leader in your industry. You want to convene other thought leaders in one place to share ideas with each other and with those hungry to learn. Perhaps you want to showcase some technology. And you want to make some money. Your vision unfolds as a conference, to which you can attract vendors, sponsors, media and attendees. Then you think about the huge events you have attended during your career – Black Hat, DEMO, Interop – and you think there is no way you can create such an event without the backing of a major corporation or media outlet. Wrong.
The era of Web 2.0 has created a freedom for entrepreneurs that never before existed – though that freedom is not without its risk. That said, all you need to get your conference idea off the ground is a nest egg investment, a good “hub†location, a strong network that you can tap for sponsors, speakers and attendees, and the power of word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) – which is exactly what it sounds like. And, while unconferences such as BarCamp, PodCamp and WordCamp are impressive, I’m talking about a bona fide technology conference.
Don’t believe me? Look at Defcon as a historic example. The U.S.’ largest hacker con is said to have launched in 1993 out of a BBS that its founders and initial attendees were a part of and grew to more than 8,000 people this year. Defcon is an institution in the security community, and while its sister conference Black Hat is now owned by CMP and also provides Defcon a bit of a captive audience, thousands make the trip to Las Vegas for the hacker con alone.
WOMM is said to have a more credible feel than other more saturated marketing attempts, and what’s great for conference founders is that you can carry the passion that made you launch the event in the first place with that word-of-mouth. Below are three examples of conferences borne of a small idea that have grown successful via WOMM. While all three are somewhat regional, all have attracted a nationwide audience and speaker roster:
Gnomedex – Though more business than technology focused, Gnomedex is an example of how someone with a strong personal brand grew a conference out of primarily WOMM. According to founder Chris Pirillo, his entire marketing model is based on WOMM. “If something I do doesn’t catch on WOMM, I consider it a failure,†he said. For example, Pirillo said that in 2001, Gnomedex was marketed through his Lockergnome mailing list, which still has more than 100,000 subscribers. As social media presence grew, i.e. legitimized blogs and the birth of podcasting, so did Gnomedex’s WOMM vehicles. According to Pirillo, “2005 was our breakthrough year – largely being embraced by an ad-hoc community of bloggers.â€
Twiistup – In doing some crowdsourcing, Twiistup came back as the most prominent answer when I asked which conferences have the best WOMM. Twiistup, founded by Mike Macadaan, markets itself as an “alternative†to traditional networking events. On a small scale, it rivals DEMO in that it features several startups selected to debut their products to an audience of media, technologists, venture capitalists and potential angel investors. What it has going beyond DEMO is its more “Webby†feel and almost cocktail party atmosphere.
SOURCE Conference – SOURCE Conference is the parent of security conferences in Boston and Barcelona. It launched via SOURCE Boston in March of this year as the first security conference to combine application security practices with the business of security. Due to my background in security, I’ve worked with the SOURCE team and I saw firsthand how the event grew from zero to a few hundred participants in its inaugural event, through 90 percent WOMM methods, making significant use of social networks such as Twitter. Founder Stacy Thayer did not have the personal brand power of Pirillo when she launched SOURCE, but what she does have is an impressive network of contacts in the security industry that she leveraged to build an advisory board and bring in impressive speakers – both making the WOMM that much easier.
You’re a thought leader in your industry. You want to start a conference. What’s stopping you?
[Disclosure: Jennifer Leggio does pro-bono communications work with SOURCE Conference]
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Man Uses Remote Desktop to Catch Laptop Thief, Watch Porn Remotely [Laptop]
01
Oct
A NY laptop-theft victim finally caught the criminal thanks to the use of a remote desktop application he had installed in his computer. However, it wasn't as easy as connecting to the notebook over the internet and locating him: His investigation lasted for almost a month, watching his laptop screen as the thief used it for everything except for giving a clue about his whereabouts. And yes, you know exactly what "everything" means:
It was kind of frustrating because he was mostly using it to watch porn. I couldn't get any information on him.
Finally, the suspect wrote his name and address to register to a website. José Cáceres, the victim, called the police, who arrested the man within a few hours. [AP — Thanks jagslive]
Government 2.0: Where’s the Urgency?
01
Oct
This is part of an ongoing series about government 2.0 written by Dr. Mark Drapeau. To view previous posts in the series click here.
Recently I had the chance to attend an event called “Government 2.0 and Beyond… Harnessing Collective Intelligence,†which was hosted by the Department of Defense’s Information Resources Management College (IRMC). It had all the makings of a public relations boon: High-profile speakers like David Weinberger (who blogged from the event), corporate sponsorship, media coverage, and a new auditorium to show off. Alvin Toffler, the author of Future Shock, was even there. But what I didn’t see among the people in the room was urgency.
Much lip service was given to welcoming new technologies, openness, information sharing, transparency, and collaboration. But there was no talk of a strategy, a plan, or a roadmap. Frankly, there was no talk of anything concrete in the way of actual progress towards Government 2.0, as the title of the event would lead one to believe. And while I am certain that DOD Deputy CIO David Wennergren was genuine when he spoke about the future of command and control being a more agile system of “focus and converge,†I am also certain that people in my workplace have Dell laptops so old they have time for a power nap during boot up.
This is particularly embarrassing given that one of the speakers, Bruce Klein talked in detail about Cisco Connect, their “next-generation workforce environment†that includes an encyclopedia, feeds, blogs, chat, and virtual meetings. No one discussed why the Department of Defense didn’t have this capability, and no one asked. More embarrassing still, Cisco Connect is very similar in principle to something the government already has – the Intelligence Community-built INTELINK, that I have used and written about before; the word “INTELINK†was never uttered out loud.
As the event was winding down, I heard a line not unfamiliar to me at this point, about everyone in the room being an “agent of change†that had to help. I became a bit frustrated with this and Tweeted the following:
While it’s probably inappropriate to “benchmark our enemies†in a Mashable post, I think it’s safe to say that terrorist and criminal organizations don’t need pep talks in wood-paneled conference rooms to adopt new technologies and gain a competitive edge. In the battle of bloviating versus trial-and-error, who wins?
One of the panelists, the co-author of Wikinomics, Anthony Williams, quipped that “The Ontario Government blocked Facebook, so everyone moved to MySpace. It’s a futile exercise.†Many people in the audience snickered. I don’t know about them, but I still can’t access MySpace or YouTube from my work computer. This is not a complicated multinational treaty negotiation. If everyone is so aware of the problem, why can’t we just… fix it?
To be fair, the government has non-trivial security issues when it comes to information systems – they must function alone and with each other properly, cannot be infiltrated by outsiders, and they must provide trustworthy information (imagine hacking not to plant a computer virus, but rather false intelligence or misleading geographic coordinates). The big takeaway that federal officials had from DEFCON 16 in Las Vegas was that social software has created a “perfect storm†for hackers – lots of new software, largely untested security loopholes, and a changing definition of privacy in society. As part of my Social Software for Security (S3) research project at the National Defense University I am working with government “information assurance†professionals to determine which social technologies are {always, sometimes, never} safe to use with DOD systems.
Unfortunately, all of this is likely discouraging young people – digital natives, or the Gartner-dubbed “Generation V†– from choosing honorable work in public service as a profession, and it is encouraging bright people already in Washington, DC to move on to greener pastures. It may be appropriate that a group named “Foreigner†wrote the song I quoted at the beginning of this article, because from my standpoint “urgency†as it concerns adoption of social technology tools into the defense establishment is thus far largely a foreign concept.
Dr. Mark Drapeau is an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy of the National Defense University in Washington, DC. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government.
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Denver police union T-shirt: “We get up early to beat the crowds”
01
Oct
The Denver police union is selling T-shirts commemorating the good times they had last month. It costs just $10, which is quite a deal!
The back of the shirts reads, "We get up early to beat the crowds" and "2008 DNC," and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton.Police Union Shirt Celebrates Beating of DNC ProtestersDetective Nick Rogers, a member of the Police Protective Association board, said police often issue T-shirts to commemorate big events.
Rogers said each Denver officer was given one of the shirts free and others are on sale for $10 each at police union offices.
He said the union expects to sell about 2,000 of them.