Twittering

A Classic Dog Ate My Homework Story - I was about to publish this post last night when my laptop blinked out in a puff of smoke. In the time it took to get my BBY laptop fired up Heather had posted something almost identical. When I woke up this morning the Apple's fan was whirling and - magically - it seems to have come back to life (though it still smells like an electrical fire. Even more magically - when I relaunched Firefox the post was still in the window. I will work on something else later this morning, but it seemed a shame to waste it.

I left a quick comment last week, but I will expand a little more about how people are using Twitter to participate in the 2008 Election.

A couple of weeks ago the Pioneer Press set up Twitter account at MN Votes, and is asking followers to report about their experiences voting in Minnesota on Tuesday. As of Sunday evening, MNVotes has 71 followers.

Twitter Vote Report is taking the poll monitoring-effort nationwide. The site, which the About page says was created by people who volunteered their time, will aggregate information collected via Twitter, text messaging, a custom iPhone application, and the phone to generate a "real-time" map that citizens and media outlets can use to track the progress of voting across the country. It looks like they are still working out some of the technology, but this could be a powerful tool for citizens.

Here is Rocketboom video about Twitter Vote Report, which is also published on the site:




For voyeurs or those looking for an argument... Twitter's Election 2008 page provides a never-ending stream of general Election-related tweets. You can also find see the filtered tweets on several "hot topics," including Prop 8 where this evening people are an apparent contradiction - Obama's opposition to the gay marriage ban on the ballot in California and his opposition to gay marriage.