September 18, 2007
Presidential politics is really heating up. So is the use of the internet for everything from voter contact (check out www.moveon.org) to fundraising (pick a candidates website and you can give) to advertising (see secondlife.com, facebook.com, and myspace.com). There are also sites to track the fundraising efforts of all federal candidates. I have written about www.opensecrets.org in the past, but there are others. You can even watch the debates on youtube.com. But, today I wanted to write about how you can use the computer to see who is most in line with your beliefs on many important issues.
Checkout www.ontheissues.org then click the Presidential Match Quiz by the Issues section. Answer honestly and you will see who is in line with the answers to your questions. The questions are pretty sticky, like gun control, drug crimes, Iraq, abortion rights, and church and state issues. The nice thing about the site is that it gives you more information about the issues and the candidates answers on the questions that you answered. If you are particularly interested in a candidate or in an issue you can delve in to the candidates answer to the question. More importantly it gives you backup and programs that they have sponsored having to do with that issue.
There is also a great home plate graphic that summarizes the candidates. When you click on the candidate’s picture at the top, scroll to the bottom to get a quick home plate read of their political philosophy. It may scare you who you are aligned with, it sure scared me.
On a totally different subject, the likes of which is more techie has to do with sound. If you want to record and edit sound you can try a free player from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. I have heard good things about this editor and the price is right. For a bit higher end recording and for a bit of money you can get a program called cakewalk (www.cakewalk.com). Learn how to mix tracks and put different sounds together.
For our Mac lovers and according to the recently published sales figures, the Mac’s have been selling like hot cakes, you can use garage band for free. The free windows audio recorder is very weak and I wouldn’t recommend it.
There are some great online audio magazines too. If you are into audio checkout http://mixonline.com/, they have a great story about Apples Logic Pro Studio which will be $499 new and $199 for the upgrade. The incredible library of sounds and effects that you get with this product make it ideal for the next step up from garage band.
This week was about politics and audio, next week I want to write about video. Are any of you uploading video to YouTube? Do you want to? There are some easy ways (especially with a new Mac) that allow you to convert your videos into YouTube ready video.
If you have any YouTube stories, please send them in, tell me what your favorite YouTube clip is and if you have watched any of the political candidate video’s. I wonder if there are any candidates that are doing “professional” videos that look like a regular person did it? Anyone know of any? If so, send them in.