CivicActions

Every so often a new technology emerges that "changes everything". Ubiquity, the new project of Mozilla Labs is the latest in that trend.

Ubiquity enables "on-demand, user-generated mash-ups with existing open Web APIs." Or, in other words, it allows users to remix the Web to fit their needs, no matter the Web site or whatever the user is doing.

Seeing is believing:

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Obama takes the lead with another emerging technology: temporarily embedding advertising inside video games.

The technology is only 18 months old, and Obama is the first presidential candidate to buy space for the Xbox Live system.

"The ads — appearing on billboards and other signage — remind players that early voting has begun and plug a campaign Web site that encourages people to register for early voting."

The video game ads are targeting 10 battleground states that allow early voting, including Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada and Florida among others.

CivicActions' own Ian Rhett will be performing this Thursday night in San Francisco at the talent-filled Bank on Barack event!

Ian recently released his latest video, What Kind of Amazing Grace which is remarkably beautiful and powerful.

Bank on Barack is a fundraiser and 100% of the proceeds go directly to the Barack Obama campaign!

The show will be filled with singer/songwriters, comedy, performing arts and great DJs to shake you all night.

If you are in San Francisco this week, grab your friends, open your wallet to give it up for change!

Tickets are $20 presale, $25 at the door.

credit: Monster Much

"If you have ever wondered what a perfect online marketing campaign looks like, just look at the Barack Obama campaign."

That is the message at webprofits.com which has put together a detailed outline of the Presidential candidate's online strategy, including social networking, SEO, email marketing, mobile marketing and a number of other strategies.

Also of note, the Obama campaign has engaged a "Rapid Response Team" which has has launched a new website for the single purpose of rapidly responding to and repudiating negative comments about the candidate.

Quickly responding in the same 24/7 news-cycle in which he is attacked is perhaps the greatest achievement of this unprecedented online campaign to date.

Chris Brogan posted a fantastic list of 20 free eBooks about Social Media on his blog.

Learn everything from the New Rules of Viral Marketing, Podcasting, Google Adwords, Marketing Plans, SEO, Analytics, Twitter, and more...

Recently, NTEN (the Nonprofit Technology Network) released their 2008 Content Management Systems Satisfaction Report evaluating the most commonly used systems at small and medium sized organizations.

The CMS systems were evaluated in five categories: Quality, Support, Delivers on Promises, Usability and Value. Drupal and Joomla! both scored the highest marks, yet Drupal had nearly twice the number of responses than the latter.

Open source systems scored generally higher than commercial systems and custom systems were rated near the bottom of the pack.

Kieran posted a nice summary of the report results at Drupal.org.

The report is available to members of NTEN for free and to non-members at a discount rate. (CivicActions is a proud member of NTEN!)

If picture is worth 1000 words, that would make this 5 minute, 15fps video worth at least 300K words on Photoshop tips.

The 21 Featured Projects competed at the N2Y3 Conference for a share of $100,000 and other benefits. The winners have been just been announced:

1st place: shahidi: Mapping Reports of Post-Election Violence in Kenya

2nd place: KnowMore.org Firefox Extension

3rd place: Social Actions

And the $10,000 prize for the DonationNow Mashup Challenge sponsored by the Case Foundation was awarded to Tweet4Good.

Congrats to all!

I Heart Miro has created the absolute easiest (and most passive) way to support the Participatory Culture Foundation's FOSS Miro project.

By just installing the Firefox extension, anytime you shop at Amazon a small portion of the proceeds will go to support Miro.

The extension works by adding the Miro referral code to the URL when you browse on Amazon. When you buy something, the Amazon referral fee is donated to their a 501c3 non-profit.

Joe Solomon introduced me to the project and posted on the NetSquared blog about abstracting the project to support any non-profit.

What about going a step further, and being able to select Drupal, the Free Software Foundation or any other Free & Open Source Software project - and then select from a list of affiliate programs such as iTunes which will donate a 5% commission on all qualifying purchases. (like your DRM-free purchased music)