I woke up, fired up coffee, eggs, ham, and toast (which constitutes a fancy breakfast in my house). Checked e-mail and hit the front page of The New York Times online, which is oddly making its way back around to being one of my daily check-in sites. I was particularly interested and anxious to find out the latest going on in Iran. This story — Opposition Members Detained in a Tense Iran — was both informative and chilling.

I then browsed Memeorandum and Techmeme and was interested to see that both sites’ top stories focus on CNN’s lack of Iran coverage (particularly in terms of protests and election fraud allegations), with the added bonus that Twitter has become a central source for 1) on-the-ground coverage in a country where open communication is being stifled and 2) watch dogging CNN (with handy hashtag #CNNFail) on its lack of focus on this breaking story.

I wrote:

It is extraordinary that we’ve reached an age where Twitter can massively amplify on-the-ground coverage AND watch dog the mainstream press

Ernest Koe soon responded:

@ericberlin we seem to be witnessing a watershed moment in history #iranelection #iranfail, breath-taking and scary at the same time

A couple of final thoughts:

1) A minor point: CNN, which played a part in really breaking Twitter to the mainstream audience, is learning that social media can both giveth and taketh away

2) Something less minor: I’d like to believe that online participation at the scale we’re now seeing has the power to directly impact governments and institutions and organizations in a positive way. In a major way.

And check out star-studded this thing is, unbelievable!

It’s a musical, you see, about an already infamous proposition labeled with the number eight… Enjoy.

(via lots of places but lets say The Inqusitr)

Hey, Mr. President-Elect, Got a Minute… or 10? – Howard Fineman

Ivy Tech Educated at Columbia and Harvard Law, Obama has drawn to his side an impressive cadre of similarly credentialed types, most of them entrepreneurs who are smart about rising sectors of the new economy, especially communications and digital technology. It helps explain why Obama’s campaign was a cutting-edge exercise in phone, texting and Web-based salesmanship: it’s the business that many of those around him know well, and they will be pushing the use of these techniques (and the prerogatives of these industries) in and around the White House. The lead player in the group is Julius Genachowski, who went to Columbia and Harvard with Obama and worked on digital startups with Barry Diller. Others include two former chairs of the Federal Communications Commission, Reed Hundt and Bill Kennard, who were major fundraisers, too.

Cabinet Newsladder
Neat little social news site that lets people submit and vote and people power-rank the hottest stories having to do with Obama’s cabinet machinations and formulations.

FiveThirtyEight.com
Just about the best place on the interwebs for stats junkies throughout the election, it’s worth nothing that it was scarily close to dead on in predicting the Electoral College outcome, alongside plenty of other statistical indicators.

The Vote: A Victory for Social Media, Too
One of the big stories of 2008 is that the web is not just a place to raise money and not just a place to organize grassroots political movements. It is now an essential front on the road to the White House. It was a “triumph for the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr,” and Barack Obama has set the digital bar very high indeed for all future aspirants to the White House.

sarahintampa’s Election 2008 slideshow
And speaking of Flickr, this slideshow covers a breadth of online images that couldn’t possibly be put into words.

Those amazing post-election maps
I can’t even explain how long I stared at these maps. I think they tell an absolutely astounding story about the election that just passed. Plus… well, they’re just cool!

The historic election that we all witnessed yesterday provided a unique “live event” that was perfect for Twitter engaging, chattering, mini-pontificating, and all around hanging for information junkies around the globe.

What follows is the “transcript” of the “live twittering” of what I saw, communicated, and thought through the election. I think it’s a pretty good example of the enduing power of this simple, flexible, engaging, and surprisingly powerful product. It’s simply a great way to hyper-quickly share information and to connect.

Slight warning that my political sensibilities are more on display here than I usually let out on OMC.

And everyone can follow my Twitter feed here if you like, a place that I seem to be quite a bit these days, finding a world of wonderful social media and other conversational threads to explore.

Live election news feeds round-up on Silicon Alley Insider: http://tinyurl.com/6xe8ep

It’s getting close now…. two years in the waiting… eight years of Bush administration

Obama winning Indiana… w/ 1% reporting thus far

@ccadelago Wonder how closely the newspaper endorsement tally will mirror the electoral outcome !

@ccadelago Very impressive, and fascinating to look back at the days when McCain was the “media darling”

I want to have election.twitter.com running but can’t because that + live MSNBC.com feed will get my computer kill’d

Real state result projections coming in! Vermont for Obama, Kentucky for McCain !

Wow…. Obama and McCain like 50 votes apart in early Indiana results

Mitch McConnell Senate race in Kentucky too close to call so far… could be a very long night for GOP

@mikeysan So true… Getting tempting to hang it up for night to get pulled into elections vortex

Pat Buchanan: “We could be on the cusp of a new liberal era”… wow

@geekaren Buchanan to me is a paradox. Incredibly astute political observer with some seriously wacky beliefs

My twitter stream just got flooded with CNN hologram talk

@Ben_Parr: “Wait, wait, wait – When did the Emperor give CNN its Holographic Technology?” lolz

@ccadelago OMG… Lieberman jumped on the bizarro train some time ago

McCain up in Indiana by about 18k, can Obama catch him… and does the tight race there simply mean it’s gonna be blowout for Barack/Dems?

Huge news for Obama…. Pennsylvania being called for Obama by MSNBC, also bunch of other blue states…

Wow… New Hampshire also goes blue… and Maine. Looks like a Northeast sweep for Dems at the very least

Seriously, Pennsylvania being called minutes after polls close shuts down Republican window considerably

Chris Matthews: “Republican strategy to go through Pennsylvania has crashed”

@jlvblogger Looking very very good thus far !

@michaeljbarber Interesting, thank you, was surprised that MSNBC so quickly. But any chance at all it could be wrong?

@geekaren If Obama takes Florida it’s pretty much ballgame

@michaeljbarber Enlightening poll early today for me showed Obama doing 8% better among white voters nationally than Kerry in ‘04

Virginia moved from too early to call to too close to call… so Obama has yet to break through on a red state

Wow, Elizabeth Dole lost her Senate seat. Huge Democratic Senate majority looming

Georgia being called for McCain… that was a long shot for Dems, but McCain still holding onto Red states, albeit solid / longshot ones

Obama sweeps midwest states that went for Kerry in ‘04

McCain grabs Georgia and North Dakota, so one thing we know is that it’s not going to be an insane electoral avalanche

Biggest news of night on presidential level thus far you’d have to say is that Obama holds blue Pennsylvania

Tons of “too close to calls” — should be fun night !

Chris Matthews: “This is a good time to order a pizza.” I’m eating sushi !

Man, if McCain *does* pull out Virginia, things start to get interesting, right ?

@ray That gets Obvious Award and obviously very true

Obama up 4 points in North Carolina with 40% of vote in… interesting

Harold Ford Jr. channels Tim Russert, intoning Florida Florida Florida

@TDefren Wow, seriously? That’s enormous on multiple levels! (@TDefren quotes Fox calling Ohio for Obama… wha?)

Anyone else seeing Ohio being called for Obama?

@niczak Was quoting @TDefren, who says Fox called Ohio for Obama

@zaibatsu confirms Ohio…. and now MSNBC calls it as well !!!!

Democrats taking Ohio is so enormous, sweet sweet revenge for 2000 and 2004, and you have to think that GOP road is now TOUGH

The northeast and midwest are now looking straight-up blue !

@JasonCalacanis Now saying New Mexico for Dems! http://tinyurl.com/6c2l2o

Huge game breaking news rolling in all over the place

@niloyphoto Hahaha, getting closer each minute !

@geekaren Yes, and now two major networks calling Ohio for Obama, looks like it’s in the can

@stuartma Seeing you muse about prospect of President Obama starting to make it very real !

New Mexico goes to Obama, this thing is tipping fast

Obama already at 200 electoral votes with tons of the country (and California!) not yet called

Matthews talks about McCain line about “fundamentals of economy are strong” line as being killer

@webomatica Amazing… simply amazing

@gregsmyth Yes, that was a critical mistake by McCain and his campaign… and lets not forget Palin pick too! Lets face it, there were many

@ScottSays Definitely makes you feel hopeful, like new and better era may be on way

Iowa goes to Obama, number of Bush ‘04 states going to Obama grows

@gregsmyth lolz !

Virginia still too close to call but it may not matter at this point

Chris Shays loses seat, House Republicans now shut out completely in New England

@mbj Yes, looking like how close Dems get to 60 seats and margin of Obama victory are now major topics… but this is the fun stuff

Indiana looking like it’ll go down to the wire… amazing

@jpgardner / Donklephant reporting that Colorado goes to Obama – http://tinyurl.com/5527xg

Dean’s 50 state strategy / Obama expanding electoral map now part of overall storyline

@jriversmn Go Al Franken !

NPR called Virginia for Obama whilst I was in the car… this thing is getting huger for Obama…

@jriversmn Thanks for keeping me posted, love the informationz!

@mbj Not a cabernet of celebration then I take it?

OBAMA WINS ! ! ! ! !

@jpostman You got that right !

McCain concession speech happening right now… it’s all a little bit surreal after such a long and historic election, isn’t it?

Amazing inspiring speech… a new president for a new time… makes me feel hopeful

(via Pollster.com)

From my perspective, this particular one is cooler because of the blue / red ratio. 29 days to go and counting…

And speaking of Twitter, Fred Wilson of A VC alerted me to a nifty new Twitter presence simply called Election 2008, located on your interwebs dials at election.twitter.com.

Here’s what it does: it pulls selected Twitter posts (”tweets”) based on keywords and streams them in real time. So without having to refresh the page, you get a flowing river of conversational snippets about the election, such as snippy little snippets such as this one:

Wonder if McCain feels Abu Ghraib would make a good international presidential training unit

Based on that example, we can infer that it was published by the Election 2008 site because it included the keyword McCain. Meanwhile, at the top the Election 2008 page, we see “hot election topics” – such as #obamashot, which seems to refer to an impromptu drinking game set up just in time for tonight’s presidential debate! – that allow us to “drill down” to see specific election-related topics.

My current favorite, I must further admit, is the stream for Jack Cafferty, an old time New York news anchor turned curmudgeonly analyst for CNN. After taking a look at a clip of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, Cafferty absolutely rips Palin’s rambling and evasive answers, calling them pathetic:

(via Talking Points Memo)

Reactions are teeming in from the twittersphere, such as this:

Retweeting: @caseymckinnon FINALLY someone tells it like it is (Jack Cafferty speaks frankly about Sarah Palin) http://is.gd/3bV0

As I mentioned in my recent story on new social media site Dwigger, the ability to create interesting or meaningful streams of information (and community) around the flood of data and conversations that are taking place on the Internet every second of the day is very exciting stuff indeed.

And in the meantime, onward with the presidential debates!

Hurricane Gustav was a huge story, of course, and thankfully it’s now finally looking like New Orleans and Gulf Coast areas are taking far less damage than what might have been expected. This story, from Web Worker Daily, outlines T-Mobile’s efforts to open up its WiFi “hot spots” for free so that people in affected areas could more easily communicate with family and friends. Good for T-Mobile, and great to see how technology can have some small positive impact during times of emergency.

Twitter is a huge part of course in how people are reporting, communicating, and staying informed during unfolding events. I’ve become particularly interested in services that take advantage of Twitter’s open API to pull data out and do interesting things with them.

That ties into the US presidential election, which is kicking into high gear, and perhaps levels beyond that too. Between Barack Obama’s historic and electrifying speech at the Democratic National Convention, John McCain’s selection of little known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential selection (you can find me obsessing about all of this on good old Twitter), and the Republican National Convention and the wrench thrown at it by Gustav, there was no end of things to chat about for the political world over the weekend.

Govtweets (found via TechCrunch pulls Twitter “tweets” based on politically-oriented keywords, and serves them up in an eye-pleasing stream. For instance, right now there are lots of tweets displayed based on the keyword “Palin.” They featured a thumbnail picture of the potential Vice President and are color-coded GOP thread. Likewise, “Obama”-based tweets feature the Democratic nominee and are colored blue. The thumbnail picture of the tweeter is also featured as well. It’s a neat little site, and I expect that we’ll see a lot more of these kinds of niche services based on the huge galaxy of conversations taking place on Twitter (and other social media platforms) over time.

Finally, I was up late one night and wound up surfing around Hulu looking for old television shows to check out. Struck by a sense of ’90s nostalgia perhaos, I wound up watching an old episode of Party of Five. I later caught a TechCrunch story rumbling up some theories about how Hulu could end up as a bigger business than YouTube.

My take is that Hulu does a pretty state-of-the-art job of delivering high quality vetted video content and serving ads around it. However, I wouldn’t bet against YouTube (and Google) to lead out the development of a next-gen standardized video ad model.