election

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

Twitter is getting into the candidate sentiment business, parsing the content of 2 million tweets a week to capture what the company calls the "nuances of public opinion" about the presidential hopefuls.

The newly launched Twitter Political Index offers a daily tally of Twitter users' "feelings" about President Obama and his presumptive Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, the company says.

"Each day, the Index evaluates and weighs the sentiment of Tweets mentioning Obama or Romney relative to the more than 400 million Tweets sent on all other topics. For example, a score of 73 for a … Read more

With the presidential elections fast approaching, both Mitt Romney and President Obama are taking their campaigns mobile. The Obama for America app concentrates primarily on distributing President Obama's policy stances, as well as news and events.

Users of the Obama for America app can also find useful information about voting rules and regulations on a state-by-state basis and information on volunteering to help the Obama campaign.

Romney's app takes a different approach, largely marketed as a way for users to keep up-to-date with the Romney campaign's decision on its vice president candidate, hence the app's moniker, … Read more

Google has some news. Voters in the U.S. get their information about candidates and issues via the Internet. That's not really news, but Google would like you to know that one third of people nationwide see campaign ads on the company's YouTube video sharing service that they haven't seen on TV. According to a 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, 71 percent of adults have used YouTube and similar sites, and 28 percent visited them daily.

The infographic above is part of Google's "Four Screens to Victory" campaign, … Read more

Washington state is the first state to get hip to social media for its voter registration. According to the Associated Press, the secretary of state's office announced today that it will feature an app on its Facebook page letting residents register to vote.

"In this age of social media and more people going online for services, this is a natural way to introduce people to online registration and leverage the power of friends on Facebook to get more people registered," co-director of elections Shane Hamlin told the Associated Press.

The app was designed by Microsoft, which joined … Read more

I am not entirely convinced about life's alleged correlations.

Just as beautiful people can be entirely unsexy, so too those who shop at Ann Taylor can be very, very wonderful indeed.

Yet some highly intuitive brains are insisting that there is a clear and meaningful link between the music you hold on your iPod, iPhone, or Gramophone cabinet and the political views you hold in your head.

A blog post by Brian Whitman at The Echo Nest offers correlations so startling that I am concerned someone might accuse me of being a Republican for listening to Pink Floyd.

Yes, despite the fact that last year the son of Floyd lead David Gilmour was locked up for rioting against the U.K. government, if you listen to Dad's music you are likely a righty.

On the other hand, if Rihanna is your thing, then you are almost certainly of a more Democratic persuasion.

The Echo Nest is a music intelligence company and Whitman used the anonymized data built within the Nest's twigs in order to find alignments.… Read more

Some Facebook users may not need that cardboard voting booth this year -- CNN and Facebook are partnering up to put that bright social media spotlight on voting in the 2012 election.

The media behemoths announced the partnership today, which includes a "I'm Voting" Facebook app that lets users commit to voting while endorsing specific candidates and issues. The commitments will then be displayed on users' timelines, news feeds and real-time tickers.

The app, which will be available in English and Spanish, will show which of your Facebook friends also supported the issue or candiate you voted … Read more

Chirpify, the company that essentially turns tweets into money, is getting into politics.

The company launched its "Tweet a Presidential Candidate" Web site today. The site lets donors give and track donations to the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns with a tweet.

Chris Teso, Chirpify's CEO, said the 4-month-old company sees Twitter as the perfect platform for fundraising. He said Chirpify recognized social media's influential role during the 2008 presidential election when the Obama's campaign took advantage of social media for a grassroots approach.

"Now it's exponentially magnified this year," … Read more

As the 2012 presidential election revs up, 33 states now permit some form of Internet ballot casting. However, a senior cybersecurity adviser at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned today that online voting programs make the country's election process vulnerable to cyberattacks.

"It is premature to deploy Internet voting in real elections at this time," DHS cybersecurity adviser Bruce McConnell said at a meeting of the Election Verification Network, which is a group that works to ensure every vote is counted. He explained that all voting systems are susceptible to attacks and bringing in Internet … Read more