Spalpeen

I support Obama for President (the opponent would be a disaster for America and the world), but this video the campaign aired recently is essentially propagandist drivel. Who would in their right mind sit through a 30 minute commercial?! I expect that it’ll come off cheesy for uncertain voters, and probably patronising for most supporters of Obama. The only group I can see actually sitting through it are hardcore fanatics of Obama, but they would have watched this if it had been published solely online. Seems like a waste of money to broadcast this on the networks. Then again, most of this $1 Billion “race” to the White House comes off as a waste sitting from all the way over in the U.K.

Dick Cheney Hospitalized, reports BreakingNews on twitter.

Some points about The Guardian’s Tomasky videos. First, let it be known that I really enjoy this series. It’s a very level headed take on the U.S. election, and follows the latest developments very closely. I also admire The Guardian for jumping into this field.

However, there are some technical issues with the way the video is being published.

-Why is there no link to the NYTimes columnist’s story in Tomasky’s latest video? If not in the video, then it should be linked to in the notes.
-Why is there no way to respond with a video comment? Plenty of online services out there solve this problem (Seismic being one - although I personally don’t like their solution).
-Why is the flash player lacking other basic features (full screen mode? download link? RSS/subscribe?)
-Where are the links to previous videos? A link to Tomasky’s blog on a sidebar isn’t enough.
-Why aren’t these videos being distributed on every other video platform out there? (Go to TubeMogul and send this video to 10+ top video sites, for nothing).
-Why is the title/tagging/description of this video not SEO friendly? The Guardian produces some great video content, and this should be up there on the most popular search topics. It’s not going to be if the meta data is as vague as it currently is.

-Also, pre-roll ads? Ugh, but whatever.

I friggin’ love The Guardian’s content, but this is yet another example of a newspaper company getting A for effort, but C for achievement when it comes to publishing on the web.

It’s also why Tina Brown is a complete idiot when she says “I’m not completely sure how a printing press works, but that never stopped me” as a way of justifying her naive entrance into the world of internet publishing. Sorry guys, if you don’t know SEO, you ain’t gonna win the internet.