The 463: Inside Tech

“Liking” Politicians

(David Mack) With the mid-term elections only a few short days away, candidates are scrambling for any possible gains. Since its major debut in the 2008 elections, Facebook has grown as an inexpensive platform that many candidates are hoping will deliver the edge in competitive races.

We know that Facebook helped to turn out the vote in 2008, registering almost 60,000 voters. More than 1 million Americans used the service to find their polling location and more than 5.5 million users helped drive turnout by telling friends “I Voted” on Facebook.

On Election Day 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama had more than 2 million fans, a number that has grown to more than 13 million. Senator John McCain had 625,000 fans, and Sarah Palin had more than 500,000. Today, the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee maintain vibrant Facebook pages with thousands of fans.

In addition to individual candidates and parties, Facebook has grown as a tool for specific political and social causes. In the run-up to Election Day 2008, nearly 1 million people used a Facebook application to remind friends to vote. Independent groups like “Rock the Vote” used the platform to register more than 50,000 new voters.

The expectation is that the services’ growth and maturation in the past two years will make it an even more powerful tool in 2010.  Tools like Facebook’s own Politics page and U.S. Congress page have been added to facilitate conversation and activism from both sides.

And, starting this election, Facebook began distributing an analysis of activity by candidates in the most competitive races. Links to the most recent updates that cover House, Senate and Gubernatorial races can be found here.

Key findings from the top Senate races are below.  We’ll check back in after the election to see how good Facebook activity is at predicting 2010 election results.

Gaining Momentum (Largest increase of fans since last week)

1. Sharron Angle (Republican/Nevada) +6,767

2. Ron Johnson (Republican/Wisconsin) +6,278

3. Dino Rossi (Republican/Washington) +2,178

4. Rand Paul (Republican/Kentucky) +1,913

5. Carly Fiorina (Republican/California) +1,588

Top Landslides (Biggest fan gap between opponents)

1. Florida: Mark Rubio (R) +106,754 more fans than Kendrick Meek (D) and +100,789

more fans than Gov. Charlie Crist (I)

2. Nevada: Sharron Angle (R) +88,266 more fans than Sen. Harry Reid (D)

3. Kentucky: Rand Paul (R) +73,889 more fans than Jack Conway (D)

4. Washington: Dino Rossi (R) +29,540 more fans than Sen. Patty Murray (D)

5. Louisiana: Sen. David Vitter (R) +29,273 more fans than Charlie Melancon (D)

Top Posters (Most campaign wall posts in the past week)

1. Rep. John Boozman (Republican/Arkansas) - 45

2. Sen. Harry Reid (Democrat/Nevada) - 42

3. Christine O'Donnell (Republican/Delaware) - 41

4. Rep. Joe Sestak (Democrat/Pennsylvania) - 34

5. Kendrick Meek (Democrat/Florida) - 31

 

A Dream Deferred No More

Katie Hallen -- The Consumer Electronics Association's Innovation Movement, a grassroots campaign formed to fight for innovation policies in Washington, has debuted a new video this week on reclaiming the American Dream.

CEA described the "Innovation and the American Dream" video this way on its campaign blog:

"Americans are tired of free falling, and we are all ready for a big change...Those feelings of desperation – desperate to end the crisis and enter the cycle of renewal – are so visceral at times our judgment is clouded. We miss the solutions staring us in the face. We are ready for the great economic comeback, ready to reclaim the American Dream. How do we get there?'

'...It’s time Washington lawmakers take a page from Americans innovators and entrepreneurs to guide the nation toward a comeback. Americans, with their ingenuity, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit, have the ingredients for success; we only need Washington to support an economy where entrepreneurs are free to compete and pursue their dreams."

Appearing less than two weeks before the midterm elections, the video asks Americans to take action by joining the Innovation Movement to fight for change in Washington - and by change, they mean a policy environment that places entrepreneurs first and advocates policies such as trade, responsible spending, modernized H1Bs, and a free-market economy.  CEA President and CEO elaborates on that policy vision in an op-ed published by The Huffington Post this week.

The message seems to be resonating. The campaign's membership has seen tremendous growth, with nearly 100,000 individuals across the nation enlisting their support. To learn more, visit http://innovation-movement.com

 

 CEA is a 463 client.

 

 

Two Million Jobs, $50 Billion to the Government

(Tom Galvin) - Sometimes, in politics, the math simply doesn’t add up. Here’s a case in point. There is a tax proposal, bandied about today by Cisco CEO John Chambers and Oracle President Safra Catz, which would help create 2 million new jobs AND provide the federal government with about $50 billion in tax revenues.

It’s innovative and productive and goes about solving our nation’s biggest problem – jobs – while addressing our growing deficit. Unfortunately up to now, the political math has looked like this:

Outsourcing rhetoric  > new jobs and tax revenues

The national politic discourse has been so hung up on demonizing those who dare to have overseas operations that it’s failing to take into account that U.S.-based multi-national companies want to invest in the United States. But it has to be a rational decision. Imagine two banks based right next to each other: one offers a 1% return on your money, the other a 10% return.  Which one would you give your money to? That’s what’s happening with our tax policy.

And that’s what makes the Chambers-Catz proposal so interesting. By creating a competitive tax rate, it incents companies to bring back profits that are overseas and invest them in the United States. That could mean as much as a trillion dollars flowing back into the U.S. economy, and $50 billion going to federal coffers. They estimate it could help create 2 million jobs. Here’s a short snippet of what they have to say:

“The amount of corporate cash that would come flooding into the country could be larger than the entire federal stimulus package, and it could be used for creating jobs, investing in research, building plants, purchasing equipment, and other uses. It could also provide needed stability for the equity markets because companies would expand their activity in mergers and acquisitions, and would pay dividends or buy back stock. And when markets go up, confidence increases and businesses and consumers begin to spend.”

For you WSJ subscribers, here’s the link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704469004575533880328930598.html

Will Congress step up and do this? I guess we’ll have to see what happens after the election season is over. But this we know: with interest rates so low, there is little the Fed can do and with our deficit is so high it’s hard to fund a new stimulus. So, maybe it’s time for some new thinking.

Cisco’s Chambers and Oracle’s Catz seem to have done just that.

Futuristic Appliances: In-Demand or Unnecessary?

(Krista Strum) How important is it for your refrigerator or toaster to be intelligent? Most think it’s a ridiculous proposition while others welcome that idea, including the world’s leading technology companies. Cisco, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are placing their bets on smart appliances eventually becoming a hot “must have” and have devoted money toward more R&D in this area.  

They aren’t alone as they’ve formed partnerships with the likes of GE, MayTag, Samsung and Whirlpool to develop products that, for example, can log recipe’s, calculate cooking times, keep notes, and also play movies. 

Sounds good right? Although product makers think so, consumers haven’t yet warmed up to this idea and aren’t sure smart appliances are necessary.  Recent research shows that consumers are not ready for smart devices quite yet however they are open to energy savings appliances…which sort of fits in the smart devices category. 

Some analysts argue that consumer demand for smart appliances with energy monitoring and controls capabilities is on the rise. However, smart eco-appliances are not without a hefty price tag. For example CNET’s Martin LaMonica noted, “One of the first network ready hot water heaters costs nearly $1,600 more than a low-end model.”

Hefty price-points like this could leave consumers wondering whether they are really saving that much energy to make up for the difference in cost. In many cases, it all boils down to whether they want to pay upfront for the more expensive yet efficient products or sprinkle the energy consumption costs out over time by purchasing a moderately priced one.

 

 

Stop.Think.Connect.: The Smokey Bear of Online Safety

Katie Hallen -- October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month - it's an important time to focus on online safety as a national priority, understand the current threats, and empower ourselves with new tools and information to expore the digital world with confidence.

On October 4, a public-private coalition led by the U.S. government, private companies from Google to Walmart, and nonprofits unveiled a single online safety message that will form the basis of a new national campaign: "Stop. Think. Connect."

"Stop. Think. Connect." came about after a yearlong process of research, opinion polling, focus groups, and collaboration across organizations. Led by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), the coalition of organizations came together in a remarkable way to adopt a single unified message that hopes to do for online safety what "Smokey Bear" did for forest fire prevention and "Click It or Ticket" did for seatbelt safety.

President Obama is also supporting "Stop. Think. Connect."  As he wrote in a recent presidential proclamation, "Through this initiative, Americans can learn about and become more aware of risks in cyberspace, and be empowered to make choices that contribute to our overall security."

To learn more, check out these stories in USA TODAY and CNET. Also, take the "Stop. Think. Connect." security quiz on Facebook to see how safe you are online. Follow the news on Twitter by using the hashtags #NCSAM and #STConnect.

 

A TRILLION HERE, A TRILLION THERE

(Tom Galvin) Before he was a Senate Office Building, the Sen. Everett Dirksen’s uttered one of Washington’s most famous lines when he quipped that “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money.” He was talking about, how in Congress, big-ticket projects got tossed around like Frisbees.
 
Well, 50 years later, the price tag has jumped. We live in a world of $789 billion stimulus packages and $700 billion industry bailouts. The punch line is Government is spending a lot of money on what amounts to a credit card, and some day we have to pay it back.
 
That’s what makes today’s report by the Technology CEO Council so interesting. For once, the topic in Washington is how to save money, not spend it. TCC, a group of leading high-tech CEOs from IBM, Intel, Motorola, Dell, Micron, Applied Materials and EMC, published a report that spells out how the Federal Government can save $1 trillion over 10 years by modernizing government operations and making it more efficient. If you want details, you can see the report here - http://www.techceocouncil.org/reports/71-one-trillion-reasons.
 
The dirty secret of Washington is that while many industries have transformed themselves since the emergence of the Internet, government has always been late to the party. So, through a series of initiatives on green data centers, consolidation of government supply chains and digital records management, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit here. And let’s face it, we need it: we have $1.4 trillion in red ink this year alone.
 
The most constant refrain will be “haven’t we heard this song before?” And the answer is yes, of course. Vice President Gore led a major initiative in the early 1990s, for example. But keep in mind that was pre-Internet (i.e., the browser wasn’t introduced yet). Since then, we’ve seen an explosion of new technologies and applications. Just think what cloud computing will mean for the Federal Government in coming years. It makes you wonder if they remade “The Graduate” today whether Dustin Hoffman’s character would be told the future was “Cloud Computing” instead of “Plastics.” So, Government need pay attention.
 
This is also good timing. The Obama Deficit Commission will report back its finding in two months, and then Congress will grapple with next year’s budget, and deficit. Proposals like TCC are needed to figure out a way through the red ink – after all, a trillion here, a trillion there, and sooner or later you are talking about real money.