Well, it's just about my favorite time of year again…March Madness.  I love the games, I love the upsets, I love the drama, and I especially love hearing Dick Vitale's screaming insanity on my TV 24/7. 

As an ode to the season, I decided to take some time and check out something that should be on everyone's minds….online bracket builders.  This is a bit of a divergence from our usual talk of politics and (possibly more important) current events, but I know that this question is burning in everyone's minds:  What is the best website for filling out tournament brackets?

To answer this question, I took a look at some of the major websites that offer brackets and ranked them based on a couple of factors:

• Ease of registration;
• Interface;
• Customization options (i.e. rules and features);
• Flexibility (having multiple brackets and groups);
• Extra features (message boards and updates);
• Prizes. (because some people like to play for more than bragging rights)

Here are my rankings: (more…)

I was catching up on my feed reading and came across this interesting post by Bush-Cheney e-campaign veteran Mike Turk.  Paraphasing wildly, Turk thinks the entire poli-tech community is focusing too much on how the Presidential candidates are using the latest technologies (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) instead of whether they are developing strategies that will actually win elections. 

While I was trying to figure out whether to agree or be offended, I came across the 2007 Golden Dot People’s Choice Award for Online Politician of the Year (thanks David) brought to you by the Institute for Politics, Democracy, & the Internet (IDPI).  IDPI asks users to vote for one of the following nominees:

• Ned Lamont for using the liberal netroots to beat Joe Lieberman in the CT Democrat Senate primary before being beaten soundly by Lieberman in the general election.
• Mark Warner for participating in a lightly attended and heavily moderated campaign event in Second Life in preparation for a Presidential run that didn't even make it into 2007. 
• Dick DeVos for his innovative use of mobile technologies and for holding a user-generated video contest.  He lost 56%-42% to incumbent Jennifer Granholm. 
• Jack Kingston for using blogs, online video, photo sharing, etc. in an innovative way on his official website.  Kingston has a safe seat and won reelection handily in 2006.

Basically, three of the four nominees did not achieve the office they sought and are being nominated for losing with style.  Winning was not a consideration in putting together this list.  I could understand including one or two politicians who lost (avoiding the word "losers" here), but three?

So I guess I agree with Turk. 

But, having been through a few rodeos, I know it is almost impossible to judge an online strategy based solely on public information.  Much of the most important work (list matching and building, mass emails, blog outreach, volunteer outreach, etc.)  is done anonymously and in private.    As I wrote before:

Just because a campaign has a relatively simple website that doesn't make a lot of noise doesn't mean they don't get "it".  And just because a campaign site has a blog or whatever doesn't mean they do.

As an aside, I voted for Jack Kingston since he is the only nominee who is actually in office at this point.  But I actually think the person of the year should be James Webb for thinking to have a cameraman follow George Allen around (macaca!)

Who do you think should be person of the year? 

Part 4 of my possibly tiresome campaign site review series finds us staring at the grim, unblinking visage of John McCain! The (mostly) black and white maverick of the campaign design world sure has its share of detractors. The monochromatic palette seems to evoke a love it or hate it vote. I happen to think it does not work, but that the site can look very solid with a few edits.

If the idea of the black and white design is a metaphor for strength of purpose or a stance on an issue (or issues), I understand that, but I think that any of those metaphors can be realized (as much as these design decisions can trigger an emotional response) with a much lighter and better-designed approach. My fix would be to add color to every obvious space within the interior real estate of the site. For example:

• The logo remains black and white, as does the background of the site including the flag imagery.

• The navigation can remain as is until mouse-over. Color could be introduced here in the nav field, not just the text, and the menu should open in that color as well.

• The left navigation/latest news fields and icons would all be in full color and the three very heavy bottom video invitations (Involving You | Informing You | Connecting You) could simply be full color versions of the existing photography.

• I would also make sure to put as much color as reasonable into the footer, and I would add the infamous DONATE button in its red glory.

My hope when I saw the first version of the site was that the black and white motif would give way to a full-bodied rendering once McCain announced and launched a full site. Dramatic entrance or something. Onward, minus any color remarks.

The structure of the homepage is fine with me and I appreciate the compact design here. The logo is strong and unique for a campaign logo and I assume the attached mark is the Silver Star, which McCain was awarded, and therefore cannot be questioned by a sissy like me. The flag background is pretty muted and therefore doesn’t offend. The universal navigation is easy to locate and use and the Undecided? navigation point is a fairly  unique keyhole. Reads better than About John McCain, I guess. One point about the photography that I’ll mention; McCain is a mechanical, unnerving subject to view in some of these shots, and his people should realize that we understand that he’s serious about this. More shots of him smiling and or looking presidential. Less of him appearing as if to ask me my intentions with his daughter.

In conclusion, I think the site is problematic in this rendition because of the black and white template choice, but feel that it could be very strong if edited discreetly.

• Launch Flash Review
• View other design reviews here

In a post last week I suggested that campaigns start using Twitter to update activists on their activities. 

Lynne Johnson over at TechPresident reports that John Edwards and Barack Obama appear to have done just that and created accounts. 

Obama hasn't posted at all and Edwards has posted only four times since January 7.  In addition, Edwards has not added Twitter to his endless list of social networking sites he maintains a presence on.  At this point it looks like the Twitter equivalent of reserving a domain name and its not clear whether they will be posting updates. 

Be interesting to see what happens with this.  Note to all campaigns: reserve your name on the service now even if you aren't going to use it.

• John Edwards on Twitter
• Barack Obama on Twitter

Several sources (BBC, CNET, stuff.co.nz) reported this morning that China has banned the establishment of new Internet cafes for the rest of this year. Apparently, this is an effort by the Chinese government to curb the number of cases of Internet addiction:

"Last year, a report from the China National Children's Center, a government think-tank, said that 13 percent of China's 18 million Internet users under 18 were Internet addicts." (via CNET)

Interestingly, the Associated Press reported via MSNBC that "China's second-largest mobile phone company plans to open 3,000 Internet cafes by the end of the year". Basically, it seems like the Chinese government is in essence replacing yet another privately-operated industry with a government-controlled company. 

According to the Washington Post, schoolkids are finding their way around government regulations in order to access the web, visiting underground internet cafes secretly.  According to the Post, Chinese kids are still finding their way to Internet cafes despite rules that prevent kids under 18 from going to the cafes.

In a country with 132 million people online (China is on track to surpass the US in its number of internet users in the next two years), how long can the government keep up this blatent censorship?  I think TechDirt has some great points on this issue.

Update: The site is back up now - www.explorehuckabee.com.  It was down for at least an hour.

I see this post over on Tech President pointing me to former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s Presidential Exploratory Committee website.  Based on that post and my own research the site URL is www.explorehuckabee.com. 

So I go check it out and I see the Go Daddy parked URL page below:

This is the kind of message you get when (a) your site isn't done yet and you are parking a URL you bought on GoDaddy or (b) you go over your bandwidth limit for the month and haven't put in more cash.

Please tell me I'm missing something here?  Do I have the wrong URL?   

One trend to watch this year is the boom in well produced, niche video blogs.  The children of Rocketboom. 

My favorite example is Wallstrip, a daily video blog that takes an in depth look at a hot stock each day from a sort of layman’s perspective.  Using humor, they try to explain in real world terms why a stock is doing so well.

I think it is terrific.

To give you a taste, following is a recent show in which a bunch of venture capitalists race to see who is the most proficient on a Blackberry.  Most of the shows are a bit more informational than this one, but it gives you a taste of Wallstrip’s tone. 

On a side note, I think it is just a matter of time before someone does this for the political scene in DC. I’m looking forward to it and I hope it is as good as Wallstrip.

An article from a few days ago in Wired caught my eye this morning.  In What Would Jesus Wiki? author Michael Calore talks about Conservapedia, an "alternative Wikipedia" that presents history from the perspective of (religious) conservatives.

Conservapedia operates on the belief that Wikipedia's content maintains an unacceptable liberal bias.  Here are a couple of snippets from the site's "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia":

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Last night I saw a fantastic show on PBS Frontline about the future of news and reporting that's an absolute must-see. Among the things it discusses:

• How the internet is changing news, with in depth analysis from major players in the field.

• How newspapers are trying to adapt to the internet and being forced to adapt to the internet.
• The role of newspapers in society.
• The role of bloggers in journalism.
• The importance of in-depth reporting.
• Local news reporting vs. in-depth international reporting.
• Using the Chicago Tribune's ownership of the LA Times as a case study, an absolutely fascinating analysis of whether newspapers should be publicly or privately owned.

Luckily PBS has the show online. The show is definitely must-see viewing for anyone who is remotely interested in the state of the news and the future of news, blogging and reporting.

Transcript: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/part3/
Video: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/view/ and click on "Part 3" (or BitTorrent, not that I necessarily condone that).

The other two parts in the four-part series do carry a somewhat controversial subject matter (government going after journalists and journalism). I haven't seen those first two parts yet, but suffice to say that this third-part is not controversial at all and is one of the most fascinating reports I've seen on TV in a long time - thoroughly recommended viewing!

If you had a chance to see it already, let us know what you thought! 

We had a story appear on the Digg homepage the other day and in the comments someone pointed to a site I hadn't seen before: Presidential Quest.  

Basically Presidential Quest has created search sites for every single Presidential candidate.  Users then search the web from the site of their chosen candidate and all the ad revenue that is generated from the searching is donated to their chosen candidate.  Here is a link to Rudy Guiliani's website as an example.  

They have another site that donates search revenue to charity. 

This is a good example of what Jason Calacanis calls media philanthropy and I think it is a great idea.  The rub is that for this to work the actual search engines on these sites will need to be in the same ballpark of the industry leaders in terms of quality.   I haven't look at it enough to judge the search quality yet.

USA Today's new website went live this morning.  You can read a note from the editors about the redesign here and a breakdown of the new features here. 

I like it. 

The key here is the social networking component.  Users can create profiles that include personal information, blog entries, photos and a list of friends.  These profiles are then linked to every time a user comment on articles.  You can see the test profile I created here. 

The site also includes tons of other features such as tagging, voting on stories, RSS feeds, etc.   The user interface includes a good dose of Ajax, which is smart.  It will cut down on page views a bit but it creates a much better user experience.

In order to succeed online newspapers are going to have to build vibrant communities around their websites.  With its new site, USA Today appears to be doing just that. 

Give it a look and let us know what you think in the comments.

Mark Glaser points to a blog entry by USA Today’s Patrick Cooper announcing that they will launch a new version of their site this coming weekend. Jeff Jarvis was given a sneak peak at the site and links to a screenshot of the new homepage.

Here are some key components of the new site based on my reading of Cooper’s post:

• Open commenting on every article.
• Profiles where users can post personal information, photos and their own blog entries.
• Active participation in site discussions by reporters.
• Tagging of articles.
• Digg style voting on stories and alternative view of content.
• Site forums where users can discuss anything they want.

Sounds really, really promising.

Tom from our office took a shot at rethinking the design of USA Today a few months back so I’m interested in giving it a thorough test drive once it goes live.
Other related posts:

• 9 Ways for Newspapers to Improve Their Websites
• The Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers

As we all know, the 2008 presidential campaigns are getting swamped with coverage lately.  It is beginning to seem slightly ridiculous to me the amount of media attention that these potential candidates are getting.  Shouldn't the country still be paying attention to who is currently in office?  What's that guy's name…..Bush or something? 

With almost two years left until the 2008 elections, it seems like all American media outlets are becoming more and more obsessed with the 2008 candidates, instead of focusing on the current status of our country.

Certainly, this is great for Bush…the less negative attention he gets, the better.  But is this extensive coverage good for the 2008 candidates?  On the surface, most people would say yes.  Candidates need to get their names and faces out in front of the public so voters become familiar with them.  However, not all coverage is good coverage.  Here are a few reasons why all this early campaigning might backfire for the 2008 candidates currently stealing headlines:

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We’ve had a bumpy history with blog statistics programs here at The Bivings Report. Services we like keep getting shut down.

Here is a quick summary:

1. Industry leader Measure Map got bought by Google a year ago and since then has closed registrations for new users. I’ve been on the waiting list for over a year now with no luck.
2. The excellent (though buggy) Blogbeat was bought by Feedburner around six months ago and was simplified to the point where it is no longer useful except for the most basic analytics.
3. The excellent Performancing blog stats programs shut down in December for some unknown reason.
4. I’m not a fan of SiteMeter, MyBlogLog or Google Analytics for blog tracking.

So I was shocked and happy to come across a new service called Clicky the other day. It is the best blog stats program I’ve used. Clicky has all the basics like site visitors, page views, incoming/outgoing links, and search keywords.

It also has a bunch of goodies like RSS feeds of your stats, a Spy section that lets you watch your users come in real time and a Google Map that show the location of your fifty most recent visitors (screenshot above right).

You can check out a demo on the Clicky website. If you are a blogger, I’d give it a whirl.