Hope everyone has a great weekend!

I'll be at ITEXPO/Communications Developer Conference in LA

Thanks Dan

Have a good trip, Sheryl

We'll be in North and South Carolina

Bye, have a good weekend.

We will not be at ITExpo either :(

Enjoy your holidays this weekend guys.

Skype IM is the most useful function for me.

MSN from PC to Mac is PAINFULLY slow

AND their IM works. File transfers on Skype are FAR more reliable than the alternatives

Yes, 50MHz... no frying pans allowed.

I remember hearing a bus go buy on the street outside the window of someone I was calling...

I'm sure you meant 50 Mhz, right Jim? 50 Ghz would be one smoking hot processor... literally!

Is it really only 5 years? I can't remember really not having skype. I guess it's selective memory.

I wonder how the Obama folks will use SMS to monitor polling places. To deal with what happened in 2000?

But I don't want to know who is NDP or not :)

Here in the UK we're not seeing it yet but if the politicians 'get' it they have the opportunity to connect to a generation that generally ignore politicians - i.e. people younger than us lot!

yes

Unbelievable Bill. Dick Wadham is obviously not well educated at all.

Obama has been the most successful "small donation" fund raiser in American History

It will be interesting to see which candidate manages to make best use of the new media in their campaign

Bizarre story

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/whoops_top_republican_admits_t.php

But I do agree that the potential exists and is HUGE

Boris Johnson on Twitter - ha ha ha!

I don't know if I agree Jonathan. I'm skeptical as to how much technology the conservatives are using. So of course that presumes skeptics are conservative

Much more personal than the generic newsletters that come through the door & are supposed to impress us!

Gordon Brown on Twitter - now there is a thought

Absolutely - in order to attract votes, candidates must somehow get 'close' to the voter - and there are are whole load of new technologies that allow potential voters to get close to the people

Connecting with individuals directly via SMS,social networking & blogging offers politicians huge opportunities to communicate with a cynical population who distrust politicians. The US has the lead here. We're not seeing much happening here in the UK, although our Prime Minister's office is on Twitter!

probably Jeanette's grandkids LOL!

I'm hearing video games

Of course not. Tech policy is so key to the economy.

Ok...as geeks, do you want someone who isn't at least tech savvy? If the candidate has no clue....think Senator Stevens :)

Tha intimacy is one of the things that creates the trust...

Exactly, Alec!

http://www.callsforchange.org/index.php/Main_Page<br/> David C. Troy, CEO, Popvox LLC<br/><br/>David Troy is a technology entrepreneur, software developer, and contributor to many open source projects, including Asterisk and OpenSER. David will discuss and demonstrate distributed phonebanking tools developed for use in the 2006 US elections. The Popvox applications have been developed using AJAX & Web 2.0 methodologies and are designed for use by a wide audience. <br/>Calls For Change is a one-day miniconference bridging innovative telephony applications and social change. A series of talks and workshops targeting Activists, Advocacy, Fundraisers, and Organizers will be held by Technical Innovators who have been successfully using telephone networks as a powerful tool for social change. A wide breadth of tools will be covered, from traditional membership communication, Get Out The Vote, and call centers, to more recent tools and technologies such as Web 2.0 applications, VoIP, polling, and SMS.

his voice changes...it sort of gets electronic

http://seantevis.com/kansas/3000/running-for-office-xkcd-style/

One of the really great thing about sms use is realtime information from whomever it is you trust to deliver it.

Haven't James... I want to hear about that once Dan's done!

Have you seen all the stuff that Dave Troy has been playing with to support political campaigns?

On the Skype topic, Skypecasts are going away... http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2008/08/goodnight_skypecasts.html

TechPresident.com is a good site to look at in general for these type of issues: http://www.techpresident.com/blog/entry/29120/the_medium_is_the_text_message

And a piece VERY fitting to the theme is here at TechPresident: http://www.techpresident.com/blog/entry/29120/the_medium_is_the_text_message

Gigaom had a nice piece up about Obama's use of text messaging: http://gigaom.com/2008/08/24/what-obamas-text-message-campaign-reveals/