del.icio.us tags 07.15.07

Politics 2.0

Earlier this month I posted about how Mike Connery over at MyDD was a little concerned about the fact that young progressives aren't engaging with political blogs. Apparently, folks weren't pleased and, alas, Connery came back last weekend to respond to the critics, attempting to answer the question, "WHY do youth groups need to engage the blogosphere?" as well as giving advice on how these same groups can make better use of blogs they already have.

Mother Jones has dedicated their latest issue to how technology is changing politics and Joe Trippi, Howard Dean, Jimmy Wales, and (sexy) Larry Lessig -- among others -- pipe in with their own perspective. Remember the Iowa "Dean Scream" video that helped to bring the campaign down? Well, if YouTube was around in 2004, says Dean, "We would have had something out the next day, saying, 'This is what really happened'."

The Kaiser Family Foundation has launched Health08.org, dedicated to the issue of health care in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Search

The Economist reports on the increasing popularity of vertical search engines -- among users as well as marketers. While two-thirds of Americans who use search engines to research health issues use general engines like Google and Yahoo!, vertical engines that are dedicated to health (like Healthline and Healia) are growing in popularity and drawing in the healthcare industry, which spent approximately $14 billion in online marketing in 2005 in the United States alone.

South Koreans count on Naver for their search results, with real humans -- and not algorithms -- churning out answers.

Transparency

Take it off. Take it all off. From back in March, Clive Thompson at Wired thinks it's worth opening up the curtains and letting the customer in.