tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23875697930663908422011-07-28T12:53:18.465-07:00Discussing the technology of politics, pop culture and its pervasiveness as part of the national and cultural discourse in campaigns, in Washington and around the countryDave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.comBlogger301100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-30305951862364007662009-03-08T12:25:00.000-07:002010-06-30T16:20:28.399-07:00

Web 2.0 is old news for many of us. After several years of businesses and Web sites touting their "Web 2.0" or "Interactive Web" or "Social Web" status, I have rarely found sites using Web 2.0 techniques to amplify their inherent "interactiveness". Most of the good newspaper sites like New York Times and Washington Post used this technology effectively, if not in a truly compelling way, like,

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-19701272263366413782009-01-21T17:24:00.000-08:002009-01-21T17:58:11.878-08:00

Washington, D.C.--What a great weekend it's been here: the city never looked so good, people from out of town and those from here all had big smiles on their faces. People were genuinely nice to each other and treated each other with respect--when was the last time you saw that in a major city?My wife and I came for the Inauguration and Illinois State Ball. We ended up enjoying a concert and a

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-2393477944489877862008-11-04T15:18:00.000-08:002008-11-04T15:25:05.948-08:00

The Republican Party has led in database development for the last 20 years, mostly with the work of former direct mailer Richard Viguerie, with his Moral Majority and Reagan contacts. I remember reading about it in industry journals at the time.What Obama's campaign has done is made this kind of database scientific. There is no contact that is not followed up on through any of the following means

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-50077202969154285072008-11-02T17:06:00.000-08:002008-11-02T17:38:31.147-08:00

Number two on my list (previous post) of technological innovations to political discourse and campaigning this year is regression modeling of polls. The first one that I saw doing something like this, though far more simplistically is realclearpolitics.com (RCP). Basically what they did is took an average of all the polls, without assigning any kind of weighting. This was good to give us a nice

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-58068774763035537322008-11-02T11:48:00.000-08:002008-11-02T12:24:10.466-08:00

The time is finally upon us. After nearly two years of campaigning we are about to elect a new president. This election has kept me so wrapped up in all the technology that I have not even had a chance to add my voice to it. Here are some of the amazing technologies that will forever be useful in future  campaigns:Social Media NetworkingRegression modeling of PollsGet Out The Vote (GOTV) database

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-23775609099047093672008-09-29T17:19:00.000-07:002008-09-29T17:26:59.166-07:00

It is that time of the year where baseball is foremost in this blogger's mind. Yes, I am following the election, to the point of "election fatigue" and I have many things to say about technology and politics. In fact, I will be covering the action over at my favorite site since the primaries, fivethirtyeight.com. But that will come a little slower in this coming month, particularly with the Cubs

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-85537107615375933932008-09-04T21:20:00.000-07:002008-09-04T21:26:02.575-07:00

Why are Republicans graded on a curve? Everyone in the Mainstream Media has said, "Oh, well McCain's not a good public speaker" and then said the same about Sarah Palin, basically the idea that she is inexperienced and will not do well.Yet, when these tepid speeches are completed, why do the Media go into paroxysms about how much better they did than anyone thought? Particularly if you're a

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-14125455260698082442008-09-01T11:29:00.000-07:002008-09-01T14:24:01.276-07:00

BOSTON - To take this picture, I stood at the spot where the Boston Massacre sparked a nascent movement for liberty, sovereignty, and freedom from colonial rule.As I stood there, I imagined what it must have been like to be standing the exact same spot in 1776 with the rest of the assembled masses as the first reading of the Declaration of Independence in public. That was the technology of the

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-35998410511683171152008-08-10T16:34:00.000-07:002008-08-10T17:14:23.177-07:00

I'm sure many of you have come across one of these "trash emails" trashing Barack Obama:Obama's Proposed Tax PlanWake Up, America!Equitable DistributionI recently received the first one about how Obama's tax plan is supposed to work. It was sent to me and my friends by a friend making fun of it. He in turn received it from what appears to be a very long thread. This thread is started by a VP at

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-28836099823902780042008-07-16T21:11:00.000-07:002008-07-16T21:14:46.280-07:00

See my mid-season prediction for the baseball season on http://www.bigshoulderssports.com.

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-1897323349973486052008-07-12T13:55:00.000-07:002008-07-14T14:52:36.127-07:00

Yesterday morning, I took an early lunch at 11am to go see if the iPhone was worth getting, and if the line was short, so I walked the block from my office to the Chelsea AT&T store. A quick calculation of about 30 people in front of me, at least 6 salespeople, at 15 minutes per transaction (on average from what was being said on the webs) meant that I'd be taken care of in between 1 and 1.5

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-4913284395747338672008-05-03T09:38:00.000-07:002008-07-12T13:55:35.191-07:00

In my quest to determine ROI in a charitable organization environment, I quickly came to the conclusion that applying the standard formulas used in for-profit businesses will not fit. Being a “Non-“ profit automatically means that a return on investment will be “nothing”. Since that is clearly not the case with any charitable organization, the “profit” must lie elsewhere. Reading the Good to

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-56461403713034286412008-03-19T12:55:00.000-07:002008-03-20T16:29:10.935-07:00

As I attended various discussions at the NTEN Conference (08NTC) today, Networking seemed to be the word of the day: Networking as in the standard way an IT geek uses it, which is the Local Area Network or Wide Area Network. This is important because for networking to be done in other ways, a good solid network infrastructure needs to be used in an organization. This will become more apparent as

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-79613717065577589162008-02-10T11:47:00.000-08:002008-02-10T16:57:32.761-08:00

Last night, my wife and I went to see From The Jam at the Blender Theatre at Gramercy. This is two-thirds of The Jam, missing only Paul Weller. I last saw The Jam in 1982 at the Aragon in Chicago, and it was a transcendent experience: Paul Weller's guitar-playing was incandescent and inspiring, Bruce Foxton's bass exploded melodically, and the thunderous drumming of Rick Buckler almost caused my

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-66444353588600953802008-01-30T18:49:00.000-08:002008-01-30T19:06:23.729-08:00

Recently, some stories have come up regarding the Diebold voting machines, this time favoring Senator Clinton against Senator Obama in the New Hampshire primary. While I believe there is a statistical rationale to being able to find wacky voting results (see Elections, U.S. Presidential, years 2000 and 2004), I did not believe that this was the case in New Hampshire. An excellent Salon Blog

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-68909727084150823072008-01-28T21:41:00.000-08:002008-01-30T18:49:19.783-08:00

If you're reading this, you've probably read my profile and see that I'm the Director, Information Systems at GMHC, which is a charitable organization. I do not like the sobriquets of "charitable" organization or "non-profit", because essentially, we are neither. We do not provide charity nor do we work for nothing. I prefer to tell people that I work in the Social-Profit sector. GMHC, and other

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-68655490262888825292007-10-21T21:35:00.000-07:002007-10-21T22:11:45.036-07:00

click image to enlargeIf you look at the prediction, based on season numbers, the Red Sox have an overwhelming advantage, based on runs scored, runs against and Log5. I know what many people are saying: how can the Rockies have such a low chance? Well, a season is not the last 22 games of regular season and playoffs. When someone is making a business decision, will they choose the business that

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-20124415105397589142007-10-08T20:56:00.000-07:002007-10-13T10:10:00.533-07:00

Click Image to EnlargeI guess $200,000,000 plus payrolls just don't go as far as they used to anymore.The probable winners in the LCS's will be the Rockies and the Red Sox. Of course, that's not to say that they will win. As I often find myself explaining to people that the statistics show the most probable world, not the way the world will be. That's also why I don't take this information and

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-17277753232306803122007-10-07T10:14:00.000-07:002007-10-07T10:22:01.105-07:00

As The Who sang so many years ago, it fits Cubs' fans today. Even when the odds seem to favor them, the "odd" seems to take hold, and off goes another season ending to the sad refrain of "wait 'til next year..."The Phillies Phans as well, are sad, and most likely will those of LA and NY. It's possible that all teams might sweep today--now that's a weird one (chance: 3%). click to enlarge imageI

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-38637462502170515822007-10-05T20:13:00.000-07:002007-10-05T21:59:13.374-07:00

Sorry--I love alliteration.In any case, the Yankees now have less of a chance to beat Cleveland than the Cubs do of beating the Snakes, even though they both play the next two (if there are two) at home.A note while I watch the Red Sox play the Angels: Steve Stone is the best analyst in the game. I remember back in Chicago, and listening to him carry Harry Caray during all those years--when Caray

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-60698934876540591742007-10-04T21:46:00.000-07:002007-10-04T23:03:33.535-07:00

Looks like the Cubs are going to have to put it all together in the last 3 games of this series, they don't look at all like the team that that overcame adversity and battled all year. Soriano, in particular, looks like the second coming of a young Shawon Dunston, haplessly flailing away at curves out of the strike zone. The Phillies look like a total fluke now that had no business making the

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-19996419261949444362007-10-03T21:42:00.000-07:002007-10-03T21:50:41.129-07:00

Two of the favorites tonight have held serve, but the Cubs did not. Even though the odds overall were in the Cubs' favor, most knowledgeable knew that beating Brandon Webb at home was a tall order. Although the Cubs odds of winning have gone down with this loss, I still think that they'll probably win the next two of three games, as originally predicted.Boston and Colorado now have commanding

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-28891136843633597522007-10-01T20:15:00.000-07:002007-10-02T08:34:10.659-07:00

This will be a cross-post with Big Shoulders Sports.Two years ago on Big Shoulders Sports, I blogged about the postseason chances of the White Sox. Re-reading prior to this post surprises me that I was so accurate (I predicted a Sox victory)--perhaps I need to call a bookie!In any case, my method is to use a combination of Bill James' Pythagorean Theorem and his Log5 Theorem for one-game win

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-12799006962108942812007-10-01T09:01:00.000-07:002007-10-01T09:20:01.829-07:00

As you may have seen in one of my earlier posts, I also do a Stats-type Baseball Posting on an Ex-Pat Chicago Sports Web site.It's always nice to be appreciated, as my Season Predictions proved highly accurate, my fellow blogger posted about that.I love Bill James' Sabermetric work, and I used his Win-Shares formula to see how the off-season would add up for the Cubs. Turns out I was only off by

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-41258414829904342372007-08-19T08:43:00.000-07:002007-08-19T10:16:40.625-07:00

Since a friend pointed me to the story of WikiScanner early last week, I've been reminded of my previous post of helping politicians technologically: If you've done something stupid, it will catch up to you. And so caveat rector, literally, ruler beware, but this will apply more to the wannabe rulers out there. Add WikiScanner as an additional nightmare for politicians and their PR people, along

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-9758055302059394302007-06-30T18:50:00.000-07:002007-06-30T20:24:34.117-07:00

Last night, The Wife and I were near the Apple Store on 5th Avenue around Midnight. We thought we would check out the latest electronic gadget. It would not surprise anybody to know that the writer of a blog titled what this one is would be what is called in the business an Early Adopter. Not only am I an early adopter, I'm also an Early Proseletyzer, because if I like the gadget, everyone I know

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-29653140479605170032007-06-12T17:27:00.001-07:002007-06-12T17:30:49.990-07:00

I do not have a Techology post, but here is one of my seemingly never-ending blogs on another blog about baseball. Go to Big Shoulders Sports to see this post utilizing Bill James' Pythagorean Wins theorem...

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-16004743017283219872007-05-12T11:46:00.000-07:002007-05-17T11:30:36.287-07:00

It wasn't very long ago that a politician could derail his campaign with a badly-timed photo op (or paparazzi shot): Gary Hart on the boat with a jeans model, Dukakis in a tank (I see this one in my nightmares), or even very recently with Kerry windsurfing. You think to yourself, "Knowing the scrutiny they were getting in the middle of a campaign season, how could they let themselves be caught in

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-72955704319301024232007-04-25T13:47:00.000-07:002007-04-28T13:22:53.320-07:00

When I first heard about this a couple weeks ago, the politics of the situation were the most intriguing element of this story: Did Karl Rove, adviser to the President, try to subvert the Hatch Act, which provides for full accounting of all communications from, to and within the White House, by using his RNC-funded and maintained email for his secret, and potentially, illegal work as an employee

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2387569793066390842.post-84083436102412794092007-04-24T11:04:00.000-07:002007-04-27T09:15:07.582-07:00

And I'm sure I mean that literally, considering that the average readership of a blog is 1!Despite that, I will try to post weekly, but if topics come up that are of interest and immediacy, I will at least attempt a quick note.Who am I and why should you bother to read my blog? I can answer the first, and give inducements to the second, but ultimately you will decide whether your time is well

Dave Tainerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01645942810568356178noreply@blogger.com8