The Great Google Election '07

Is YouTube ‘more important to Mr Rudd than the national parliament of Australia’?

Liberal Party Minister Alexander Downer yesterday tagged Kevin Rudd’s plans to debate election issues on the Internet with PM Howard as ‘phoney’. Of three election debates, Rudd proposes to host one on YouTube. Downer retorted: ‘There'll be an election, and when there is an election, it won't be about YouTube debates, it will be about substance.’

This sentiment sits in direct contrast to Howard’s assertion that the Internet is ‘not some sort of gimmick’, as he sits primed for a conversation with voters through the tubes. Clearly, Downer needs to do a bit of searching for substance in Wikipedia himself, as he declared Australia’s parliamentary term as being three years and three months, rather than the Constitutional stipulation of three.

The world (including the Foreign Minister…) can now watch the news from the comfort of their Google homepage, with the launch of the 2007 Australian Federal Election site, an opportunity to ‘explore the Australian political landscape’ through YouTube videos and electorate-by-electorate announcements, overlaid on Google maps. At the site’s launch, ALP MP Peter Garrett notioned that this would probably be a ‘Google election’. All major parties have a presence on the web.



In addition to this, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is today launching a dedicated election page, which will feature the insightful graphics and new electronic pendulum tool of commentator Antony Green. With his usual astute observations and enviable manipulation of online tools, Antony analysed today’s Newspoll figures on Lateline, comparing Labor’s current standing to the equivalent election-lead-up in 1993, where the fall-off was earlier and their margin not so large. Whether swings will be consistent across the country is the great debate currently.

'If the swing was only 4 to 5 per cent, you could say that a marginal seat could help the Government hold on. They would actually hold on to some of those key marginals, make it harder for Labor to win. If the swing is still 6 to 7 per cent, then it's much harder for the Coalition to hang on to some of those marginals, and any they do hang onto maybe compensated for Labor by winning a seat beyond the uniform swing. So on these polls it's very hard to see how the Government can possibly win, but if they can claw back another two to three points and get the swing down to about 5 per cent, then you starting an election which will be much closer.'

More news of this, and a summary of last weekend’s Crikey events to come!

On Being an Über Blogger: Cory Doctorow

Blogger Thomas Crampton shares with us the following video interview with Cory Doctorow on how to be noticed in the attention economy.

Drawing on his wealth of experience, particularly with Boing Boing, Cory emphasises that you’ve got to write relevant headers to be captured by RSS feeds. Leave the puns at home (awwww). Apparently Cory also points to the condensed wisdom of Jakob Nielsen on design.

Surprisingly, as someone who’s contributed to the International Herald Tribune and New York Times, Thomas’ video blogging skills need an instructional guide! Lose the long shot unless you're sure people don't want to converse in the middle of your set, lol!

I Want My MySpace TV

As if our lives didn’t unfurl before us minute-by-minute on Facebook these days, through continual status updates and being tagged in photo albums, MySpace TV will be launching a new series Quarterlife, apparently the place to be for the digerati. Writers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick of ‘My So-Called Life’ construct this life with the aim of illustrating Generation Y’s fervent creativity, pursuit of pleasure, idealism, and search for meaning in this increasingly interconnected world. It’s billed as the twentysomethings’ coming of age in the digital generation.

The series’ central player is a ‘blabbermouth blogger’ called Dylan Krieger, a woman who divulges a few too many private moments of her friends online. Over the course of 36 episodes distributed online from November 11, viewers are invited to participate in the show’s success as a site for ‘truthful depiction of the way young people speak, work, think, love, argue and express themselves’ through discussing plot lines and extras on the site and through MySpace. To what extent contribution can be made to the show itself is of yet unknown. This is an interesting strategy for MySpace, as it battles to maintain its reputation alongside other web 2.0 sites. Chronicling the lives of six characters are they negotiate these decisions may indeed be the necessary ‘in’ to maintain interest.