Apologies to our readers for the lack of activity on the Beaconfire Wire lately - the whole staff has been busy with a variety of exciting projects, some of which we hope to announce later this week. Unfortunately, our work on behalf of our clients has kept us too busy to blog, but here are a few things to check out on election day that I wish he had time to blog about in depth:

• Google has a bevy of cool tools to help voters - there’s a map to help you find your polling place, indexed audio of ads and speeches, so you can find what candidates have said about your key issues, and, as the polls close, live results.
• Twitter is featuring an election update page that moves really fast, but is nonetheless cool. Though the candidate statuses on top make me wonder if one candidate might be more connected to Twitter than the other…
  
• When you log into Facebook, you’ll note that it’s asking you if you’ve voted yet - there’s a running tally of people who both voted and checked their Facebook today, and while it’s lower than expected, that’s probably a good thing because it means that people are getting out the vote rather than visiting Facebook.
  
  Facebook also features an “election central” page, which isn’t as useful as Google’s, but does hawk their gifts. This made me laugh a little bit - first of all, how can a virtual gift be sold out, second, it’s probably not a good sign for McCain:
  
• TechPresident is going to be the place to be throughout the day, particularly after 4 PM Eastern when they start liveblogging. I’ve found TechPresident to be one the best blogs in the business for those of us interested in technology and politics, and their cross-partisanship gave me a look at McCain’s operation.
• My favorite electoral vote calculator is Daily Kos’s scoreboard. For now,it’s just in prediction mode, but it’s supposed to start getting a feed of AP data tonight as polls close. It also shows off downticket races that won’t get as much play on TV.

Look for more on the Beaconfire Wire later this week and month, as we resume our regular posting schedule. For today, though, do what you can to Get Out the Vote!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Cool Tools and Tips, Current Affairs, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.