A B2C Web 2.0 Application That Really Works

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, most popularly, FaceBook. The Better Half is using LinkedIn every day to bridge many personal and professional gaps in online networking in promotion of her company's goals and helping her personal branding as an industry thought leader.

In light of this, after signing up for Verizon FiOS* (no, I do not have any affiliation with Verizon except as a new fiber customer!), and logging into their myFiOS page, I was floored by their magnificent use of the technology. What can I do on my FiOS page?

• Upon log in I am shown the status of my DVR (which I was allowed to rename), with amount of space remaining and shows that are set to record that day
• Remote DVR capability--say I need to work late that night and will miss my Countdown that evening, so I can go online and set my home DVR to record the 8pm broadcast
• Make space on DVR remotely by deleting watched or unwanted programs
• Look at the TV listings for future programs, and set the DVR to record
• Create channel lineup favorites
• Search for programs and set them to record

I don't remember the last time I bookmarked a page from a service provider like this, but after logging on and seeing the capabilities, it is now saved. Sure, there are more features that I'd like to see Verizon add to their site:

• RSS feed, so I can see if there's anything new without going to the Web site
• iPhone app--so I can control DVR from my phone
• request list alerts, so I can enter my favorite movies and be alerted/asked to record them when they make it on to the listings
• Recommendations ala Amazon or Netflix for shows I might be interested based on my DVR recording history
• FaceBook app of TV/Movie Recommendations

Even so, Verizon did a very good job with this and I must applaud good use, and good usability!

*On Saturday, March 7, I switched over from Time-Warner Cable to Verizon FiOS. I know that they are just doing this to entice switchovers and, after they've killed cable and become a monolithic monopoly, they will raise my rates through the roof, but this is really an unbelievable deal: 20/5MB down/up Internet, wireless router, HD DVR, HD TV, and $150 cash back. Not to mention what I just wrote about above!

President Obama: You Had Me at 'Nonbelievers'

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 parade as well. I don't have too many pictures because we were really far away from anything deserving of a picture and you've all by now seen the pictures from the National Mall and the Capitol Grounds.

As for the Inauguration ceremony, our tickets to the event said "Purple Standing". This now infamous section was one of the few which entrance was prohibited to us. Granted, we got there later than most people, but the line was long and we decided to watch the ceremony elsewhere. The one line that struck me the most was when my new President actually was talking directly to me: "For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers." That's me (the non-believer); no president had ever spoken directly to me and I appreciated that.

But what is truly the most important thing of all yesterday occurred in the cyberworld, not the real world: WhiteHouse.gov went live to Obama shortly after the oath of office was uttered by the new President. I look forward to the implementation of that agenda. The campaign was a tasty gumbo of great strategy, using technology to the fullest, and boots on the ground. It appears that government will now be the same.

My friend, Paul Anderson joined my wife and I. He's a reporter for the Daily Pilot (of LA Times regionals). He's posted some excellent dispatches from D.C., you'll enjoy them. I'm glad to be heading home now, but I will always carry with me the palpable sense of optimism, and, yes, hope, from Inaugural Weekend 2009. 

Database Mining: The New Ward Heeler

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: text message, email, phone, facebook, or twitter. This has been the Democrat's strategic advantage since he entered the race. The way his campaign has stayed on top of technology throughout has been impressive.

When everything is said and done after this campaign, everyone will point out the massive GOTV effort by the Democrats will have provided the edge. But this edge, of people walking their states, would not have been possible without the social networking and database contacts.

I probably received, in the last 2 months, 8 entreaties to phone bank or canvass in battleground states near me EVERY DAY. I had to look to do this in 2004.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Regressions for Politics

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 and easy quick look at where the polls stood for the election, and washing out, for the most part, the effects of left- or right-lean of polls.

I would check RCP during the primary season occasionally, just to get the sense of where things stood, but they often didn't get the right trends. Around the middle of the primary season, I came across the website fivethirtyeight.com.  At first, I was very apprehensive about the model. My initial reaction was that there would be a propagation of errors that basically rendered the results useless. But the genius of the regression model, wasn't just the polling but the way these polls were weighted, both with lean and with recency.

If you'd like to check out the FiveThirtyEight FAQ, please do so; I will not repeat work that is already excellently explained even if you're not mathematically inclined. I think many of us who were watching this campaign intently, and liked the numbers aspect, really came on board around the time of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. It was at that point that I put 538 on my bookmarks and checked it daily. You will also notice that I now use the 538 widget on my right rail. 

A note about FiveThirtyEight.com is that the statistician in question is Nate Silver, of the baseball stats site, BaseballProspectus.com. Most of you know that I also have a baseball-related blog, Sabermetrati.blogspot.com, and am a big fan of Nate Silver's work on BP, which I reference regularly. I did not realize that it was the same Nate Silver until around early June, and it definitely lended more credence to his fine work on FiveThirtyEight.

My favorite part of 538 is the win percentage. I have been following that number since Obama officially won the nomination. It now stands at 94% chance of Obama winning the election, with a peak about a week ago of 98%.

Tuesday will prove the accuracy of Nate Silver's model; it should be interesting.

Brave New World on November 4th?

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 Networking
• Regression modeling of Polls
• Get Out The Vote (GOTV) database mining
• Voting Machine Fraud Blogging
• Trash Emailing
• YouTube Moments
• Mobile Contact

While some of these items are completely non-partisan in nature and merely helped to inform us of campaign status (Poll regression modeling, Voting Machine Fraud blogging), the others were utilized to better advantage in getting out the message for the candidates. Who won this battle? Let's take a closer look.

Social Media Networking

The Obama campaign was on FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn before any of the other candidates during the long primary. I was not on the Obama bandwagon early, but I was impressed that I was being contacted in these areas long before anyone else. Any of us on FaceBook saw how many people were joining the Obama groups steadily over the course of the last two years. How many Obama buttons, Obama Lightsabers, etc. have we received during this time--too many to count?

On LinkedIn, Senator Obama asked my advice on topics facing his campaign and topics facing the country. I didn't fall for it: I knew he didn't send this personally nor do I think he read all of the comments. But I did send in my response when I thought I had something to say about a topic, and I received an automated response--that's better than when I was looking for a job and I would almost never get even the most cursory of automated responses ("Thank you for your interest, we will be contacting you if your resume meets our requirements.").

Between all of these social media items, this might constitute, as Mary Butler Twittered in my feed, his new communications channel after he's elected (IF he's elected). An unfiltered feed to the huge network he's built up and one that can get his message about his agenda out before the Limbaughs and Hannities of the world can lie about.

Are we witnessing the beginning of a whole new way of communicating in the Internet age between our government and the electorate?

It Happens Every Fall...

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 in the playoffs...

In any case, I hope you hop over to Sabermetrati to keep up with all of the sabermetrically-inclined baseball news. A sneek peak: it could be a Red Sox vs. Cubs All Time All Futility World Series!

Question: Why Are Republicans Graded on a Curve?

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 Republican, and you don't believe in quotas, or "grading on a curve", than why are McCain and Palin accorded such kudos for speeches that pale in comparison to even the worst Democratic speaker last week?

Just a question...