insights from the digital future
Per Zach’s post at LAist, I can now find my house on Google Streetview:
The quality of the images are much better too — here’s a great example of how ridiculous it is that my street is one-way: look at what the mailman has to do to get out the way of the Googmobile!
They did miss a couple of the smaller dead-end streets near me, but still — very cool. Now all I want is to be able to embed real-time traffic overlays!
Zach shot this at yesterday’s Anonymous protest across from the Church of Scientology on his Flip camera. Immediately after uploading it to YouTube (and before he even posted it to LAist), it was Dugg and is currently on its way to the Top 10 most popular Diggs of the year. The video itself is a testament to right-place/right-time, brevity and the the fact that you can play it straight from Digg. The content kinda gave me chills the first time I saw it. Way to go, Zach! Also gotta give credit to whomever submitted the Digg as the headline (“This is how police SHOULD react to protesters”) is perfect for Digg.
Best BarCampLA to date? Quite possibly. There were some amazing presentations — Hopefully presos / audio, etc will be posted online soon. I hosted PowerPoint Karaoke and almost died laughing. There was a very well used gong. Vinyl was spun, there was a Rickroll Train, a Rockband rocktackular, even a couple sessions delete with food artistry and consumption. Read my post from Day 1 at LAist. Check out the photos via flickr:
UPDATE: It is still contested whether or not these votes (such as mine, and two of my three colleagues who also voted Democratic on a Nonpartisan ballot) will be disqualified. Obama campaign lawyer Stephen Kaufman defines two issues decline-to-state voters are experiencing today, one statewide and one only in LA County. CA campaign chair Buffy Wicks just sent out an URGENT UPDATE, the Clinton campaign has still said nothing beyond: “False reports about voting problems in LA are being drudged up – Everything is going smoothly in LA.”
Despite all the preparation I did before going down the street to Elysian Park Elementary to vote this morning I missed something HUGE. Perhaps I should have read my literature closer, or at least this blog post:
Thousands of non-partisan voters’ ballots in Democratic Primary could go uncounted if voters fail to follow instructions carefully.
As a registered decline-to-state voter, I was aware that I could choose either a Democratic or American Independent ballot. I had no idea, however, that I would be handed a punch card that said only “non-partisan.” Furthermore, at the top of the card there apparently was an additional and crucial bubble on it, signifying whether the non-partisan was voting for the American Independent candidate or one of the Democratic candidates. City officials are getting the word out to citizens now, but it’s a little to late. This extra bubble is ONLY for DTS voters in Los Angeles County.
This is only one of my concerns. Despite SoS Debra Bowen doing the right thing and recalling all electronic voting machines until they’re proven reliable, the Inkavote machine used to verify and count my ballot was apparently broken! As I went to slip my punch card in, the poll worker told me, “it’s broken, just give it to me and I’ll put it in the box myself later.” What?!? You’ve got 6 months to fix this, Bowen.
OK. That’s my Super Tuesday story for now. I hope you can all make it down to Seven Grand later to watch the returns and celebrate my birthday! Let’s party.
