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Yesterday I attended the Modern Media Strategies Workshop at The Heritage Foundation.  There were many panels during the conference about how those in the political sphere can harness new and social media.

While blogging was one of many topics, many people from political organizations and congressional staffers asked the speakers about how one can find prominent blogs.  Panelists suggested Google Blog Search and Technorati, among other blog search engines, as places to get a general idea about different blogs.

I would like to add two other resources: e-newsletters and blog aggregators. 

Some newsletters track blogosphere chatter about a specific topic, and following this coverage is an excellent way to determine which blogs are influential.  The Exoro Group's Utah Policy Daily is a great example from my old stomping grounds.

Blog aggregators cull posts from a set of blogs focused on the same topic.  Thus, you can use these sites to easily track many blogs at once to determine which are the most prominent.  Staying close to my previous example, UtahPolitics.org is an example of a site that captures political blog chatter in the state. 

These are just two types of helpful resources.  What do you use to find important sites?

CBSNews.com and Washingtonpost.com are teaming up to share election-related content as a way of standing out in the increasingly crowded election news market. In a release about the partnership, CBS said:

The online relationship will join the rich tradition of both organizations, providing the combination of the most compelling video coverage from CBS News correspondents, producers and off-air reporters and the news, analysis and commentary from the Washington Post’s renowned political reporters.

The release also hints that CBS will be launching an ambitious Campaign 08 site in the coming months as part of this partnership. This come on the heals of the previously announced partnerships between the National Journal and NBC and USA Today and the Politico.

The media has always done some of its most innovative web work around elections. The election and election day sections of sites like CNN and Washington Post are some of the best things I’ve seen from the media in terms of technical execution.

I think we’re going to see some really fantastic online work in 2008 that will drive innovation for the entire media industry in the year following.

<Via Cyberjournalist>

By now everyone on the planet has heard of Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC), which aims to “provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves” by providing children in developing countries worldwide with a laptop. This ambitious venture has produced an inexpensive and extremely durable machine which will be sold to governments around the world and distributed to impoverished children. The laptop, called the XO, is currently in its final beta phase and is being prepped for mass production. What you may not know, however, is that the XO is not the only inexpensive computer being produced for this purpose. There is competition. Intel has been selling its version of the “cheap laptop” since March for $225. The company recently joined OLPC in an effort to maximize the benefits of this laptop development around the world. Vice President and director of corporate affairs at Intel Will Swope stated,

“Our role here is one of how do we have the biggest impact on education and on children around the world?” he said. The chipmaker has spent more than $1 billion in education initiatives since its founding, and over the last five to six years has been investing annually around $100 million on such projects. “How could we make that more impactful and reach more children?” Swope asked. The answer, he said, was to join OLPC.

Despite its collaboration with OLPC, Intel will continue producing and selling its Classmate PC to governments, leaving it up to countries to decide which laptop, the XO or the Classmate, will best suit its children. While the general concepts of the laptops overlap, variations in design, structure and applications make each laptop best suited for different environments.

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The New York Times launched a Netvibes/My Yahoo style Ajax start page on their site called My Times a few days back.  These start pages allow users to create a custom home page that features only the information they are interested in.  In the case of My Times, users can select from a bevy of Times-related content and add RSS feeds from external blogs as well.

The reaction from the tech community has basically been a giant yawn.  Dave Winer sees it as an opportunity missed.  Techdirt reacts with derision.  Everyone seems to be noticing that these kind of start pages have been around since the mid-90s.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

They are right.  My Times is inferior to start pages like Netvibes and Pageflakes that have tons of widgets and can be customized in pretty much limitless ways.  But I’m pretty sure the folks behind My Times would answer by saying that they aren’t trying to compete with My Yahoo or Netvibes or whoever.  I doubt the Times staff expect folks without an intense, pre-existing relationship with the Times website to sign up specifically to use their start page.  My Times is intended as a value added feature for their loyal website readers – a way to get them to spend more time on the site.  My Times accomplishes that goal very well I think. 

We received some fantastic feedback in regards to my post last week about our picks for the best US newspaper websites. I'd like to take a moment here and point out some other great websites that our readers brought to our attention.

A few readers questioned why our list only referred to US papers. Due to limited resources, our initial research only addressed the websites of publications here in the US.  Last year, we conducted research on some international papers with help from our readers.  In general, however, the Guardian and the International Herald Tribune are two examples of great newspaper websites. Their designs are superior with clean and uncluttered layouts.  Both of these sites have successfully differentiated themselves from their print counterparts by combining aesthetic appeal with solid content and technological offerings.  The Guardian tends to be known for offering high quality reporter blogs, which are expanded upon on the site Comment is Free, a blog- and comment- driven site tied to the Guardian's website. 

Commenter Genevieve pretty much sums up the International Herald Tribune site in the comments from the original post:  

I’m really surprised to not see the newly redesigned International Herald Tribune on this list: http://www.iht.com

It’s really clean and easy to read, the navigation “cloud” is interesting. I love how easy Search is to get to, and the video box on the right is cool. Plus, who doesn’t love big photos and big headlines on the article pages?

'Nuff said.

Some smaller US papers also received some positive reviews:

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Micah Sifry’s post last week about YouTube metrics got me thinking about which videos produced by the campaigns have been viewed the most on YouTube. Following is a list of Dem Presidential candidate videos that have attracted more than 200,000 YouTube views. I’ve excluded YouTube spotlight videos, since they tend to attract a ton of views no matter the candidate/quality of the question.

(1) Hillary Clinton: I Need Your Advice (627,335 views)

Clinton asks for help in picking her campaign song.

(2) Hillary Clinton: Pick My Campaign Song Take 2 (337,366 views)

Follow up to video #1 above that is a mash up of responses sent in by users.

(3) Barack Obama: My Plans for 2008 (334,261 views)

Video in which Barack Obama announces the formation of his exploratory committee and discusses his rationale for running.

(4) John Edwards: Ann Coulter on Good Morning America (294,280 views)

Video of Ann Coulter saying she wished John Edwards’ had been killed by a terrorist assassination plot.

(5) Mike Gravel: Campaign Finance Reform (275,855 views)

A video posted by the Gravel campaign in response to a leftover question from the YouTube debate.

(6) Barack Obama: Opposition from the Start (239,822 views)

Clips of Obama over the years expressing his opposition to the Iraq war.

(7) John Edwards: Hair (230,784 views)

Viral video produced by the Edwards’ campaign in response to the notorious Feeling Pretty video. First aired at the YouTube debate.

(8) Bill Richardson: Job Interview (208,210 views)

Viral video that highlights Richardson’s qualifications for the Presidency.

I’d classify these videos as follows:

• Numbers 1, 2, 7 and 8 (50%) are your classic viral videos put out to draw attention to the candidate/attract page views/raise money. They are heavy on humor and not issue oriented at all.
• Numbers 3, 5 and 6 (37.5%) are more issue-oriented videos, but have viral qualities all the same. The Gravel campaign smartly piggy backing off the YouTube debate to get some attention. The first Obama video piggy backed off the media coverage of his announcement while the second potently explains the difference between Obama and the other Dem front runners on Iraq.
• Number 4 (12.5%) is a rapid response video that was distributed widely by the Edwards’ campaign as part of a fundraising pitch.

I don’t really have a big point here, but I think anyone who reviews that list sees that successful YouTube videos don’t just come out of nowhere. They are the result of good planning/production and smart timing. In other words there is a real strategy to being successful on YouTube.

Fred Thompson Disclaimer 

When the CIA began advertising and recruiting via the social network facebook, I kind of laughed since someone working in the clandestine services should keep information safe and not freely divulge it.  However, the whole point of social networking sites is to share information with your "closest friends."

Interesting, the Financial Times reports today that the intelligence community within the United States government sees more use to social networking sites than just recruitment.  As the government is trying to improve inter-agency communication that plagued it before the 9/11 attacks, the paper reports that, "Thomas Fingar, the deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, believes the common workspace – a kind of 'MySpace for analysts' – will generate better analysis by breaking down firewalls across the traditionally stove-piped intelligence community." 

According to this article, the government expects to deploy the social network – named "A-Space" – to all of its intelligence agencies by December.  This is a rather interesting development in the world of social networking sites; it's a bummer that most of us can't observe how it functions. 

The left-leaning news and opinion site The Huffington Post announced a new commenting policy to its community last Thursday.  It'll promote top commenters to regular Huffington Post bloggers. 

Community members will help determine who gets this honor by using the site's new "I'm A Fan Of" and "Favorite" links for comment and user profile pages. Paul Berry explains, "Our decision will be based on how many fans a commenter has, how often their comment is selected as a Favorite, and our moderators' preferences."

I think that this is a great idea since community driven sites need to find ways to award their members, and this is an interesting strategy.  First, commenters who earn this promotion will have to prove that they'll particiate on the site in an intelligent way.  Second, it'll encourage commenters to do their best to contribute in a constructive fashion so that they'll even have a chance to win a blogger spot on the site.  Third, promoting the best commenters is a great way to retain and encourage active participation on the site.