Thursday, September 25, 2008

Tracking Obama McCain with Google Applications

The 2008 Presidential Election between John McCain and Barack Obama is receiving unprecedented coverage on the Internet. Leading the way is Google with its heterogeneous set of offerings. The following is the list of politically related Google applications that I was able to find:
  • Track McCain Obama quotes - Google In Quotes is a service that is collecting Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin quotes from news articles and organizing them by keyword (e.g., Iraq, economy). Specifically, Google In Quotes yields the ability to do a side-by-side comparison of quotes from two politicians regarding the topic of your choosing.
  • Identify your polling location - Type your address into the left side bar on Google Maps for polling locations and it will tell you your most likely polling location and provide locale-specific links for voter registration and absentee balloting. Google Maps for polling locations will not have a complete set of data until mid-October so it may be a couple of weeks before the service displays a polling location for your town.
  • Presidential Election Video Search - Watch videos of Obama and McCain talking about political issues by adding a search box to your Google homepage that displays YouTube's election ads and videos. Videos are searchable by keyword and candidate.
  • Political Articles Read by Top Political Journalists - Read news articles posted by the McCain and Obama campaigns along side news articles submitted by political pundits and journalists at Google's Power Readers in Politics.
  • Google Maps Election Gallery - The Google Maps Election Gallery has a collection of maps that display election data by location including view the number of internet searches by candidates name, view each candidate's campaign trail, and simulate election results by designating which party wins a state's electoral votes.
Am I missing a Google tool that is relevant to the 2008 Presidential Election? Or, are there non-Google tools that are interesting too?

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