EchoDitto

The Obama campaign's plan to announce their V.P. pick via SMS was a brilliant stroke, and the sheer number of people engaged with the campaign via text has already earned the campaign a place in political history (not that there was any question).

Unfortunately, the announcement didn't go as planned. Both the campaign as well as their most connected supporters have reason to be frustrated, and there are lessons here for all of us in the worlds of online politics, campaigning, organizing, and communications (keep reading!).

I'm quoted in two AP stories yesterday (here and here) about Obama's Biden pick as saying, "This is like finding out from your neighbor instead of your sister that she's engaged: not how you want or expect the news to be delivered."

There's a bit more to the overall story that didn't make its way into the coverage (surprise!), so i'll elaborate below. But for those still bitter about not receiving their text message, I think we'll need to give the campaign a pass on this one, after what was surely a long and bumpy night largely outside of their control.

At the Democratic National Convention next week, 125 bloggers will hold press credentials and hundreds more will be reporting from The Big Tent. You're probably wondering - how do I follow hundreds of blogs? Well, there's always Memeorandum or Newsjunk where you can watch the river of news flow but you run the risk of missing the more nuanced observations from smaller online media outlets. Try OMPL-a simple XML markup originally designed for outlining that was recently adopted to package RSS feeds. You can download the full OPML file of DNC credentialed bloggers here. Once you have the file, re-upload the file to your RSS reader and you will have the 125 credentialed bloggers loaded into a folder. It's that easy.

Last week, Google launched the newest tool in its arsenal for web marketers, Google Insights for Search. A take-off on Google Trends, you can now easily compare search traffic across a variety of keywords, categories and regions. Although Google Insights doesn't really give you access to any new data (you could find all this info previously through a combination of Google Trends and AdWords), the new interface to the data -- and ability to chart and export numbers -- makes it an invaluable new tool for understanding the world we live in online.

I travel quite a bit for work. For the most part, I enjoy it. But travel also comes with its challenges -- of late, the airlines have cut back on the amenities in response to rising fuel costs, there are fewer direct flights making even simple trips a lengthy endeavor, and other travelers are on edge about security and cranky about poor service.

The biggest challenges when you travel, of course, come in the form of delays and cancellations. Sometimes delays and cancellations result from bad weather. Other times mechanical issues keep an aircraft from getting off the ground. Most of the time, I feel the airline can't (or won't) explain what the cause of the delay is, but they keep you from getting to your destination in a timely fashion nonetheless.

So I am just back from my annual family vacation. Oxymoron? Nah! It was great, really. We made big strides this year to be as ecofriendly as possible on our road trip. My very favorite tip is the bit about taking fewer left turns! It's true. UPS has used this quirky fuel conserving trick for years. Stopping to take left turns takes longer and wastes more gas (and at more than $4.00 per gallon who doesn't want to save gas?) than turning right. In 2007 UPS estimates it saved more than three million gallons of gas and reduced its trucks' CO2 emissions by the equivalent of taking 5,300 cars off the road just by route planning with right turns in mind!

I have to admit - I don't check w00t.com on a daily basis. Most of the time I'll check it on a whim, or if my coworkers or friends point me to the site for a cool product. So, it's for this reason that I point your attention, right now, to w00t.com! We've recently been working with a very cool company - Neuton Mowers. Of course all of the people we work with are very cool, but I don't have a lawn, and never before have I wanted something so badly that I personally have no use for. Neuton sells battery powered lawnmowers, and they're selling them on woot right now. Now, you might be skeptical - skeptical of the power, the actual ability to cut grass effectively, or even the claim that it's great for our environment (why would you jump to such drastic conclusions though?). I assure you having used it (and lifted it) myself that it is, simply put, an awesome machine. Click here for a tour of the 6.2 mower.

Growing up, I remember watching Jerry Lewis telethons every Labor Day. For 24 hours, Lewis and celebrity co-hosts like Ed McMahon and Casey Kasem would host a live, televised fundraising event for Muscular Dystrophy, panning the room to a sea of volunteers answering calls from donors across the country. Names of donors would flash across a scrollbar on the screen, and if you were really lucky, Jerry Lewis would announce your name and your donation live on the air.

That was the 80s, when Commadore 64s were cutting edge, and I had a stack of rubber bracelets that went from my wrist to my elbow. Today, telethons are being replaced by "Blogathons" and rubber bracelets are trendy again. According to Blogging for Kids, a blogathon "is a Fundraising Event where bloggers from around the world stay up for 24 hours, blogging every 1/2 hour for pledges to their favorite charity or cause." Niki, a blogger from Ohio is doing a 24 hour blogathon today to raise money to benefit kids with Neuroblastoma, a rare and deadly form of childhood cancer.

I am an Ambassador for OneWebDay, a global celebration of the web that takes place every year on September 22nd. There is more information at www.onewebday.org.

This year’s theme is participation in democracy online. As far as I am concerned, there is no more important subject. The functioning of our society - here in the United States and increasingly around the world - requires that people are able to participate and contribute openly and freely. The internet, and all forms of technology, expand those opportunities and open the democratic process to all. The more people participate, the more we all benefit.

This past weekend, my husband took me on his annual camping trip to the Catskill mountains. For those of you who know me, you know that I am not one to rough it. In fact, last week was the first time I have ever even been to the "Outdoor" aisle of any large department store.

As we drove up the mountain, the bars on my iphone slowly started to decrease. As they went from four, to three, to a sad dotted line, I started to panic. You see, it didn't even occur to me that there would be no cell reception in the woods. I used my phone in Argentina, my husband sent me text messages from Chennai, how could my phone not work in New York's Hudson Valley?

This weekend at BlogHer08 I kept thinking that maybe I was going to the wrong panels. They were interesting, and had a few new tidbits, but none of them were giving me the “wow” that you want to leave a conference with. So I decided that I must be doing something wrong, and I should go to something completely different. I went to “Can we take back naked blogging?”

And then, as these things usually are: it was great. I closed my laptop and focused, and wrote notes that I knew would be a blog post.

The premise was this: a panel of three women who had stepped back from the intimacy of their lifeblogs after intimidating or scary experiences when that intimacy was abused. Several of the women on stage and in the audience spoke of their blogs as their “living rooms,” and that when these incidents occurred, they lost their sense of security on the internet, with their blogs. I was captivated.