obama

Instagram users upload 250,000 election-related photos

Instagram users showed off their voting activities on Election Day, uploading more than 250,000 election-related photos and immediately posting a slew of photos after hearing of the president's victory, the photo-sharing network posted today.

In the U.S., users tagged more than 100,000 photos with #IVoted and 150,000 photos with #election2012, Instagram reported, with the largest surge of photos coming in right after news outlets projected President Barack Obama's win. At that moment, the number of Instagram photos uploaded each second was at 2.1 times the normal rate.

Clearly, these Americans are not shy … Read more

The post-election tech tally: Winners and losers

Elections are all about winners and losers, who is up and who is down. Here's a CNET look at the winners and losers in the 2012 election in which President Obama bested former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, from a tech perspective.

WINNERS

Nate Silver: The FiveThirtyEight forecaster's algorithms correctly calculated that on election day President Obama had a nearly 92-percent chance of winning, and accurately projected the voting outcome in 49 states (Florida has not yet been called).

Read: Obama's win a big vindication for Nate Silver, king of the quants

Big data: Many, especially … Read more

Obama victory photo smashes Facebook 'Like' record

Shortly after President Obama won re-election last night, a simple photo of the president embracing his wife was posted on his Facebook page. Just a few hours later, and with apologies to Gangnam Style, Justin Bieber, and adorable kittens worldwide, that shot became the most "liked" photo ever on Facebook.

At the moment, it's been liked over 3.1 million times, and the number is still climbing.

The same photo was also posted to the president's Twitter account last night, and quickly smashed Twitter records for the most retweets. At the moment it's been retweeted … Read more

Obama faces piracy, privacy tests in his second term

The most controversial technology topics in President Obama's second term are likely to be two political flashpoints: piracy and privacy.

When Internet activists allied with an hastily assembled coalition of Silicon Valley companies blocked votes on a pair of Hollywood-backed copyright bills early this year, they didn't end efforts to slap stiffer anti-piracy sanctions on the Internet. They merely postponed the fight.

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act are dead, of course. Those names have become radioactive on Capitol Hill, thanks to a broad public outcry that involved millions of Internet users and actually … Read more

Obama's win a big vindication for Nate Silver, king of the quants

In the end, big data won.

Not the presidential election -- although there's no doubt that President Obama's victory tonight was aided by a sophisticated understanding of the American electorate born of years of analysis of voting trends and demographic shifts.

No, big data -- and its patron saint, Nate Silver -- won the battle to predict the outcome of the contest between Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Where breathless pundits brandishing equivocating polls shouted from the rooftops over the last few weeks that the race for the White House was a "tossup," or &… Read more

Obama 'four more years' tweet skyrockets to No. 1 retweet

A tweet sent this evening by President Obama minutes after winning re-election has quickly become the most retweeted message ever.

Obama's official Twitter account -- which now has more than 22 million followers -- posted a photo of the President hugging First Lady Michelle Obama, with the message "Four more years."

Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st...

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

The tweet quickly logged more than 350,000 retweets and 100,000 votes as favorite tweets, easily surpassing a Justin Bieber tweet grieving the passing of Avalanna Routh, a young fan who died … Read more

Bing's Election 2012 page can filter news by political bias

As election results roll in with Barack Obama taking Vermont and Mitt Romney winning Kentucky and West Virginia, Bing lets users tailor the political news they're getting.

In it's Election 2012 page, Microsoft's search engine has what you'd normally see, a map with color-coded states, numbers showing how many states each candidate has won, up-to-the-minute news, and results from the Senate and House races. But, there's one additional feature that's a bit more unusual -- a political bias slider.

In the upper right corner of the page, users can slide the bar to the … Read more

Obama returns to Reddit to drum up last-minute votes

With mere hours left before the polls close, President Obama turned to Reddit for a last-minute push to round up support for his re-election bid.

After making headlines in August when his question-and-answer session overwhelmed servers running the popular link-sharing site, the president returned to Reddit this afternoon to remind voters to vote.

"I'm checking in because polls will start closing in this election in just a few hours, and I need you to vote," Obama said in his post. "Millions of Americans have stepped up in support of this campaign over the last 19 months, and today we decide what the next four years look like -- but only if we show up." … Read more

The 404 1,159: Where we challenge you to a vote-off (podcast)

Tune into today's show to hear an update to The 404's Halloween Samsung Galaxy SIII Giveaway Contest! With all the chaos of last week, we're editing some of the rules (see full list at the bottom of this page), but here's how to enter:

Follow @the404. Tweet out using #404S3 a photo and quick description why you need a new phone. Your photo MUST include your Twitter handle handwritten in the image. The submission deadline is Sunday 11/11 at Midnight ET.… Read more