CivicActions

Google is announcing Friend Connect tonight, a service advertised to "help website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors." Friend Connect employs OpenID and oAuth which is a good start, but how it puts them together is lacking vision and, disturbingly, may raise significant privacy concerns.

I just found the following interesting facts compiled by Women Who Tech, which incidentally is hosting a Tele-Summit on Women in Technology on March 31st, 2008.

Top 5 Cities Where Women Work in IT

• Washington, DC Metro area - women account for 32.3% of the IT workforce.
• Detroit - women account for 31.5% of the IT workforce.
• Baltimore - women account for 28.6% of the IT workforce.
• Philadelphia - women account for 28.2% of the IT workforce.
• Atlanta - women account for 28.2% of the IT workforce.
  

What was AT&T's vision of the Internet? Movies on demand? Bridges without stopping to pay toll? What about he CRAZY stuff, like: Meeting without your shoes on?! Faxing from the beach? Tucking your baby in from a phone booth? Who the hell knows what a phone booth is?

Alex Iskold has written a fantastic piece on The Road to the Semantic Web

"Some people think that the Semantic Web is about AI, some claim that it is more about semantics, while others say that it is about data annotation. All agree however, that we will all be wonderfully more productive and simply happier when it arrives."

What is the Semantic Web?

Zephyr Teachout has a great op-ed in the Washington Post today about the future of campaigning.

She talks about some interesting ideas like mobile political affinity software, political accountability software and political placement as ways of reaching voters in '08.

Thanks to the Berkman Center newsletter for pointing this one out.

Evolve Strategies has developed a Web-based “widget� to collect and report election incidents that may require voter protection intervention.

VoterStory.org is an open-source utility that can be placed on any website to feed data into a central database, which in turn alerts voter protection groups each time a new incident is reported in their district.

Like to count cards in Vegas? Double your coupons? Digg new stories?

Then you'll love to Spike the Vote.

Today MAPLight.org unveiled a pioneering database that lays bare the connection between money and votes in California politics.

http://www.maplight.org

The MAPLight.org website combines information from the Official California Legislative Information website, which contains the official text of each bill and how each legislator voted, and the Institute on Money in State Politics, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to accurate, comprehensive and unbiased documentation and research on campaign finance.

MAPLight.org allows journalists and citizens to answer questions such as:

At first glance, the PEW report on the Future of the Internet seemed a bit juvenile. Then jumping in to it, I realized those surveyed included Internet luminaries Esther Dyson and Howard Rheingold (among others), and should be taken seriously...

From the report summary:

"A survey of internet leaders, activists, and analysts shows that a majority agree with predictions that by 2020:

* A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening� world.

* Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents� proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.

* Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.

* Tech “refuseniks� will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.

* People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.

* English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence."

Read the full PDF report.