RNC Chair’s Race Made For Twitter
Today, the Republican National Committee is electing a new Chair at their winter meetings. The Chair is elected through a series of secret ballots, the results of which are announced to the folks attending the meetings. This kind of event is made for Twitter, as tons of people in the room as posting results in real time. It has been fascinating to watch today. At this point the sixth ballot is about to be cast and the race is down to Dawson and Steele. Below are some Twitter accounts to follow to get updates in real time:
- anamariecox (Anna Marie Cox)
- TheHyperFix (Chris Cizilla)
- PatrickRuffini (Patrick Ruffini)
- katieharbath (Katie Harbath)
- mkhammer (Mary Katherine Hamm)
You can also check out the #rnchair hashtag for an aggregation of the various conversations about the race that are going on. You should also follow @bivings while you are at it. 
Update: Michael Steele won.
Pickens Plan Web Program Wins Reed Award
Last week a project we work on, the Pickens Plan, won a Reed Award for best use of social networking technology. The Reed Award is put on by Campaign & Elections’ Politics Magazine and recognizes excellence in political communication. The award was given in recognition of Push.PickensPlan.com, a Ning-based social network that has attracted around 200,000 members who support the principles of the Pickens Plan.
Along with My.BarackObama.com, Push.PickensPlan.com is one of the first social action networks, which, put simply, are social networks focused on achieving political or legislative goals. We’ll be writing more about this trend in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
Socializr Succeeds Evite
Dear Evite,
We're breaking up. It's not me; it's you. And I've found someone better. Her name is Socializr.
Best of luck in future projects,
J. W.
If only it were that simple to get Evite out of my life. Unfortunately, 99% of my friends still insist on using it, despite its numerous flaws. In 2007, Time Magazine renounced Evite as one of the 5 Worst Websites. Following that up, Wired Magazine blasted the site in an article titled Why Things Suck: Evite. There are even sites dedicated to how awful of a service Evite runs, and yet it still remains wildly popular. I'm far from the first person to write about this phenomenon, but I'm here to recommend what I have found to be a far better product: Socializr.
Website Review: Least I Could Do
[NOTE: Several of the comic strips presents in Least I Could Do contain suggestive dialogue and occasional course language. Please read at your own discretion.]
Webcomics normally contain several elements: tech humor, poorly drawn animation, infrequent updates, and ad-riddled layouts. To top it off, many of these sites contain poor code and shoddy design (which is ironic considering that the very same comics mock bad tech users). Thankfully, none of these elements are present in Least I Could Do (LICD), a web comic that proves the diligence of formal newspaper comics can translate to the world of the Internet.
Comments Vote WordPress Plugin
The Bivings Group is proud to announce the release of our first WordPress plugin, Comments Vote, which is available for download on WordPress.org.
This plug-in enables users of the website to vote comments up or down, in a style similar to Digg.com. The running vote tally can be displayed next to the comment, as a positive or negative number. The screenshot to the right shows what this looks like.
In addition, administrators have the ability to set a threshold at which comments are automatically collapsed, meaning users won’t see them unless they specifically opt to. This feature will make Comment Vote useful plugin for webmasters looking to have their community help them police their comment section for spam, trolls and general unpleasantness.
This release is most definitely a first iteration. We have plans to make improvements to the user interface of the plugin, with the goal of giving administrators more control of how the buttons/votes are displayed. We also want the collapsing of comments to work most smoothly.
Comments Vote was original written as a custom plugin for a client project we were working on. It has been cleaned up and made release-worthy by John Bafford, our Director of Programming Services.
This plugin is installed on this blog, so please test out in the comments. Please leave comments if you have suggestions or find bugs.