Anderson@Large

Coding is Cool

Yo, Philly Votes

Election Day is 55 days away. With the Cost of Freedom Voter ID App, I’m helping voters get ready.

I’m now developing an app to help protect the rights of those who show up on Election Day.

I’d like to share an excerpt from my post about the Ushahidi-powered Yo! Philly Votes, which was published yesterday on the Ushahidi blog:

I am a voting rights activist who has monitored elections in Angola, Ethiopia and Nigeria, and led democracy workshops in Kazakhstan. Since 2006, I have live-blogged from Election Day command centers organized by the Election Protection Coalition and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

I’m now spearheading Yo! Philly Votes, a citizen-led initiative that will crowdsource election protection in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the American democracy.

Read more: Yo! Philly Votes Will Turn Data into Action

Let’s Tumblr

I wrote my first blog post on Jan. 20, 2005. One thousand seven hundred and five posts later, I still enjoy blogging.

In the era of Web 2.0, I also curate news and information on microplatforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

In a recent post, Mathew Ingram, a senior writer with GigaOM, asked what happens when journalism is everywhere:

One of the real threats to traditional journalism that come out of this phenomenon (if there are any) is that the ability to report and publish and broadcast the news in real time from events such as the Zuccotti Park protests can turn anyone into what journalists have traditionally been: namely, a trusted filter for the news. Mitchell describes how one college student created a summary of the event that got tens of thousands of views in a matter of hours and was embedded by the Washington Post. Does that make him a journalist? Of course it does — in exactly the same way that Pakistani programmer Sohaib Athar became a journalist by live-tweeting the raid on Osama bin Laden, something NPR digital editor Andy Carvin described as a “random act of journalism.”

There’s an app for mobile journalism -- Tumblr. I signed up for Tumblr back in 2009 but I did not publish my first post until yesterday.

Let’s get ready to Tumblr.

Have You Voted Yet?

I’m part of the 99 percent.

Now that I have your attention :-), I hope you will “just take five” and vote for me for the 2011 Women’s Media Center Social Media Award.

Thank you.

It’s My Birthday

Yes, it’s my special day. Fortunately it only happens every five to 10 years ;-).

It’s also the day before voting begins for the 2011 Women’s Media Center Social Media Award. I’m one of the nominees.

As a voting rights advocate, I LOL that I’m the first one listed. Studies show that ballot order matters.

So I thank you in advance for your vote. Check back tomorrow for the link to the site.

Now back to my irregularly scheduled program.