”…I promise you this: When I am President, any governor who’s willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that’s willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that’s willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America.”     

Video after the jump. 

Peering into my Gmail history for the keyword ‘obama,’ I can see the first time I talked about him was in a chat session with my friend Ala on 10/16/06 at 10:35 AM PST:

me: goodmorning
Ala: good morning
me: how are you this morning?
Ala: fine, and you?
me: fine.   obama huh?
Ala: made the cover of Time

And that’s how it started.

In November of 2006, I did phone banking in Portland for the Oregon Democrats, and took to the street like a crazy person, holding up my Vote sign on Burnside. About 11 months later, I was living in Boston, starting work on my MBA at Babson College.  Politics are a little more interesting for Democrats on the East coast and by then I was looking to get a bit closer to the candidate, in an email to my brother on 10/19/07 I wrote:

Hey,

Obama just got endorsed by Deval Patrick, and they’re having a rally with both of them in attendance on Tremont and Boylston on Tuesday the 23rd at 6:30pm.

I got a call requesting me to flyer for the rally and am going to do it this coming Sunday.  The meeting time is 10am at the transportation station on Boylston by the Boston common.  (10 park plaza).

Are you interested in going at all?  Might be fun to grab some food first and see if we can meet an organizer who can put us close to Obama when he shows up.  Maybe get a photo.

rob

My brother ended up having to grade some 30 Harvard undergraduate papers that morning and couldn’t make it out.  I however, took to the streets in my slacks, buttoned up shirt and tie and stood on the corner of Harvard Square and Commonwealth avenue, in front of a liquor store.  I passed out fliers to whoever would listen, spreading the good word of Barack.  At the time, the democrats were locked in a three person primary, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were still both serious opponents.

Eli Forsyth was the coordinator of the Boston office for Barack Obama at the time, he and his staff helped me into a volunteer captain role at Boston Governor Deval Patrick’s endorsement of Obama on the Boston Common.  I took that work very seriously, wrangling a half-dozen volunteers with clipboards to do data gathering on the long line trying to get into the rally.

After the rally, I had to return to work on my MBA.  The people like Eli were giving up everything to work on the campaign, for free.  If I was in a different time and place, I could see myself doing something like that.  I kept up my efforts from my office chair, so that in December of 2007 when the Obama campaign requested letters in support of overworked campaign volunteers in Iowa, I wrote the following:

Hey there,

I want to thank you for your hard work in helping get Obama elected to the most important job in our country.

I was born in Des Moines and my dad still lives in Sioux City.  I make it back occasionally.  Although I live in Boston and Portland, OR now, I have a special connection with Iowa.

I was a volunteer captain at Barack’s recent Boston rally and did street flyering.  I know it can be tough work.  Putting Barack is the right thing to do, and I’m glad you see it that way as well.

Please keep it up and know that I’m out here appreciating your efforts. I believe in Barack and that Iowa can play a critical role in getting him elected.

Thank you.

Regards,

Robert Banagale

Then, in February of 2008, Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe emailed supporters asking for letters to help secure the support of superdelegates. He asked us to share our stories with the superdelegates, so I did:

Dear Superdelegate,

I’m not sure how you, in particular, were chosen as a superdelegate.  Perhaps you served as a former president or vice-president of this great nation.  Or perhaps you took a strong leadership role on behalf of our democratic party.

Either way, I appreciate what you have done for our country and in turn am happy to share a part of my story as to why I support Barack Obama.

I am a 27 year old man, born in Iowa, raised in Portland, OR.  I’ve been a life-long democrat. I made phone calls for the party in November 2006 and have stood on the street corner with a Vote sign on election day.

Today, I am an MBA student at Babson College.  It is my dream to be running a successful, socially responsible company by the time I graduate.
Barack Obama also has a dream.  He is a man who has a dream that we can change the way our country is viewed by others across this planet.  He has a vision for a country that works together to accomplish progress on our domestic agenda by reaching across the aisle.

But what is a dream or a vision worth without integrity?

Barack Obama has shown integrity in his campaign and in his loyalty to the party.  He has refused to take donations from lobbyists, to show where he stands on influence of corporate interests and he refused to put his name on the ballot in Michigan because he saw and complied with the party line on our primary rules.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t care about the democratic party rules.  When the chips are down, she’ll do anything to win.  I’m not suggesting that our leader should not be decisive or make hard decisions.  But this race for president is not a war, this is our celebrated democratic process.

If Hillary Clinton can not be expected to follow the simple rules set by our party for our election, what might we expect from her in our nation’s highest office?
Please, use your power to vote for integrity.  Use it for a dream of a better, more united country.  Make your vote for Barack Obama.

Kind Regards,

Robert Banagale

In concentrating on my many projects and graduate school, I stopped work on behalf of the campaign and instead simply talked to friends and family about the candidate as much as was polite.  I became focused on renewable energy, thanks in part to from Clinton White and Jonah Eidus, two other Babson graduate students I worked with to create the Babson Wind Turbine.

This interest led me to the Cleantech Forum in Washington DC, where I had a chance to meet Jason Grumet, Obama’s energy adviser.  About a month later, I attended a debate between Grumet and James Woolsey (McCain’s energy adviser) at MIT.

A photo of me and Jason Grumet.

As the days counted down towards the election, I still had some friends and family to convince, so I reached out as much as possible to help them understand.  Some minds were changed, some were not. I also was active on Facebook, posting relevant links and videos, including sharing my brother’s Status Updates for Change group occasionally.  My contributions, like the lifetime of the campaign were winding down.

But late last night I authored what would be my final opportunity to reach an audience on behalf of Barack Obama.  My Dave Matthews Band website, Weekly Davespeak recieves between 50k and 100k visitors a month.  The site is meant to appeal to all DMB fans and is thus, non-partisan.  However, fortunatly Dave Matthews and I have been politically aligned, at least on choice of presidential candidates for the past three elections.

During my press coverage of Bonnaroo 2008, I met the photographer from Wire Image who shot Dave Matthews and Barack Obama backstage at Farm Aid.  He offered up his photos, which unfortunatly did not turn out well because of some bad sunlight cast on Barack’s face.  So, I went to work mending the photographs and released them packaged with some new exclusive photos of Dave Matthwes and Tim Reynolds taken by a photographer and ally of Weekly Davespeak.

Touched up photo of Dave Matthews and Barack Obama.

These went up on the front page of the website this morning, and were part of an email newsletter blast to just under 5,000 Dave Matthews Band fans.  To me, voting for a candidate simply because an artist endorses them is lunacy.  However, for those fans out there who know the issues and are considering voting against their own personally held social values in favor of the dynamic leadership, I see nothing wrong with their affiliation with Dave Matthews being a reasonable tipping point for getting their vote.

Yesterday, I printed out a non-partisan sign reminding everyone living in my building to go vote, with the address of our local polling station.  I firmly believe that this is a good country, and that when push comes to shove, we will make the right decision.  For so many reasons, Barack Obama represents the greatest opportunity for the long-term prosperity of this nation, and because of it I heartily endorse him to be the next President of the United States.

What might the goals of a union of Facebook application developers be? It would help to look at what has stirred the pot recently. About two weeks ago someone posted a complaint that Facebook had unfairly bent the rules to give CBS’s Sports NCAA bracket application advantages for faster viral spread across the Facebook user base. Adding insult to injury, the thread also pointed out that the CBS Sports NCAA bracket application had a poor user rating.

Two days ago another developer posted a thread titled, “Facebook has stolen my idea!” which describes the recently added “Do you know these people?” page on Facebook. The developer suggests he feels “cheated” because the new Facebook page duplicates his own application’s functionality. The developer’s application was forced to comply with platform development rules that required an obstructive approval process in order work correctly.

Facebook’s “Do you know these people?” page circumvents this approval process because it is not subject to the rules independent application developers must follow. Facebook made a better version of the application a part of the Facebook experience by bending the rules that crippled the original developer’s work.

These examples illustrate that Facebook considers it a duty to nationalize or expropriate functionality if it is considered good for Facebook. Rather than something that needs to be declared, Facebook makes this right clear in the Facebook Developers Terms of Service:

“…You hereby grant us a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license, with the right to sublicense, to: (a) access, reproduce, display, distribute, perform, and store on our servers your Facebook Platform Application and any Facebook Platform Application Content, and to create derivative works of Facebook Platform Application Content, as may be necessary or desirable to make such Facebook Platform Application and Facebook Platform Application Content available to Facebook Users in accordance with the terms of this Agreement and the Facebook Platform Documentation and the Facebook Platform Application Guidelines; and (b) otherwise access, use and analyze any Facebook Platform Application Content for our internal business purposes (e.g., for the purposes of targeting delivery of advertisements or other content to persons who have viewed particular types of Facebook Platform Application Content).”

This paragraph basically says that Facebook can duplicate and meet parity or run with your application’s functionality and then integrate it into the basic Facebook experience. The second part basically says that Facebook reserves the right to monitor how much your application would be worth if Facebook were to take your idea.

I think a lot of independent developers get to sleep at night with the belief that Facebook wouldn’t expropriate their applications. These developers comfort themselves with the idea that “it happens occasionally–but only to applications with functionality that obviously belongs in the platform.”

The board of directors for the copper companies were probably counting the same sheep prior to the sweeping expropriation of copper mines by the Chilean government in the early 1970s. The result of that disagreement was that the United States pushed for and succeeded achieving economic sanctions against Chile. But the Facebook development community doesn’t exactly have sanctions on its list of tools of influence. What does it have?

For one, it would have to be part of a greater independent community of developers for all open social platforms. Only by having a union of developers that canvas’s all major platforms could it hold sway against any particular one. Such an organized group might hold sway by steering technical offerings, such as beginner guides, away from platforms that have a history of expropriating applications functionality unfairly. A strong independent application developer union might also be able dissuade or at least condemn social platforms that repeatedly expropriate functionality.

Representation at the table would help, when the biggest social networking application companies, RockYou!, are getting all of the attention. RockYou! has funding from Sequoia Capital, a company that wouldn’t take wholesale expropriation of their software lightly.

The article separates the types of leaks into three categories: the malevolent, the benevolent and the accidental.

Grim’s article includes eleven leak sub-categories each with a different intention. If you are plan to communicate with or be a part of the fourth estate, you should probably take a moment to read them each in detail. Instead of touching on each sub-category here, I would like to highlight how fair-weather leaks are used as a method of strategic media control.

Fair-Weather and Bad-Weather Patterns

“When an organization is being run well, people tend not to look at things as leaks, but they tend to look at things as information specifically being put out for some strategic purpose. When things are not well, the information getting out there is perceived as leaks.

-Chris Lehane, of the ’92 Clinton campaign and later the White House.

This seems like a subjective impression to me, and I wonder how it could be quantified without defining exactly what it means for an organization to be “run well.” And Lehane’s idea seems to create a chicken-or-the-egg scenario: a well run organization incorporates strategy into leaks, while strategic leaks also seem to be the hallmark of a well run organization.

The In Rainbows Fair-Weather Leak

A recent example of strategic leaks that I noticed had to do with information surrounding which record company would score the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows. Just days after the digital release of the album, Tiny Mix Tapes was reporting on Billboard news that Radiohead was considering signing with ATO Records / Side One Recordings.

Realize that no one at Billboard or anywhere else could guess that Radiohead would look at ATO with a high enough degree of confidence to publish it as an industry rumor let alone a news story. So this was clearly a strategic leak. According to Grim’s article which type of leak was it?

Of the benevolent leaks Grim writes about, here are a few that could apply:

• The Trial-Balloon Leak
  This would only make sense if Radiohead’s management was behind the leak of the information. They tossed the ‘rumor’ to Billboard to gauge industry reactions to the news prior to going forward with it.
• The I-Scratch-Your-Back-You-Scratch-Mine/Relationship Leak
  This type of strategic leak could have come from either ATO or Radiohead’s management and would suggest that one of them was either buying back favor or investing in favor from Billboard, Hits, Tiny Mix Tapes, or perhaps all of them. Unfortunately, I’d say that the real news with In Rainbows was not the label signing, but rather the surprise announcement of the digital release. No one had the jump on that, so if media relationship needed to be built then sharing a whisper of information on the digital release would have been a lot more effective.

• Because-They-Wouldn’t-Say-It-on-the-Record-It-Must-Be-Newsworthy Leak
  This assumes that ATO/Red Light was behind this one. I think this is more likely because Radiohead’s management was focused on drawing out hype on its decision to go digital, not an impending traditional release.If the In Rainbows label signing leak falls into this category it likely means that the deal had been inked before the time Billboard and Tiny Mixtapes were reporting on it. ATO was worried that an official announcement would not bring the adequate attention. Instead the leak of a “possible” signing makes it appear that the band is in some underground bunker furiously debating whether to take the big money and sign with either Warner music or EMI or go with the progressive and responsible alternative of ATO.

When it comes down to it, I think that this last category is the most likely one. Was it effective, and does it demonstrate that a well run organization? I’d say yes. Not only did a ton of media outlets pounce on the news, but some of them tied the story to Radiohead’s quiet decision to do a live webcast for its fans.

I didn’t notice any smokers in Ratatouille, and I couldn’t see them in a new traditional film from Disney either. But the FT article goes on to state that Bob Iger’s position is that “the company would also ‘discourage’ depictions of smoking in films made by its other studio labels.”

Disney’s owns Bob Weinstein’s Miramax Films which has released a ton of adult-oriented features including Tarantino’s, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino makes including cigarettes in his movies a recurrent presence. Iger goes on to say that argueing with filmmakers working under his roof about excluding cigarette smoking is a “confrontation we are certainly willing to have.”

The timing of the move is certainly not coincidental, as the MPAA recently began making smoking a factor in rating films. This change comes only two years after a suggestion by the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. So while Disney is doing the right thing being the first to take a hard line on tobacco use, it is also protecting a kid-friendly film ratings.

Keeping cigarettes out of the movies is one thing, but Disney aims to make a difference in the nutrition level of its customers as well. In October of 2006 Disney published new guidelines for both food available on theme park menus along with its promotional and licensed foods available in stores. This is most likely a move to help slow down the increase in obesity among children, but you have to question, why is Disney in the food business in the first place?

If Disney is going to get serious about kid’s health they’re going to have to take a hard look at the ethics of marketing to children in the first place.

This morning a transcript of “Remarks by President Bush Before Arrival of President Putin of Russia” was released which was a entertaining until that he managed to sandwhich the instillation of fear that has been the hallmark of his administration: “But it just goes to show the war against these extremists goes on. You never know where they may try to strike.”

Here’s a link to the full text, my favorite part is where he describes a potential fishing trip on his coming day with Vladimir Putin “Maybe today. It’s pretty casual up here, as you know, unstructured.”

Remarks by President Bush Before Arrival of President Putin of Russia
Walker’s Point
Kennebunkport, Maine

White House News

5:35 P.M. EDT

PRESIDENT BUSH: Welcome. Is everybody having a nice day here?

Q Yes. The lobsters are good.

PRESIDENT BUSH: They are good.

Q Sir, are you going to take him fishing?

PRESIDENT BUSH: We might just do that, yes. Not sure yet, Mark.

Q Today?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Maybe today. It’s pretty casual up here, as you know, unstructured.

Q — the menu?

MRS. BUSH: Lobster, what else? (Laughter.)

* * * * *

Q How was the fishing today, sir?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Lousy. (Laughter.) Was that you, Chuck, the other day? No wonder we didn’t catch any fish. They took a look at you and — (laughter) — headed out.

Q Sir, while you’re waiting, can you tell us what you think of those terrorist incidents in Britain and Scotland?

PRESIDENT BUSH: We got a press conference tomorrow, Mark. But it just goes to show the war against these extremists goes on. You never know where they may try to strike. And appreciate the very strong response that the Gordon Brown government has given to the attempts by these people.

* * * * *

PRESIDENT BUSH: Everybody been behaving themselves?

Q You sure you won’t come back here a little more often? (Laughter.)

PRESIDENT BUSH: That’s what I figured. (Laughter.)

Q I wasn’t going to give you the satisfaction — (laughter.)

PRESIDENT BUSH: That’s what I thought, yes. Well, the guy is counting the days in Crawford, you know. (Laughter.)

Q I’m counting your days here, too — 35.

Q Are you watching any baseball?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I watched the Ranger-Red Sox game today.

Q Is it over? Did they win today, too?

Q I think they won today, too.

Q But the Yankees lost.

PRESIDENT BUSH: They did?

* * * * *

(President Putin arrives.)

FORMER PRESIDENT BUSH: Where did these guys all come from? When I left there was nobody here.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Come over, Condi. Come on, Bill.

Okay? It’s been real. (Laughter.) Thanks for coming.

Presidential speaches usually include a link to an MP3 of the speach in the RSS item body–which means that Google reader embeds a flash player so I can listen to the speach right from the syndication. This is actually quite good.

However, for White House News RSS items, important information is left out of the syndication making the items worthless. I finally found the time and nerve to let them have it. Here is my letter to the United States White House web site technical team:

The White House news feed, specifically that at http://www.whitehouse.gov/rss/news.xml often consists of only the headline for major announcements. In order to be an effective RSS feed, it needs to include at the very least 3-5 sentences from the content that is being syndicated.

I respectfully request that you change the White House News Feed to include 3-5 sentences of content with the headline. This will allow US Citizens and those abroad to read a portion of the feed without having to click through unnecessarily.

For example, “Personnel Announcement” is a frequent RSS title without any content. The most recent one should have had included:

“For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
June 29, 2007

Personnel Announcement

President George W. Bush has nominated two individuals and announced his intention to designate one individual to serve in his Administration.”

This would have made the RSS item far more relevant.

Thank you for your time,

Robert Banagale

Fission

Fission is a little extension that gives you a visual indicator of the progress of web pages loading. It draws a colored progress bar across the URL entry text area which is way better than just waiting for web pages to load which is really boring. Try it, you’ll like it.

Tab Mix Plus

Tab Mix Plus is probably my favorite FF Add-on, extension, plugin, what-have-you. This thing has all kinds of features, but most having to do with tab behavior within the FF window.
TMP also offers a great session manger and recovery tool, that is way better than the junky-no-good one that comes with FF2.0. This is particularly handy for projects that require a dozen webpages to work on. For instance, my current Drupal conversion on Weekly Davespeak often needs the Drupal forums, technical documentation, the old Weekly Davespeak page, the new testing version, Gmail, and perhaps kexp.org open. Saving this session as my New WDS backend means that I can restore and get back to work quickly and efficiently.

Clone Window

I like my tab duplication (ctrl-t) to also duplicate the current tab’s page and the browsing history. FF 2.0 does not offer this as an option, which is pretty weak. This is an essential extension.

Mouse Gestures

Mouse gestures are a really handy way of accomplishing common navigation and browser requests without taking your hand off the mouse. While I prefer to use keyboard and menu shortcuts at all possible moments in a program like Adobe Dreamweaver, you can’t really surf the web easily without a fair amount of mousing about. Also, you get to draw little lines and things which is kind of fun.

Mouse Gestures also supports mouse rocking, which is like clicking the left-mouse button then the right in sequence, as if you were rolling your fingers across the top of the mouse. This lets you go forward and back in your browser really really easily. Once you modify your surfing behavior you’ll never look back and always get annoyed on your unsavy friend or partner doesn’t have the extension installed on their laptop.

Web Developer

I’m pretty new to the Web Developer Add-on, but it has been instrumental in my most recent design activity. While there are many features and options, my favorite is that you can edit the CSS for a webpage in a browser panel on the left (hit ctrl-h in FF to see the history panel) and see the changes on-the-fly in page display on the right. Though Dreamweaver is supposed to have oh-i-don’t-know the most advanced WYSIWYG html/css renderer in the whole wide world, nothing beats seeing it for yourself in the world’s best browser, Firefox!

Adsense Notifier

Adsense notifier displays your current daily earnings from Google advertisements you display in the bottom on your browser. (see screenshot). This is really handy, as you can right-click the statistics and bypass the Adsense login screen. I’m not actively developing sites running Adsense at this time, but it is nice to know how all my old stuff is doing.

If you don’t run any Adsense campaigns, you should. It is incredibly easy to create web content that turns up search results, and as my friend Scott Dunlap can testify, creating only eight pages in a single week or so can turn out to you finding between 10 cents and a few dollars on the street every day for months and months at a time.

You may not have heard of the protests going on in Belarus (Bell-a-roose). Belarus is a country of about 10 million people in north-eastern Europe. The country is led by Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Lukashenka is looked upon as somewhat of a villain for having extended his initial presidential term and almost assuredly rigging two more consecutive elections where he was found the victor.

What might be most striking to someone with a North American perspective is the oppression by the Belarus government in such close proximity to the European Union. This oppression was shown most recently during the March 19th, 2006 presidential poll where one of the opposition candidates was beaten and arrested and protesters were put down by riot police the following week.

The acts of the state riot police against the protesters were caught with incredible clarity through the lenses of amateur and professional photographers. You can view photos of the Belarus government’s violent oppression of its people on Flickr. Also, you may want to watch this frightening video showing clips of the police approaching the citizens and subsequently beating peaceful protestors.

The reason that this situation continues to exist is because not enough of the country’s citizens are willing to stand up to the government. If you’ll look at the pictures and video above you may wonder when the next clash will be.
Not surprisingly, Belarus still suffers from the fallout of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown. April 26th is the 20th anniversary of the disaster, and is likely mean further demonstrations from the citizenry of Belarus. Needless to say there will be an incredible amount of turmoil before there can be any hope of regime change against Lukashenka.

I invite you to learn more about Lukashenka, who allowed a hot air balloon on an international race to be shot down for violating Belarus airspace. And also Belarus, widely regarded as the last country in Europe to be under the control of a dictatorship.