romney

Twitter launches dedicated presidential debate page

Whether you're a political junkie or someone just starting to pay attention to next month's presidential election, tonight's first debate between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is sure to provide tons of conversation fodder. And Twitter wants to be right in the middle of it.

Already, Twitter has dispatched members of its @gov team to Denver, where they plan to monitor the debate from up close and keep track of how the massive Twitter user base responds to each and every barb, attack, evasion, and even the occasional thoughtful answer. And to help … Read more

Feds probe alleged hacking theft of Romney's tax returns

The U.S. Secret Service is looking into claims that someone stole presidential nominee Mitt Romney's income tax returns and is threatening to release them if he doesn't pay up.

Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie told CNET today that the agency is investigating, but had no further comment.

The claim was made in a post on the Pastebin site on Sunday that alleged that Romney's federal tax returns were taken from the offices of PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Frankin, Tenn., on August 25 by someone who snuck into the building and made copies of the document. The message … Read more

The 404 1,121: Where we rock out with the pop out (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- The POTUS did an AMA on Reddit yesterday, and here are the Web site's stats.

- Metal Gear Solid movie heads into production, will be produced by Avi Arad.

- Google begins reminding users of friends' birthdays.… Read more

Microsoft, Google folks are top sources for Obama funds

President Obama's campaign is getting financial help from people associated with two big tech firms: Microsoft and Google.

Following the University of California, those companies were listed as the second and third top contributors to his re-election campaign by OpenSecrets.org, followed by the lawfirm of DLA Piper and Harvard University.

Mitt Romney's list is a who's who of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Credit Suisse Group.

The money did not come from the organizations themselves, but from political action committees, individual employees, owners, and family members, and includes … Read more

Facebook, CNN election insights show lots of Romney chatter

Facebook and CNN launched their election "real-time" insights feature today to show how much presidential candidates are talked about on the world's largest social network.

The insights show that most of the country's Facebook users are currently talking about presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, which makes sense since the Republican National Convention kicks off today.

CNN has the information are broken down by state, age ranges and gender.

This is a continuation of a partnership between Facebook and CNN announced earlier this year. The two companies paired up to introduce a "I'm Voting" app … Read more

YouTube debuts 'Elections Hub,' a one-stop campaign channel

YouTube launched "Elections Hub" today -- its one-stop shop for this year's election coverage.

The video service announced that with this specialized channel, all live speeches from the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions will be streamed. Also, people can watch Google+ Hangouts and live streams of the official presidential and vice presidential debates. The channel debuted today and will available through Election Day.

"You won't need to go anywhere else for the must-watch moments of this election cycle," YouTube news manager Olivia Ma wrote in a blog post today, "they're all … Read more

Obama still beats Romney in digital messaging -- study

While Mitt Romney is getting better at harnessing the power of the Internet for campaigning, the current POTUS still dominates the online world.

President Barack Obama's campaign has used more direct digital messaging than Romney's campaign, according to a Pew Research Center report released today.

The report notes Romney's attempts to catch up to Obama's tech savvy, with Romney's most recent stunt involving the announcement of his VP pick via an app. The report also mentions Obama's 2008 sucess with social media campaigning.

The research -- part of the center's studies over the … Read more

Paul Ryan's sparse, mixed record on technology

Rep. Paul Ryan, the new Republican pick as vice presidential nominee, has not been a leader on technology topics and has a mixed tech voting record in this area.

This should be no surprise. If you're in the U.S. Congress, you're not likely to focus on technology unless you're a member of the relevant committees. Ryan isn't. Instead, he's the chairman of the House Budget committee and has spent years trying to get entitlements under control.

So far, though, Ryan's voting history indicates that he tends to align himself with the Republicans' party … Read more

Mitt Romney suspiciously gets 116K Twitter followers in one day

In playing catch up with President Obama's social media savvy, Republican nominee Mitt Romney might have cut some corners. A new report by Barracuda Labs shows that more than 15 percent of Romney's Twitter followers may have come from bogus accounts generated by pay-for-followers services.

"We believe most of these recent followers of Romney are not from a general Twitter population but most likely from a paid Twitter follower service," Barracuda Labs research scientist Jason Ding wrote in the report.

It's important to note, however, that it's not clear if the Romney campaign, an … Read more

'Dyle' in to watch live TV on your phone

You don't need any accessories to catch up on Friday's top tech stories:

A new service called Dyle picks up live, local TV signals to watch on your mobile device. The first with this service is the MetroPCS Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G. But if you rather not drop $460 right now for a phone, iOS users may have another option this fall when Dyle attachments are expected to go on sale.

No price has been set, but the attachments could cost, at most, $150. And the service from then on is free. Would you pay for an … Read more