NDN Blog

Lots going on in the New Tools world this week. Here's a quick recap of some some of the most important things happening in the tech sphere:

• NDN and the New Politics Institute held an event on Tuesday entitled New Tools for a New Era. Hopefully some of you were able to join us in person, or via our new NDN Live Web cast. In case you couldn't make it, I'll be posting videos and a recap from the event tomorrow, so be sure to check back then - it was really good (and I say that as an objective, unbiased observer).

• Several prominent articles this week explored how the blurring of the line between phones and computers is both creating new opportunities and posing new challenges. First, an article in Wired discusses the spread of "iClones," phones from other manufactures that closely mimic the iPhone's features and interface. Another piece in Wired looks at how others are copying Apple's innovative (and highly lucrative) App Store model.

• A great article in the New York Times this week raises many of the same questions I asked in a previous post about location-aware mobile technology, one of the many advances enabled by the proliferation of smart phones and apps. It's well worth the read.

• Two more articles in the Times look at how mobile phone processors are beginning to rival PCs in their functionality. The first looks at how phones are beginning to break into the education sector. From the article:
  

  On Tuesday, Digital Millennial will release findings from its study of four North Carolina schools in low-income neighborhoods, where ninth- and 10th-grade math students were given high-end cellphones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software and special programs meant to help them with their algebra studies.

  The students used the phones for a variety of tasks, including recording themselves solving problems and posting the videos to a private social networking site, where classmates could watch. The study found that students with the phones performed 25 percent better on the end-of-the-year algebra exam than did students without the devices in similar classes.

  The other looks at how the ARM processors used in many smart phones are being adapted to create very inexpensive (~$200) "netbooks," stripped-down laptops with limited functionality. These ARM-based netbooks might even run on Google's Android platform, which currently powers Google's G1 smart phone. 

• These are certainly exciting prospects for those of us interested in the possibilities for using mobile technology and cheap laptops as instruments of social and political progress (see A Laptop in Every Backpack and Harnessing the Mobile Revolution to see just how much potential there is). But it's not all good news this week; because they will use broadcast TV's old frequency blocks, the delay of the DTV conversion will likely also delay the development of 4G networks and devices. However, the stimulus money should get the DTV conversion moving, and hopefully avoid any further delays (it's currently been pushed back until June).

• Obama's new site for the stimulus bill, recovery.gov, was built using Drupal (just like this site!), which is a big deal for nerds like myself. Drupal, for those of you that don't know, is a free, open-source content management system. The Administration's embrace of Drupal is another signal to us that they "get it." 

• Finally, a word about search ads. As I wrote last week, search ads are a highly effective and cost-efficient way of reaching targeted audiences (the Obama campaign saw an ROI of around 15:1 on their search ads). This market has recently been dominated by Google, which now owns two thirds of the search ad market share. However, in an attempt to shake things up and gain back market share, Yahoo has just introduced new search ads with images and video (they are normally text-only). This is something search ad buyers should certainly consider, as it mixes some of the benefits of search and banner/display ads. 

UPDATE: Today, Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post points out that more and more politicians are finally waking up to the fact that using 21st-century coummunication technology is vital in today's political environment. From his excellent piece:

...the GOP will be rebuilding itself at a time when the Democratic Party continues to make inroads in using technology to reach a diverse set of constituents with their message. Today, the New Politics Institute, an arm of the liberal think-tank New Democrat Network, will hold one of its many lunches for Democratic Hill staffers and advocacy folks. The title of the event: "New Tools for a New Era." Simon Rosenberg, founder of NDN, said the lunch is a part of his group's ongoing New Tools series, which tout the use of cell phones, social networks and micro-targeting, among others, in campaigning.

We hope you will join NDN and its affiliate, the New Politics Institute (NPI), today at noon for our first post-election tech event of 2009, New Tools for a New Age -- a discussion of three exciting media and tech tools with tremendous potential for use in politics, advocacy and governing today. This event will showcase some impressive new advances in the fields of social networking, Web video and microtargeting of television advertising.

For those not able to attend, we are excited to announce that we will be providing a live Web cast of the event from our newly redesigned, high-tech NDN event space just a block from the White House. Visit ndnblog.org/livecast today to catch a high-quality stream of the forum. Feel free to tell others you think might be interested in attending or watching. For those watching on the Web, the live program will begin at 12:15 p.m. ET.

Joining NDN President Simon Rosenberg for this forum will be Jason Rosenthal, Senior Vice President of Business Operations at Ning, Inc.; Tim Chambers, Co-Founder of the Media 50 Group and Principal, Dewey Digital; and Amy Gershkoff, co-founder of Changing Targets Media. Jason will talk about how Ning -- a scalable social networking platform -- can be adapted to a huge variety of applications; Tim will show us the new Dewey Digital Radar, which provides accurate and detailed Web video metrics for more than 150 Web video platforms; and Amy will tell us how Precision Buy can make media buys more efficient, from targeting the right cable systems to buying the right television programs.

The forum will take place at NDN's offices from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Lunch will be served, and seating will be first-come, first-serve. Space is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible. For maps, speaker bios, and other information, please click here.

For background, feel free to review the following memos and papers from NDN and NPI: Leverage Social Networks, Buy Cable Smart, and shaping and delivering messages with Microtargeting.

On Friday, I posted some of our recent breakthroughs in the media, including Morley Winograd and Mike Hais's piece in the National Journal and Simon's commentary on Judd Gregg's withdrawal in the Huffington Post, the Economist, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the Hill. That commentary picked up more steam over the weekend, appearing in Gather and even the Spanish-language Sendero de Peje. From the original Huffington Post feature piece:

During the Clinton administration, Judd Gregg fought hard to deny the Commerce Secretary the ability to use the latest techniques to ensure the most accurate Census count. The goal of this effort was to make it harder for the Census to count minorities, young people and the poor, groups the Republicans do not view as part of their coalition.

Rob's last blog post was also picked up by Reuters and internationally syndicated, appearing in papers worldwide. From the Reuters article:

Some economists argue globalisation, in the sense of the increasing integration of different countries in the world economy, is the cause, acting as a transmission belt from one suffering economy to the next.

"With globalisation, the world can suffer the central cost of protectionism -- a deep fall in trade -- without passing any new laws or regulations," Robert Shapiro, head of progressive think tank NDN's globalisation initiative, said in a blog.

...

"The crux of it is that as the share of what the world produces that's traded across borders rises -- 18 percent of worldwide GDP was traded in 1990, compared to 30 percent in 2006 -- a serious recession in a few large places moves quickly around the world, driving down global trade," said Shapiro of NDN, a former undersecretary in the U.S. Commerce Department.

In other words weak demand in one country increasingly affects others because they are more dependent on exports.

Simon's commentary on Senator Judd Gregg's surprise withdrawal of his nomination for Commerce Secretary yesterday was featured in the Huffington Post, the Economist, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the Hill. From the Economist:

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, cheers the news because Mr Gregg had opposed a census reform that might have counted more minority voters, and the census is typically under the Department of Commerce's purview (although this would have been changed had Mr Gregg served).

From Michael Tomasky of the Guardian:

So Gregg was mad, apparently, but there's a back story here. Simon Rosenberg of the Democratic-leaning group NDN, and a former Clinton White House staffer, wrote on his blog:

During the Clinton Administration, Judd Gregg fought hard to deny the Commerce Secretary the ability to use the latest techniques to ensure the most accurate Census count. The goal of this effort was to make it harder for the Census to count minorities, young people and the poor, groups the Republicans do not view as part of their coalition.

And from Chris Cillizza's "The Fix" in the Washington Post:

"The longer the Washington Republican Party holds on to old plays from an old political playbook, fighting a popular Democratic President and a whole new set of 21st century political realities, the more likely they are to suffer in the eyes of the American people," predicted Simon Rosenberg, the head of NDN, a progressive think tank.

NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais were also quoted in a great National Journal piece by Ron Brownstein, "Millennial Tremors" (which would also be a sweet name for the 5th sequel). From the National Journal article:

Generational comparisons can simplify, but early indications are that Millennials may balance idealism and pragmatism better than either Baby Boomers (who have favored the former, at times to self-righteous extremes) or Generation X-ers (who have often had trouble rising above self-interest). Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, fellows at the Democratic advocacy group NDN and co-authors of the perceptive book Millennial Makeover, say that Millennials display the group-oriented values of a "civic generation" like the fabled "GI Generation" that surmounted the Depression and won World War II. Civic generations (a phrase originated by authors William Strauss and Neil Howe) tend to favor "inclusive solutions" that "accomplish results without ... ideological argument," Winograd says.

A recent post from Personal Democracy Forum reports that the Obama campaign found online search ads had

a "ridiculously" high Return On Investment as a list-builder. Joe Rospars talked significantly more at a second NOI-sponsored event last month, divulging that search and contextual ads (Google Ads) were the backbone of the campaign's online advertising outreach, and that a relatively straightforward strategy had been steadily and consistently effective...when compared with the cost of acquiring supporters via other channels, search advertising absolutely shone, with an ROI Rospars described as approaching 15:1.

The Obama campaign, recognizing the power of search ads, spent a much larger percentage of their budget on them than the McCain campaign did; the Obama campaign spent about $8 million on search ads in 2008, compared to the McCain campaign's $1.5 million. To put that $8 million in perspective, it is reported to account for nearly half of all political search ad money for the year.

Given the Obama campaign's solid grasp of new media tools, their emphasis on search ads is not surprising. Nor are the results - NDN and the New Politics Institute have been pushing the use of online search ads for years now precisely because they are so inexpensive relative to their impact. For tips on how to use online search ads effectively, check out our excellent papers, Use Search and Advertise Online, or watch the video below of Google's Peter Greenberger speaking at one of our NPI events. Of course, not everyone will get the kind of return that the Obama campaign did - few people have been searched more in the last two years than Barack Obama. But as people get more and more accustomed to using Google whenever they need information about anything, search ads become more and more effective.

Finally, to learn about other great ways to improve your advocacy or campaign, be sure to drop by our NDN / NPI event, "New Tools for a New Era," this coming Tuesday, where we'll look at new advances in social networking, microtargeting, and web video. Anyone interested in technology and politics is guaranteed to geek out, and we'll be debuting a few new toys of our own; stay tuned for more info. 

Several factors combined to propel Barack Obama to the presidency in the historic 2008 election including America's rapidly changing demographics, a redrawn electoral map and the use of new tools and media that changed the way candidates communicated with voters.

Join NDN and NPI Tuesday, February 17, for our first post-election tech event of 2009 -- a discussion of three exciting new tools and media with tremendous potential for use in politics, advocacy and governing. This event will showcase some impressive new advances in the fields of social networking, Web video and television microtargeting.

NDN and its affiliate, the New Politics Institute (NPI), have long advocated and helped facilitate the use of new tools and media with our New Tools series. We are excited to bring you these new developments.

Joining us for this forum will be Jason Rosenthal, Senior Vice President of Business Operations at Ning, Inc.; Tim Chambers, Co-Founder of the Media 50 Group and Principal, Dewey Digital; and Amy Gershkoff, co-founder of Changing Targets Media. Jason will talk about how Ning -- a scalable social networking platform -- can be adapted to a huge variety of applications; Tim will show us the new Dewey Digital Radar, which provides accurate and detailed Web video metrics for more than 150 Web video platforms; and Amy will tell us how Precision Buy can make media buys more efficient, from targeting the right cable systems to buying the right television programs.

The forum will take place at NDN's offices from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Lunch will be served, and seating will be first-come, first-serve. Space is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible. For maps, speaker bios, and other information, please click here.

NDN was featured in a diverse group of media sources this week. Simon was quoted prominently in the San Francisco Chronicle about the legislative battle over the economic recovery package, and in the Las Vegas Sun on how Republicans are creating and playing off of unfounded fear of "welfare" for illegal immigrants to hold up immigration reform. From the SF Chronicle piece:

Simon Rosenberg, who heads NDN, a Democratic advocacy group, says the difficult drama starring Obama in the first weeks - including the new administration's effort and its road bumps over nominees - is being played out in some dire national circumstances.

"The country is hurting, people are desperate for their leaders to succeed - and their expectations are very high," he said. "And he's just a man. He's not a god. ... People are coming to realize ... that change, as it always is, will be hard. Barack Obama will have to grind it out."

And from the Las Vegas Sun article:

“The immigration system is broken and there are a lot of people who live in this country who are not legal citizens,” said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Washington-based think tank and advocacy organization. “So the issue of whether benefits are conferred upon them will come up again and again.”

Rosenberg said attaching the issue of immigration to other policy questions creates “proxy fights,” a waste of time and political momentum. Debate on the Children’s Health Insurance Program quickly became a setting for one of those proxy fights, he noted.

Simon's analysis of Michael Steel being picked for RNC Chair was also featured in Ben Smith's blog in Politico. Finally, Rob's argument for getting a "free" $420 billion by bringing corporations back to the U.S. was featured in the Bangor Daily News. From the Daily News editorial:

...An even better outcome would be for those companies to reinvest those earnings in equipment and personnel at home.

The measure won approval in 2004 for a one-year period, and an estimated $312 billion in funds was “repatriated,” according to analysis by Dr. Robert Shapiro, former undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs under President Clinton. Of the $312 billion, he wrote, $252 billion was brought back to the U.S. by manufacturing companies. The 2004 law dictated acceptable use of the funds to qualify for the low tax rate, and surveys showed that $73 billion was used to create or keep jobs; $75 billion was used in new capital spending; and $39 billion went toward paying off domestic debt. It also produced $34 billion in new federal tax revenues, making it a “free lunch,” Dr. Shapiro wrote. The same analysis suggests that about $421 billion to $565 billion would come home if the tax were lowered temporarily.

Here's a scary, scary graph, courtesy of Speaker Pelosi's office:

The green line is the current recession, with the other two being 1990 and 2001 (for a full-size version, click on the graph).

In his newest weekly address this morning, President Obama congratulates the Senate for reaching a compromise on the stimulus bill, and stresses the urgency of passing a stimulus package. Clocking in at over 4 minutes, it's one of the longer addresses the President has released. Check it out below:

The big news in geek-land this week is the recent release of Google's new location-based mobile application, Latitude. Latitude is a mobile social networking app for smartphones that allows your friends to see where you are in real-time, and vice-versa. Users see a little mug-shot of the people nearby, and have the option to text, call, email, or IM them by tapping their picture.  

NDN and NPI have written a lot about the importance of mobile technology and its effect on the political landscape. Location apps will add another layer of complexity to the picture. Today, location-based mobile social networking is still an emergent technology, with most users being early-adapters and geeks. Google's entrance into this space is likely to help get location-based networking off the ground (although tech reporters are quick to point out that, without integration with the main social networks like MySpace and Facebook, these apps remain limited in their utility).  

In this experimental stage, the uses and etiquitte for location-based services have not yet been fully identified and codified; for a fascinating and slightly creepy introduction to the location revolution, read the recent Wired feature, "I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle." Novelty aside, they are mostly limited (for now) to random meet-ups with friends in bars. However, I believe they have real untapped potential for organizing purposes, potential that we are really only beginning to understand. 

One of the challenges for progressives of all stripes (not just politicians) in this new political era is to understand how technology can broaden our reach and our horizons while making our world phenomenologically smaller and more inter-connected, and how we can utilize these advances to enhance solidarity and promote political and civic participation. So go get Latitude (or Loopt or WhosHere or Brightkite), play around with them, and start thinking about what comes next.