Pancake City

I need a Web 3.0 widget that will let me create Web 2.0 sites with a minimum of effort, which happens to be the maximum amount of effort I am willing to spend on making a web site. Two ideas I thought of last night:

1. “Best 10 Minutes.” Almost every town hall meeting or Q&A like the candidates’ visits to “the Google” has been uploaded to YouTube. There is a lot of good, in-depth information in these videos that one can’t find on traditional outlets like the news, newspaper web sites, or the candidate’s web site.

YouTube’s system for rating and recommending videos works pretty well, but I think a web site dedicated to just videos of candidates discussing philosophy or policy would make them easier to find, and save people the time of digging through hours of video to find the best parts.

I would (I don’t know what verb tense describes ‘action that I wish I could take but I never will’, so “I would” will have to do) set up a web site that would allow users to nominate 10-minute or less video snippets that best capture what they like about their candidate.

Each candidate would have their own section. I am guessing but don’t know that YouTube allows you to embed a clip of a video using time codes, so only a link with relevant time codes would have to be uploaded. People could vote what effect the video had on them (positive, neutral, negative) and clips with the highest combination of votes and positive ratings would be featured under each candidate’s section.

Yes, there is potential for abuse in a voting system like this. I’ll be sure to install as many safeguards in the voting system when I don’t make this web site.

2. “Pork Patrol.” I am so disappointed that PorkPatrol.com is already taken. At least it doesn’t go to a porn site. It redirects you to Citizens Against Government Waste, or CAGW. Yes, that is much catchier. If you want to remember what Web 0.7 looked like, be sure to pay them a visit.

At his Google talk, Obama says he wants to “Googlefy” government (my word, not his). Make bills fully searchable, attach Congress member names to earmarks, and so on.

If these changes were made, the next step would be to create a web site where people could search bills and mark each item in the bill (e.g. separate earmark, proposal for funding). If someone saw a questionable project, they could flag it, where it would appear in a public area for a certain amount of time. People would then be able to ask questions about the project, share information, and rate the earmark.

Every week, the Congress members with the top 10 negatively voted earmarks (for example) would be contacted by the site and given a chance to respond. There would be a new voting period, and then a determination would be made to publicly shame the creator of the earmark, start a phone campaign, or drop the matter and move to a new issue.

I think limiting the number of earmarks, bill language, and so on that would move on to the next stage is important. A limit would make people more judicious when voting and selecting parts of a bill to complain about. If only x items were highlighted a week, it would encourage people to focus on only the most expensive and egregious waste.

Since many earmarks are added at a last-minute and often without a vote, and a web site like this would actually encourage that practice, perhaps there should be a public comment period of 2 weeks after every significant bill so public watch groups like this site could at least bring a bill’s shadier parts to the public’s attention.

What makes this idea great in my eyes is that it’s not even possible to do yet, so I don’t feel guilty about not creating the web site. Also, I barely know anything about the minutia of the legislative process, so I am blissfully aware of whatever huge holes there are in my idea. But if budgets were made fully searchable, accountable, and indexable, a site like this would be the logical next step.

Edit: I should have used Google before writing that title. Other candidates that have appeared at Google.

I linked to a video of Barack Obama answering questions from Google employees in the last post that I have heard of but never watched. I finally watched it, both 25 min. parts.

In the campaign, we hear stump speeches, pundits, and occasionally an informative debate, the best of which might allow each candidate to speak for a few minutes at a time. There is a lot of attention paid to each candidate, but sometimes little information.

Unless you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you probably aren’t going to have the chance to go to a town hall meeting and hear a candidate talk in-depth for an hour or two on policy and philosophy. The video of Obama’s Q&A session from a few months ago was interesting for that reason, because it gave him a forum to elaborate on some of his policy interests, governing philosophy, and most important to me, his decision making process. It took place in a laid-back environment away from the mass media and before the primaries, and the talk was as unguarded as one could expect from a politician.

There is no one moment that blew me away, but he said a lot of things that seemed rational and well-reasoned. The cumulative effect made me feel more comfortable about him being elected President.

If you want a good sample, forward to 18:30 in this video and watch the rest (6 minutes).

I was already leaning towards him, so there is some bias there. The clip (and whole video) is worth watching though, and it has the type of information that I think will be difficult to get from any candidate at this point in the campaign.

If you have 10 min. of a video of another candidate to suggest, post it in the comments. I will watch it, whoever it is.