One of the worst problems I’ve found with the current state of American Presidential campaigning this season is the glut of pre-packaged propaganda.  It’s either B. Hussein Obama’s pre-screened tech-centric interviews, John “Pretty Boy” Edwards’ 300 social media presences (with no actual personal updates from the candidate himself), or a CNN-YouTube debate where the glut of questions are so great that the moderators and participants of the debate can still cherry-pick the topics to where it is little more than a glorified joint press conference.

Any way you slice it, only in a few rare cases has social media allowed us a good glimpse of what is actually happening on the campaign trail, and what is actually being said by the candidates.

Thanks to the Democrats, though, that’s about to change.  Part of the primary process involves a lot of what are called “stump speeches.”  Essentially, the candidate will go from town to town, state to state, and recite more or less the same speeches, and usually end the speeches with an open question and answers session.  As such, the press coverage tends to be light, since the cable news followers don’t really need to hear the same speech from all 18 candidates every single day.  What the public ends up missing, though, is how the message each candidate presents evolves over the course of the campaign, and the generally unique questions and interactions that occur at the end of the speech segments.

That’s about to change.  True political junkies and citizens genuinely interested in the political process can now follow all the Republican candidates as they go from stump speech to stump speech.  Utilizing Blip.TV media serving, Democrat operatives will now be attending as many Republican stump speeches, filming them and uploading them to the DNC’s new FlipperTV. The reasoning behind it is that they’re tired of being pegged by Republicans as “flip-floppers,” or in other words, constantly waffling and changing positions on the issues.  They think that by having a library of Republican stump speech coverage, they’ll be able to spot flip-flopping a mile off.

This will end up back-firing on the Democrats, in the long run. First of all, only in rare cases have the presidential Republicans contradicted themselves, and never three times in a matter of minutes, like Senator Clinton has, for example. Beyond the politics and behavioral studies of various political candidates, the value of providing hours of raw footage of Republican candidates has far more inherent value to Republican supporters than Democrats. Republican conservative online video producers and bloggers, for instance, now have a wealth of source material to pepper their productions with.

Meanwhile, Democrats now have an immense time-sink, as they scour and are exposed to literally days worth of Republican propaganda.

So Republicans, next time you see a Democrat, thank them for the great resource.

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Everyone loves photos, and they’ll put them anywhere. On calendars, mugs, t-shirts, and coasters. Which is why American Greetings Corp. seems so very interested in online photo services that provide ways in which to do all these things with your photos. First Webshots, and now Photoworks, for $26.5 million.

American Greetings will make a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding common shares of PhotoWorks at 59.5 cents per share. The merger is expected to be complete by the end of January, 2008. Whether Webshots and PhotoWorks will eventually be combined into a single service, or simply morphed into American Greetings entirely, is unknown. A complete morphing of services seems unlikely, as Photoworks has additional options such as storefronts for users to sell their work.

But it’s clear that American Greetings would like to expand its “greetings” tools to offer better options for gifts, cards, and all the things that go along with special events. And it’s looking to do it in a big way. With Webshots having been purchased from CNet and now PhotoWorks under its belt, the plan is to become a leader in the space. Nevertheless, it will still have Cafe Press to contend with.

[via paid content]

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Everyone loves photos, and they’ll put them anywhere. On calendars, mugs, t-shirts, and coasters. Which is why American Greetings Corp. seems so very interested in online photo services that provide ways in which to do all these things with your photos. First Webshots, and now Photoworks, for $26.5 million.

American Greetings will make a cash tender offer to acquire all outstanding common shares of PhotoWorks at 59.5 cents per share. The merger is expected to be complete by the end of January, 2008. Whether Webshots and PhotoWorks will eventually be combined into a single service, or simply morphed into American Greetings entirely, is unknown. A complete morphing of services seems unlikely, as Photoworks has additional options such as storefronts for users to sell their work.

But it’s clear that American Greetings would like to expand its “greetings” tools to offer better options for gifts, cards, and all the things that go along with special events. And it’s looking to do it in a big way. With Webshots having been purchased from CNet and now PhotoWorks under its belt, the plan is to become a leader in the space. Nevertheless, it will still have Cafe Press to contend with.

[via paid content]

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Photo sharing – one of the biggest and most successful areas of Web 2.0, and likely to be a hotly contested area of the Open Web Awards. Flickr recently passed the 2 billion upload mark, while earlier in the year we saw Photobucket acquired by Fox Interactive for more than $300 million and international standout Fotolog cash in to the tune of $90 million. Meanwhile, upstarts like Zooomr and Picnik have their share of rabid enthusiasts. All the while, it could also be argued that Facebook is actually the largest photo sharing application on the Web.

To nominate a photo sharing service, leave a comment with the word “NOMINATE” in it. Nominations will remain open until 11:59pm PST on December 4th (next Tuesday). At that point, we will tally up the nominations and enter the second stage of the competition – voting.

Once again, a thank you to our sponsors:

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Photo sharing – one of the biggest and most successful areas of Web 2.0, and likely to be a hotly contested area of the Open Web Awards. Flickr recently passed the 2 billion upload mark, while earlier in the year we saw Photobucket acquired by Fox Interactive for more than $300 million and international standout Fotolog cash in to the tune of $90 million. Meanwhile, upstarts like Zooomr and Picnik have their share of rabid enthusiasts. All the while, it could also be argued that Facebook is actually the largest photo sharing application on the Web.

To nominate a photo sharing service, leave a comment with the word “NOMINATE” in it. Nominations will remain open until 11:59pm PST on December 4th (next Tuesday). At that point, we will tally up the nominations and enter the second stage of the competition – voting.

Once again, a thank you to our sponsors:

Reddit.com - Reddit.com is a social news aggregation website where readers, not editors, determine the top stories.

WIRED - WIRED is the first word on technology, exploring how ideas fueled by innovation change the world.

Cohn and Wolfe - Our PR partner and co-producer.

Quintura - Quintura makes you control your web search. You will find what you want as quickly as possible.

RetailMeNot - The RetailMeNot.com community saves you money by sharing 50,000+ coupon codes for 10,000+ stores.

Streakr - Discover more of the web you love together with Streakr.com

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Yahoo now has a Facebook module that you can add to your My Yahoo start page. It will tell you some basics about your Facebook status: how many new messages you have, if you’ve got any pending friend requests, invitations, and pokes. This is a fairly interesting tool coming from Yahoo, and I wonder if it will be building on it to incorporate even more information from various social networking portals.

For now, it seems pretty focused on you as an individual user, and the activity that’s occurring around you within your personal network–namely your inbox. It’s giving you immediate access to all the information you’ll see popping up in your Yahoo inbox, on your Yahoo start page. On the one hand, it doesn’t seem entirely different from a Gmail module for Facebook or Pageflakes. But it is different in the sense where it’s laying out the social activity for anything related to Facebook.

More importantly, it looks like it could be part of Yahoo’s “Inbox 2.0” initiative, at least in the sense where I found it could be most useful (around its start page). In an attempt to bring users back to Yahoo’s service, finding innovative ways to recoup some of the market share lost to social networks, and refocus its implied concept of showing users the most important information in their personal networks, this Facebook module could very well be part of that larger plan. We’ll be watching and waiting to see if this grows into something larger and more involved.

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Yahoo now has a Facebook module that you can add to your My Yahoo start page. It will tell you some basics about your Facebook status: how many new messages you have, if you’ve got any pending friend requests, invitations, and pokes. This is a fairly interesting tool coming from Yahoo, and I wonder if it will be building on it to incorporate even more information from various social networking portals.

For now, it seems pretty focused on you as an individual user, and the activity that’s occurring around you within your personal network–namely your inbox. It’s giving you immediate access to all the information you’ll see popping up in your Yahoo inbox, on your Yahoo start page. On the one hand, it doesn’t seem entirely different from a Gmail module for Facebook or Pageflakes. But it is different in the sense where it’s laying out the social activity for anything related to Facebook.

More importantly, it looks like it could be part of Yahoo’s “Inbox 2.0” initiative, at least in the sense where I found it could be most useful (around its start page). In an attempt to bring users back to Yahoo’s service, finding innovative ways to recoup some of the market share lost to social networks, and refocus its implied concept of showing users the most important information in their personal networks, this Facebook module could very well be part of that larger plan. We’ll be watching and waiting to see if this grows into something larger and more involved.

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Windows Live Messenger 9 was launched in private beta yesterday to a few thousand people, but a download link has been leaked and can be accessed on softpedia, in case you’d like to try it out for yourself. Microsoft has warned that too many users may cause the service to be shut down, so keep this in mind…if you care. There aren’t an incredible amount of new features, but the most notable is ringtones.

They’re not exactly ringtones like you’ll find on your phone, but the implementation of this new custom sound feature reminds me a lot of how ringtones are in fact used for your cell phone. Create a signature sound for what others will hear when you sign in, and sounds for your buddies that you’ll hear when they sign in. These can be attached specifically to individual buddies in your contact list, and could come in handy on several fronts if combined with Windows Live Messenger’s APIs.

It’s very much like the images that display on your Gmail contacts when you hover over an email address–you can view the image they’ve uploaded, or add one that you’ll see for that contact as well. Choose from the sounds that are pre-loaded, or add one of your own. You get 5 seconds for these ping audios, so choose your favorite part of the song, not just the boring intro. You can even add in fade in/out effects. Snazzy.

Other useful features in this release include the ability to log into multiple locations at the same time, without being signed off, and th ability to use your own animated GIFs for your avatar. You can also place links in your personal status message. Some improvements to existing features include better connectivity (according to Microsoft, it’s now faster), and other tweaks to texting IMs, voice and video features.

[via download squad]

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Microsoft is succumbing to patent trolls today, as they’re being ordered to pay over $140 million for, get this, asking for two passwords. The original award was ordered in April last year by a federal jury in Marshall, Texas, widely known as the friendliest court for patent trolls. There Microsoft and Autodesk were saddled with $158 million (plus attorney fees) for asking users to “input two passwords during the process of activating newly installed software with the aim of deterring piracy.”

Somehow, two weeks ago, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision in its entirety. This begs two questions in particular.

Did Microsoft Save Money?
Just setting aside the inestimable losses they took with their corporate attorneys, did they really stop the piracy of their software with the addition of an additional password? I’m guessing not. I can spend five minutes digging through Google and various crack sites and find a way to get a free copy of just about any version of Windows or any Microsoft product. The extra password isn’t fooling anyone.

The obvious answer, is no. Not that I’d ever pirate a Microsoft product, but from what I hear, its pretty rampant. Need further proof? Look at Vista’s Chinese sales numbers.

Evidently, adding layers of annoyance doesn’t really prevent piracy, then… which leads us to the other question:

Should the two password process of DRM be patentable?
I’m not a patent law expert, it seems to me that if the process is something a pre-schooler would come up with, it isn’t exactly something particularly cutting edge. As such, it shouldn’t be patentable.

Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster said, “Windows Vista and Office 2007 are not affected by the appeals court decision” and that “the company does not have to make any technical changes to Windows XP or Office 2003.” Clearly Microsoft came to the conclusion, based on the levels of piracy of previous software products, that asking for a second password didn’t do much to curtail piracy; they don’t even use that technology any longer (if you want to use the term technology charitably here).

Z4 Technologies, the patent holder in this case, does not even offer any actual services or products that utilize their patents, making them a patent trolling company (that is, a company who creates or acquires patents for the express purpose of suing companies that later use the ideas). As such, they are a perfect illustration of why the patent and intellectual property system is completely broken in America. Patents are supposed to encourage and promote technological advancement, not curtail them.

By granting fines payable companies that troll through the patent system in America, the barrier to entry for new technological participants is raised. Part of what truly cutting edge tech companies must account for now is the legal fees they must pay to either defend their products or pay the patent extortionists who come behind them and try to milk them with overly broad patents.

[via Silicon Valley]

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MashMeet Chicago is tomorrow! The event will be hosted by Mashable lead writer Kristen Nicole, host of Chicago’s successful Web Ascent event in June. She’ll be joined by fellow Mashable writer Andy Angelos, and interesting attendees will be covered here at Mashable.

The informal event will be hosted at Fulton Lounge on 955 West Fulton Market, Chicago, between the hours of 7:00 - 9:00 PM on Thursday, November 29th. We have reserved the whole left side of the chic lounge for you which includes a fireplace. Be sure to try a few of drinks off of their infamous Fall & Winter Martini Menu. Attendees are invited to join the MashMeet Chicago group to network before the event.

Where? Fulton Lounge

When? 7:00 - 10:00 PM, November 29th 2007, Thursday

Dress? Informal

RSVP Required? Nope, 21+ only

You can also find the details of this event at:

My Mashable MashMeet Chicago Group
Meetup.com
Facebook Event through Facebook Page
Upcoming

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