The draft rule was announced the day before a show of support from the Obama administration for both corn and cellulosic ethanol. The administration held a call this morning with reporters to discuss not just the EPA rule but also $786.5 million in stimulus funds that will be allocated for biofuel research and commercialization and a task group called the Biofuels Interagency Working Group that will work on development programs and policies.

The EPA rule is the most controversial of the three. While many biofuel advocates favor an emissions standard, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Tuesday morning cited an estimate that biofuels only reduce emissions by about 16 percent compared with fossil fuels. Other studies put the number closer to 60 percent, said General Wesley Clark — an enthusiastic ethanol proponent and chairman of ethanol trade group Growth Energy — and Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis, during a conference call today. Growth Energy’s board of directors includes corn-ethanol companies POET, Western Plains Energy, Amaizing Energy, Hawkeye Renewables, and Green Plains Renewable Energy.

Clark called the modeling “science gone wild” and “way out of line with what other studies show,” and pointed out that attributing things like rainforest clearing to ethanol alone is unfair, as governments choose to cut trees for many different reasons. The good news, Clark and Buis said, is that the current model isn’t set in stone. The EPA plans to conduct peer reviews on its emissions analysis and has formed an interagency biofuels group to help come up with policies to make biofuels greener.

Jeff Broin, CEO of corn ethanol maker POET, said in a statement that he is:

[C]oncerned about the preliminary rule issued by the U.S. EPA that included an indirect land use change penalty for corn ethanol. While many scientists have found significant flaws in the models used to calculate indirect land use change, I think the very concept is flawed and stems from a lack of understanding of ethanol and agriculture.

The vastly conflicting studies out there on emissions from ethanol does make the subject confusing. Last month, when the California Air Resources Board delivered a similar call to include indirect land-use numbers in a state standard, more than 175 scientists signed a letter suggesting that those ethanol emissions numbers were flawed.

Speedy improvements in the technology could also render an easily dated emission-calculation model obsolete. An Argonne National Laboratory study last year concluded that ethanol’s water consumption fell 26.6 percent, and energy use fell 21.8 percent, over a five-year period ending in 2006.

But for some of the newer cellulosic ethanol firms, which will be able to create ethanol from waste, and non-food plants that don’t take up farm land, the ruling seems less threatening. Bruce Jamerson, CEO of cellulosic-ethanol company Mascoma, believes this process will help establish a common scientific basis for a much-needed lifecycle analysis, which will help to value biofuels’ carbon-dioxide advantages. A lack of scientific consensus has resulted in widely varying conclusions from different lifecycle studies today (see examples here and here). Jamerson said he’s confident that cellulosic fuels will come out ahead under any scientifically driven lifecycle analysis. “If we’re going to encourage low-carbon fuels, let’s come up with a common independent agreed-upon scientific standard for what constitutes low carbon,” he said.

Bob Walsh, CEO of algae-biofuel startup Aurora Biofuels, said that while the industry and science community doesn’t yet understand the whole equation of how energy plays into biofuels, it all boils down to the same thing for biofuels companies: Reducing your energy use is good for both your emissions numbers and for your economics. “If you’re energy-efficient, you probably have a good greenhouse-gas model and you’re efficient economically, too,” he said.

Even among companies involved in cellulosic ethanol, though, support isn’t universal. Mark Emalfarb, CEO of biofuel-enzyme company Dyadic International, said the rule kicks the ethanol industry when it’s down. “The economy’s unstable enough,” he said. “Either we have to get off oil or not get off oil. This seems to me to be ‘let’s throw more burdens in [biofuels'] way.’” Emalfarb recommends reducing emissions by supporting cellulosic advancements and technologies that turn carbon-dioxide into fuel or electricity, instead of by penalizing corn-based ethanol.

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Improvements in hardware helped the team keep costs low. Luke Peterson, data architect for Obama for America, told me his $700 laptop easily handled voter registration data, in fact better than did the $5,000 workstation he used in 2004.  But improved processor performance was aided to some degree by improved software, too. Peterson said the campaign used inexpensive software options — PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc. — where possible, saving budget resources for expensive items like SPSS licenses and an ArcGIS server for the Chicago office.

Increased bandwidth also was a big boon. In 2000, Peterson explained, the Al Gore campaign was using an ISDN that was split 60 ways (I hope he was exaggerating). “If we needed to move a big data set, we’d set it up at 6:00 p.m. and go home … or go work at another computer,” he told me. “Maybe the next morning, if you’re lucky, it went through.” Compare that to the Obama campaign, which had “huge” pipes going into the Chicago office and invested heavily in Internet connections for field offices.

Advances in mobile technology made life easier, as well. By the end of the campaign, Peterson said, the team was running most of its voice communication on cell phones and even VoIP. – the only copper going into the Chicago office was the DSL line. The Chicago office maintained a traditional digital phone service, but many, if not most, of the field offices dumped traditional phone lines for VoIP. The team even built an iPhone app designed to help canvassers do their jobs.

The campaign also used cloud computing tools and a whole lotta SaaS. On the cloud front, Peterson recalled a team of DBAs using EC2 to run a huge PostgreSQL spatial analysis with political shapefiles. SaaS-wise, Peterson cited extensive use of Google Docs and EditGrid. In fact, he told me, the campaign shared more EditGrid spreadsheets than it did Excel spreadsheets, and there was a rumor that Google contacted the Obama campaign’s legal team in South Carolina to say the team had the biggest spreadsheet of any Google Docs user.

And, of course, there was Team Obama’s use of new media. On top of the 5-million-plus friends Obama for America had across the social networking landscape, the campaign also targeted applications and advertising to each particular site. Ads on Gothic.net were different than communications on LinkedIn, for example, and the distinct differences in how people use MySpace vs. Facebook meant different strategies for those two sites.

Facebook was a big part of the campaign for reasons beyond its online reach: Co-founder Chris Hughes was part of the campaign team. In fact, Peterson told me, Hughes’ presence underscored the campaign’s open culture, a characteristic that made possible the testing (and ultimate success) of all these new strategies. In other campaigns, Peterson said, the then-25-year-old Hughes, despite his web mogul status, would have been told to sit down and shut up. In the Obama campaign, though, he “kicked some of the gray-hairs in the ass a little bit,” Peterson said.

Even with all the new techniques employed by Obama’s campaign, I expect those who cut their political teeth with the Obama campaign will hone their methods in the years to come, making 2007-2008 seem like last century just a few election cycles down the road. With the growing legitimacy of cloud computing, the growing prevalence of broadband and the growing reach of social networks, the possibilities for what computing can bring to a campaign seem almost endless.

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Data drove many decisions for the campaign. The team amassed more than 13 million email addresses and more than 5 million friends across the social networking landscape. Of the roughly $750 million Obama raised, two-thirds of it was donated online. There were field offices across the nation. Data was coming from everywhere — every time someone signed up on Facebook, donated $5 or requested info from my.barackobama.com, the campaign got at least a phone number or an email address.

Corralling the various data was critical, Peterson said during the presentation, as it allowed the campaign to “break down the walls between departments.” In early 2007, when Iowa was the focus, Team Obama built a tool that meshed voter registration data with data collected online to determine the geographic location of voters. This allowed precinct organizers to more fully personalize the experience for voters in their precincts. Instead of generic phone calls asking people to vote for Obama, callers were able offer rides to caucus locations or talk about issues that voters might have raised via a forum post. While all this was going on in Iowa, another web tool was feeding information to volunteers in states with later primaries and caucuses, who built and grew coalitions until the official campaign focused its attention on those states.

The main objective of this data integration strategy was to make the most of resource expenditures. The Obama campaign didn’t want to waste time going through the phonebook cold calling, so it used data mining and integration to figure out “who the cream was on our barrel,” on whom it should unleash its hordes of volunteers. This was the campaign’s single biggest technology-derived success, Peterson told me. It gave the campaign a leg up on the Republican effort, which Peterson thinks lost its analytical edge thanks to “data nerd” Karl Rove’s absence.

The end-result of data integration is creating what Peterson calls “one picture of the truth” across the board, where organizations see all the relevant data for a particular need in one place instead of having the data isolated in their respective departments. Siloing data points decreases efficiency and usefulness. Peterson said corporate America’s bureaucratic structure and cultural resistance to departmental integration slow down data integration projects, even though corporations all strive to make the best use of their data.

As opposed to established corporations with legacy systems and practices, campaigns are like startups: They’re pretty much built from the ground up each election cycle, meaning there are no deeply rooted architectural or cultural obstacles standing in the way of integration. When the Obama 2012 campaign begins to take shape — strategies developed, infrastructure put in place and resources allocated — Peterson hopes 2008 veterans bring the institutional memory to build in data integration from the start.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell the rest of the story — how technological advances ranging from Facebook to mobile processors to cloud computing helped revolutionize the way campaigns are run.

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Charles Moore wrote a great article about the unibody 13″ MacBook compared to the much-loved 12″ PowerBook. A friend of Charles argued that until the dimensions were nearly identical it could never be considered a replacement. Charles feels there’s a little more to it than that.

I think they’re both right (yes, life is good sitting on top of this fence).

I don’t disagree with Charles’ friend that width is a big factor, and here the new MacBook is much bigger than the 12.” However, I would suggest that depth is the more critical (for use on a table, airline tray table, etc.) and here the new model is only slightly bigger. Further, weight is a big factor and the two are pretty much identical.

So you need to consider just what you’re getting for those extra couple inches of width. It’s more than just a much bigger screen (in resolution, not just size). The larger case allows a larger thermal envelope so they can pack all that power in there. Remember that Apple could never get a G5 in a notebook no matter what. The G4 in the 12″ initially ran at 867MHz, less than the 17″ introduced the same day.

I’m just not convinced one must insist that every dimension be equal or smaller to be a true replacement. Given the near-equality of each dimension except width, and what you’re getting for that width — and its value — I’d say the 13″ kicks some serious butt. And I put my money where my text is, since I own one and love it.

What Apple Could Do

Can Apple do better? One thing to consider is that, while I believe 1280 x 800 a minimum reasonable screen resolution, does that have to mean a 13″ screen? No, it doesn’t. Apple could drop to a 12″ screen (maybe even 11) and still support 1280 x 800. Look at how beautiful 1920 x 1200 looks on the MBP’s 17″ screen to convince yourself.

The smaller screen could address the complaint about width. However, this is where fantasy ends and reality begins.

Cost

The 13″ screen size is ubiquitous. In short, they’re rolling off the assembly lines even as we “speak,” and have come down in price to make those models more affordable. Gearing up for a”non-standard” 12- or 11-inch might actually cost more. The smaller 10″ displays are certainly becoming common, but I’m not sure they could support 1280 x 800 well enough.

Power

OK, you’ve managed to shave a couple of inches off the width. That’s great, right? Well, maybe not for the electronics inside, who suddenly begin to wonder why it’s so hot in here. (Yes, I know I shouldn’t anthropomorphize electronics. They hate that.) Anyway, would the smaller model support the 2.4GHz like the current high-end MB does? Likely not. Would it install the “full” NVIDIA graphics, or would it have to be slowed down like in the MacBook Air?

Other

Do I think Apple could pull the CD drive from this new model? Personally, yes. Sell an external one as an option and use the “air sharing” software. I’m surprised at how little I actually use the CD in my MacBook. Still, many people want an all-in-one to be, you know, all-in-one, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

So then here’s the issue. Let’s say Apple uses an 11″ screen, and even removes the CD drive. Now the machine is small and light. And let’s say they use the 17″ battery technology to cram as much as they can into the thing. Even with a resolution of 1280 x 800, how powerful can this machine be? It would probably have to be even lower power than the MacBook Air. In short, not a primary laptop. That’s fine, you say? Yeah, except we’re talking about a 12″ PowerBook replacement, remember? The 12″ was perfectly capable of being a primary machine, so any machine dubbed as it’s replacement should be, too. A “netbook” will not be a 12″ replacement.

What’s That Leave Us With?

So what can Apple do? Well, to keep it affordable, stick with the common and relatively inexpensive 13″ display. Better keep the CD as well. Try to make it as slim and light as possible given those constraints, then pack as much power as can reasonably be kept cool in that footprint (preferably reaching “pro” levels).

In the end you’ll have something that balances all the factors in creating something simultaneously small, powerful, and affordable. And when Apple tosses all that in the margarita blender, what do they pour out? Well, well, it’s the unibody 13″ MacBook!

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This week as the sold-out Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference kicks off, and Congress sits down to vote on a new, pared-down stimulus package that includes billions for jobs in energy efficiency and clean power, “green jobs” are at the forefront of everyone’s minds. But the cleantech industry hasn’t proved to be recession-proof, and layoffs and hiring freezes are leading would-be green employees to question just how soon the jobs will arrive, and what kind of cleantech companies will be hiring. Here’s what we see:

Where The Green Jobs Ain’t Right Now:

In the near term, the recession has caused many large renewable energy developers to shed staff — the New York Times had an excellent article last week on the hard times for renewable developers. A big part of the problem is that debt and tax-equity financing dropped off late last year, making it far harder to finance new clean power projects. And after a period of high demand, high prices and high margins, manufacturers have been suffering.

The wind industry has been blown over. Clipper Windpower is laying off 90 workers at its Ceder Rapids, Iowa, plant and cutting its production for 2009. Gamesa is laying off about 180 workers at its plant in Fairless Hills in eastern Pennsylvania. Even Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s No. 1 turbine maker, is reportedly seeing lowered demand for its products.

Large solar makers are feeling the same pain. Suntech Power, Day4 Energy, GT Solar, Emcore and Advanced Energy have announced layoffs, and still more have delayed or suspended new plants.

In addition, younger startups in capital-intensive businesses — many of which grew too big too fast in the good times — are in varying stages of crash and burn. OptiSolar ramped up at an incredible pace out of nowhere and recently had to chop half its staff. Electric-car maker Tesla underestimated just how difficult it would be to raise the money to mass produce vehicles and started cutting staff last year. Basically, if you see a new firm that needs to raise hundreds of millions to manufacture a lot of gear in order to start generating revenues, it’s probably not a good idea to turn in your resume.

Where The Green Jobs Still Are:

In the near term, early-stage firms and less conventional sectors of cleantech are still providing jobs. Greg Chin, a partner at law firm Latham & Watkins, says he’s seeing a net increase in jobs among his early-stage cleantech clients, with jobs mainly in science, engineering and marketing. Amy Vernetti, a managing director at headhunting firm Taylor Winfield,
says many of the jobs are coming from more obscure cleantech sectors, such as fuel additives and air filtration. She pointed us to Accsys Technologies, which is hiring and has developed a nontoxic chemical process to harden fast-growing pine so it can be used in place of hardwoods or even steel.

Startups that are building tools that can help companies save money on their energy bills can still move product in a downturn, and many are still hiring skilled employees. IT companies like Sun Microsystems are increasingly focusing on cutting the energy consumption in their data centers, which requires engineers, installers and designers. Sentilla, a startup that makes energy management services for data centers and industrial manufacturing, recently raised funding and is hiring engineers. Positive Energy, a startup that builds energy management reports for utilities, raised money in late 2008 and has over a dozen jobs for engineers, executives and designers listed on its site.

But a couple things to consider about these current openings: smaller, early-stage firms hire fewer people, and that means more competition. And getting those jobs will require more skill and experience than they did previously. “A lot of people might be trying to come into the sector at a time when many people have got a three- to five-year head start on them,” says Ron Pernick, a principal of research firm Clean Edge.

Down the Road: Green Jobs From the Stimulus

A lot of hope is being pinned on the green jobs that will be created in the stimulus package, particularly jobs in building out infrastructure. The package, if passed, could allocate $4.5 billion to build out a smarter power grid, which could create jobs for electricians, installers, engineers. Smart grid software company eMeter says it has seen increased interest from utilities based on stimulus expectations. Though other utilities are slowing their smart-meter rollouts in the face of the downturn.

The stimulus package is allocating a massive $6.2 billion to weatherize public housing, which would create jobs for local construction companies that can install new insulation and more energy-efficient windows. The DOE’s Weatherization Project Manager, Robert DeSoto, told us that every local agency that will be allocating these funds will be searching for new home retrofitters to work with.

The stimulus package also allocates billions in tax breaks for renewable energy projects. This could help those large clean power developers down the road that have recently been shedding staff. The more-established, later-stage companies are the ones that are far better poised to answer Obama’s call for “shovel-ready” clean power projects than new startups. And new projects could also create a substantial amount of construction jobs, which would have a far bigger impact on green jobs overall than a small number of highly-skilled openings for executives and engineers in Silicon Valley. Another bonus: clean power construction jobs can’t be outsourced.

While it remains to be seen how many green jobs the stimulus package will deliver, as Latham & Watkin’s Chin, says: “I expect the pickup in cleantech job creation to come before the pickup in the overall economy.”

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Obama provided few details on how the green building makeover would work — or how many jobs it could provide — but he said he would start by replacing old heating systems and installing energy-efficient lighting. “Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that,” he stated. He said he would unveil more about the plan in the coming weeks and push to have congress start working to get the plan approved in January.

While clean energy initiatives like adding solar to the roofs of buildings tend to receive the bulk of attention, making buildings more energy efficient is typically a more cost-effective way to cut carbon emissions. There’s a great article in the Christian Science Monitor from November detailing how this works and some of the programs from energy-efficient building startup Sustainable Spaces.

The federal government has largely been slow to recognize the importance of making buildings more energy efficient, and states and local organizations have been leading these efforts. Oregon’s governor Ted Kulongoski wants to mandate a rating and certification program that would disclose the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of buildings that would start in 2011 for homes and in 2012 for commercial buildings. Nevada has a similar law.

But many in the building industry, green and otherwise, would prefer a national standard — Sustainable Spaces CEO Matt Golden tells us that state programs are part of the solution but that these need to be standardized nationally. Compared to varying standards across states and counties, a national standard could simplify and unify the effort to make buildings more energy efficient, as well as help to give a boost to the nascent market.

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With those words, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chair of the House Financial Services Committee, wrapped up two days of testimony from auto executives intended to be something like a truth commission for the incompetent but ending up more like sado-masochism in bespoke suits. It leaves one wondering what happens if we aren’t lucky — and generally not looking forward to this week.

It also raises a question. What kind of solution would everyone like?

Enter Chad Holliday, CEO not of a Detroit automaker, but of Delaware’s DuPont. It shows just how far the U.S. auto industry has fallen when it’s getting schooled by a guy who makes freon and spandex. DuPont gets a fifth of its revenue from its automotive division, so Holliday urged executives at a luncheon in Detroit’s storied Book Cadillac Hotel to consider a “Detroit Project” — a new Manhattan Project with all the innovations and none of the bombs.

Holliday says his idea is “not totally crazy” — which these days is another way of saying it’s a pretty good idea. As the Free Press reported, he envisions

[a] new-generation car as very safe and environmentally sensitive, perhaps using solar cells. The $5-billion project would be paid for through the public sale of bonds and would be operated on a tight timeline. It would involve the best scientists and engineers from the Detroit auto companies as well as Microsoft, Intel, Google, Boeing and DuPont.

Two days later in Washington, Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla) was making the same pitch to the Big Three themselves, only with an open-source twist. According to the New York Times’ Tom Zeller, Klein suggested:

that American automakers ought to form an research-and-development collective — a “Manhattan Project” of sorts, he says — to conceive and develop the very best concepts toward creating clean, efficient automotive technology. That body, Mr. Klein says, would then share and distribute this knowledge base and innovations, among all automakers.

Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli piped up that he would “totally subscribe to the concept,” although you have to wonder whether he wouldn’t totally subscribe to In These Times if it would help him get his piece of that $34 billion.

So why not a Motor City Project? A few reasons. While nothing is preventing the companies from such an ambitious transition, it’s just not in the DNA of the current management to oversee it. The notion of them relaxing their paranoid instincts to share the best research is hard to imagine. Also, the Big Three have already received a commitment of $25 billion for just such next-gen cars, but with no provision that they share information — or any strings attached, really.

A Detroit Project would mean a bailout with accountability: Take this money, share the engineering, and do something useful. The problem with the Big 3 is not the economy; it’s that this simple task is beyond them. So I guess we’re stuck with that bill that nobody likes.

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How about a virtual world space, where you can follow and discuss the tally live with avatars from around the globe? Here’s a handy traveler’s guide for doing just that:

WeeWorld (free reg. required)

For the election, the avatar-based chatroom/social network has released McCain and Obama WeeMee characters, created in its distinct, South Park-esque style, so you can add the Presidential candidate of your choice to your WeeWorld room. (While decking your avatar out in campaign gear, of course.) With a simple “Who else has this” search, WeeWorld users can find others who’ve also added McCain and/or Obama to their room — a good way to find and meet up with like-minded avatars.

Barely Political on Vivaty (Plug-in installation required)

The web-based 3-D scene platform Vivaty recently partnered with Barely Political (the Obama girl people) to create official rooms for the viral video producers.

You can watch BP’s many election videos with other avatars in their loft-style hangout; assuming enough fans show up, a potentially nice place to be during the final outcome.

Second Life (Free reg. and software download required)

Of course, there’s only one virtual world where your avatar can actually look like Obama Girl or Sarah Palin. Linden Lab’s metaverse is teeming with political activity and real world social advocacy groups, so it’s no surprise that election day will be rocking in SL. An unofficial Obama group is 1,500+ members strong, while a McCain group is much smaller (450+ members) but also active. Both will be following election results from their respective headquarters. There’s also a dynamic electoral college map that will be updated through the night at Capitol Island, while Info Island will host a bipartisan blow-out starting at 4pm, with mud-wrestling matches for avatars who want to release pent-up partisanship.

Teleport links to the above locations (launch SL and take you directly to designated spot):
Obama Headquarters
McCain group’s Straight Talk Cafe
Capitol Hill Island
Info Island

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Last week we wrote up some of the best places to watch election results online. Since we compiled that story, additional news outlets have finalized their plans of attack, and more people have pointed us to other great resources.

If you want to get your election news from a linear TV channel, that’s your call. But as Slate editor Joan Walsh told the New York Times, “At a time when almost anyone can check voter turnout in certain neighborhoods in Cuyahoga County, I don’t think everyone is going to sit there and wait to be spoon-fed the election results in the order Brian Williams thinks is appropriate.” So if you’re planning to set up a multiscreen command center, here are some sites to pull up:

Video streaming by Ustream

Both the presidential candidates, Rock the Vote, ABC News, PressPassTV (professional athletes talk politics…no really), OneNewsNow.com (conservative Christian coverage — embedded above) and Politico (YouTube favorite James Kotecki) will all be streaming on Ustream.TV. A ton of other outlets, including USA Today and a bunch of other Gannett properties, will be using live Mogulus channels.

The Associated Press will be issuing its first-ever live webcast, hosted by reporters from its Washington bureau, and including voter interviews.

The New York Times has built an online election dashboard that will incorporate news and state-by-state results as they are called by its staff and other major news organizations. On its home page, the NYT will publish videos every 30 minutes throughout the night from inside the newsroom. The paper is also catering to mobile users, with full results available for phones as well as text message news alerts. For alerts, send the word “NEWSALERTS” to 698698. To customize for a particular zip code,
send “ELECTIONS [ZIP CODE]” to 698698. All of the options are summarized in this blog post.

The Washington Post is hosting all its election coverage on an interactive map and timeline. Via socialmedian, users can chat about the election, see an aggregation of news sources with relevant Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube posts, and see hot discussion topics rise to the top.

For live citizen news from around the country, try The UpTake, which will be streaming reports on voter reaction and turnout.

The Personal Democracy Forum’s techPresident is also pulling together a “Twitter Vote Report,” effectively a citizen-created national exit poll that combines “tweets” about users’ voting experiences into a cohesive interface.

C-SPAN will offer live streams of John McCain‘s and Barack Obama‘s election night events via Mogulus.

ABC News will offer livestreams of its own newscast, the scene at both the McCain and Obama campaigns’ headquarters, and a stream of roving reporters in battleground states. It will also offer a live results map, searchable exit polling data, liveblogging and results via SMS.

CBS News will be offering county-by-county results updated every minute, liveblogging, as well as a simulcast of its TV coverage, starting at 6:30 p.m. EDT. Around 2 a.m. EDT, Katie Couric will host a live webcast on CBSNews.com and CNET.com to address participants’ questions.

Current is offering a user-contributed party. Instead talking heads blabbing away, it will instead a provide a pulsating map set to a live DJ set by Diplo. Contributions will pop up from users on Digg, Twitter and 12seconds.tv.

For an international perspective, Livestation will stream Al Jazeera English, BBC World News, euronews, France 24 and C-SPAN, and will integrate viewer comments with some of those networks.

Stateside, there is Fox News‘ Elections page, and its live video page (and embedded above is a tour of the channel’s election studio setup). FNC will offer a special live webcast of strategy discussion all night from New York.

CNN has a comprehensive Election Center. Users can also customize the site around the races they care most about. The site has its own team producing CNN.com Live video throughout the day and night.

Live (and embeddable!) video coverage will be available from MSNBC. Also see their “Decision ’08 Dashboard” — which consists of maps, fundraising and other data, as well as discussion.

Yahoo News will be simulcasting ABC News Now alongside a Political Dashboard, and Google will offer a results map with feeds from the AP.

If you want to go old-school — or maybe you’re just driving from one place to another — NPR will offer live radio coverage from 7 p.m. ET (and reporters will be tweeting as well).

As for text updates throughout the night, a great place to check will be Mememorandum, which tracks hot political stories and analysis. If you install this cool Greasemonkey script, you can see a red-and-blue overlay on links, indicating stories from conservative and liberal bloggers, respectively. Memeorandum tells us it will be increasing the speed with which items rotate off its site so that the newest news and analysis can dominate as they change throughout election night.

Meanwhile, who won’t be streaming live? Hulu, for one, even though it got in on the live debate action. Also, no Comedy Central Indecision 2008, sadly. Though if you go to Times Square it’s free on the JumboTron.

Nor will MySpace be embedding live coverage, as it had previously indicated it might. But it will be offering a live-updating map, text and video blogging by the MySpace Impact team and celebrities, as well as user-generated video.

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One question was from an audience member who wanted to know if Chen felt that YouTube videos made politicians’ comments more in context or out-of-context. Chen said there was “more context with a 30 second video than a two sentence line in print.” He also said that the stuff that goes on before, during or after you watch the video (like comments) helps provide even more context.

The idea of context in last night’s setting was an interesting one. Living in the Bay Area, it’s easy to forget that there is a world of people for whom the simple act of emailing is new, let alone watching a video online. The woman next to me was a retiree originally from the Ukraine. She said when she was growing up, her town had one line connecting it to the outside world. On one end of that line was Moscow, on the other end in her town was a loudspeaker. Talk about bandwidth throttling.

When discussing the “Macaca Moment” of Senator George Allen, Chen talked about the two sides of YouTube: the controlled official side used by the campaigns to post candidate videos and ads, and the user side, with unapproved videos being posted. Chen said it was useful for voters to see more than the on-camera persona of candidates.

Newsom then asked whether the constant presence of video cameras in cell phones and other devices meant that politicians had to always be “on” for fear of being caught in a bad light, and if being “always on” was a beneficial. Chen believed that whether moments were captured on camera and uploaded or written up in a blog post, this always-on nature of media wound up being a good thing for the voters.

Chen also talked about the “YouTube Debates” that happened earlier this presidential season. When asked about future YouTube involvement in the political process he only brought up candidates and users uploading videos, but there was no mention of additional debate participation, indicating that there are no melting snowmen in the cards for future debates.

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Here’s a quick summary of events so far: Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was presiding over an obscenity case when the LA Times reported that the judge was hosting sexually explicit images on his own, publicly accessible, web site.

As Lawrence Lessig explains in a good overview of the situation, the judge sent a link to a file on his server. The server wasn’t very well configured: Visitors could browse its directories at will, even though Kozinski told the LA Times he “was not aware the images could be seen by the public.” A disgruntled plaintiff forwarded a variety of material to the press.

Kozinski requested an investigation into the situation, then subsequently removed himself from the proceedings of the original obscenity case. As he told the San Jose Mercury News earlier this week, “A lot of this is OK in private but looks awful put into the public.”

The situation reveals two major issues we have to come to terms with as a society, and even as a species, as we connect ourselves to the global Internet and one another.

The first is intended privacy. We use many systems to store personal information, both private and public. It’s easy to get them mixed up. The privacy the publisher intended, not that which the meddler was able to obtain, should be what matters. The fact that the server was readable doesn’t mean the judge intended to share the materials; it was a misconfiguration.

The second is that of community decency. As Lessig points notes, a Playboy magazine on the table is “a legal publication, harmless in the eyes of some, scandalous in the eyes of others.” We judge what’s acceptable based on the standards put forth by the community in which we live. Nude sunbathing is fine on the Riviera, verboten in the Vatican. The act of taking an adult magazine, or a viral video, out of the house and into the community changes the standards to which it is compared. Put it on the Internet and someone’s bound to be offended.

When the disgruntled plaintiff put content that was intended to be private into a public place, he changed the standard to which it would be held. That doesn’t mean the judge should have to tailor his private material to the public Internet. If there’s something genuinely illegal going on, then we have legal systems to investigate and expose it, but those systems aren’t meant to tar and feather those with whom we merely disagree.

The web broadens our community of standards to include that of the whole world. Leaky privacy means someone’s personal predilections and closed-door kink can be held up to the most offended audience in the world: The Internet. Often, a minority of vocal objectors sets the tone for the “community” because it’s an open-access medium. Those same critics aren’t able to take an adult film from Cinemax, screen it on Nickelodeon, and then cry foul. But as things stand, they can take a person’s content and make sure it shows up on the nightly news.

Whether the judge was right or wrong, we need to revise our definition of community and privacy if we’re to live together in a connected world.

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And yet, given all these possibilities, what is today’s most-watched Clinton video on YouTube? In fact, what is today’s most watched YouTube video, period? The latest in the attractive-girl-singing-about-political-candates genre, Hillary, Be My Best Friend.

A short music video created by “Venetian Princess” Jodie-Amy Rivera, this video makes heavy use of amateur greenscreening to… I’m actually not sure what’s happening here. Is this an endorsement for Clinton? Is this meant to be mocking the candidate’s currently tenuous status in the current election? It’s hard to ascribe too much cleverness to this short, especially given lyrics like “We’ll have slumber parties and paint each other’s toes/And I know you’re older, so I’ll even pluck your nose” and “We can go on double dates/Just make sure Bill colors his hair.” It’s a shallow, silly bit of fluff — and might become popular enough to make people forget about that silly Bosnia mix-up.

I often pretend to know why something will go viral, but other times I’m completely mystified. Hillary, Be My Best Friend is just ridiculous, a slightly amusing Obama Girl rip-off that lacks the original’s clever lyrics, production value, and, well, originality. And what does Venetian Princess receive for showing up and looking pretty? Yet more subscribers, YouTube revenue sharing, and the eyes of an entire web nation.

I know we’re deeply divided as a nation. But can we all come together and agree to stop watching bad videos? Well, as long as Venetian Princess remains one of G4′s “10 Hottest Women on the Internet” — hell, as long as G4 has a list of the hottest women on the Internet — probably not.

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I know the jury’s still out as to whether or not the Republican candidate has the pop cultural savvy to be our commander in chief (Was that whole “Heidi Montag is a talented actress” comment made out of utter cluelessness, or was it a knowing wink at the construction of her pseudo-reality show, The Hills?) but McCain seems smart enough to generally play away from his known weaknesses.

Plus, It’s Raining McCain simply looked too good. From the hundreds of little McCains that rained on the Girls to a green-screen gaffe caused by a certain costume, the video’s very badness had a rhythm to it that was clearly intentional. But if any doubt remains that McCain Girls is something between pure parody and Obama Girl-style, cable news-baiting performance art, the Girls’ latest video should clear that up.

Here Comes McCain Again, set to the tune of “Here Comes The Rain Again” by the Eurythmics, features the same three women who appeared in It’s Raining McCain, none of whom are credited by name. On the left, there’s the older white woman, who seems enthusiastic yet befuddled and who, in both clips, is the Girl most likely to fumble her lines or choreography. On the far right, there’s a sexy young thing who resembles Obama Girl, but OG’s winking eye twinkle is replaced by the vacant stare of Audrina Partridge. And in the middle is a largish black woman, indisputably the most confident and compelling of the McCain Girls (potentially even a break-out star?). It’s a model of demographic diversity — which, in the context of the McCain campaign, seems to be a joke in itself.

The biggest difference between the first video and the second — beyond the fact that the first could be found in YouTube’s “News and Politics” section, while the second was categorized as “Comedy” — is that in Here Comes McCain Again, the central figure steps away from the pack to become a protagonist, confronting the floating specter of a miniaturized McCain in a darkened countryside. Of the three actresses, she’s clearly the one who is the most in on/the most comprehending of the joke; last week, she appeared in this video, an ostensible response to McCain Girls haters, which seems more like an effort to maintain the illusion that McCain Girls is a “real” phenomenon, pushed by three genuinely passionate McCain supporters.

I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but it’s not. Two weeks ago, I saw comedian Jon Benjamin at Brooklyn’s Union Hall, where he did an entire set about It’s Raining McCain, which he said he produced in conjunction with the Huffington Post’s 23/6 comedy site. Although Benjamin didn’t directly address why the video had been placed on YouTube instead of 23/6, I walked away from the show with the impression that it was done to maintain an ambiguity about where the video came from and whether or not the girls themselves were “real.” (For the record, Benjamin did say the “Girls” were found on Craig’s List, and indicated that, at least on the first clip, they were not given any sort of creative control).

This Washington Post blog entry debating the derivation of the clip is the only one I’ve seen pointing towards the 23/6 connection. Interestingly, that post also notes that the clip was virtually ignored on YouTube until the Huffington Post promoted it. That’s the funny thing about today’s YouTube climate: With the average viewer stunned into passive consumption by the sheer deluge of content, it’s fair to assume that if you’ve even heard of a video, a powerful entity has an interest in its promotion.

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Most of the explanations were trite: “naked hubris”; “power corrupts”; “just plain stupid,” and on.) But David Brooks of the New York Times takes a deeper consideration of why the most talented and successful among us, those who achieve “Bigness,” sometimes behave very badly.

…our social structure seems to produce significant numbers of people with rank-link imbalances. That is to say, they have all of the social skills required to improve their social rank, but none of the social skills that lead to genuine bonding. They are good at vertical relationships with mentors and bosses, but bad at horizontal relationships with friends and lovers.

Sure, being raised inside our societal Achieveatron (“the complex social machine that takes young children and molds them into Ivy League valedictorians”) is part of the problem. But Brooks’ theory is more subtle than the “Nerd gone wild” theory, and also more universal: It affects people who go “into one of those fields like law, medicine or politics, where a person’s identity is defined by career rank.”

Business belongs in Brooks list, especially entrepreneurship. Founders spend a lot of energy navigating the high-pressure social matrix of the startup industry, where (like it or not) “rank in the community” matters. So founders, like Brooks’ subjects …

develop the specific social skills that are useful on the climb up the greasy pole: the capacity to imply false intimacy; the ability to remember first names; the subtle skills of effective deference; the willingness to stand too close to other men while talking and touching them in a manly way.

Sound familiar? It’s called “working the room” — which Found|READ counsels you to do all the time!

…these people succeed and enjoy their success. When Bigness descends upon them, they dominate every room they enter and graciously share their company with those who are thrilled to meet them. They master the patois of globaloney — the ability to declaim for portentous minutes about the revolution in world affairs brought about by technological change/environmental degradation/the fundamental decline in moral values.

If you’ve ever attending a tech-networking event or conference where a successful founder is asked to stand up and speak, then you’ve no doubt experienced this.

But then, gradually, some cruel cosmic joke gets played on them. They realize in middle age that their grandeur is not enough and that they are lonely. The ordinariness of their intimate lives is made more painful by the exhilaration of their public success. If they were used to limits in public life, maybe it would be easier to accept the everydayness of middle-aged passion. But, of course, they are not.

And so the crisis comes.

And suddenly you have the new Eliot Spitzer.

It is necessary for your success as a founder that you become very good at transactional relationships, transactional politics, transactions (read: dealmaking) period. We all know this. We genuinely value such skills.

But do remember that life cannot be lived in transactional terms alone. This is what fosters the fragile sort of “Bigness” built upon a Rank Link Imbalance. And this definitely is not the sort of success or leadership we aspire to.

Anyway, I pulled some of his key thoughts, but read David Brooks’ whole piece. It’s very insightful.

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But founders have more important things on their minds — like getting your startup out of the purgatory of “pre-revenue.” My research can help. You’ll close some deals using these core sales strategies. These tips don’t involve much sweet talking, but they do demand some attention and organization.

1. Aim your sales efforts at being #2: Your goal should be a “second
supplier”. A major mistake is going for the throat too early. SSG, Second Supplier Gambit, is trying to be a #2 provider through your website. Set aside your need to be their #1 supplier and love the waitlist status you are on. If you’re #2 on enough lists, you’ll be #1 soon enough.

2. Speak at industry conferences: Industry get-togethers are always looking for bleeding edge speakers. If you’re advanced, offer to be a back-up speaker (yes you just applied SSG). Another technique is to offer content focus, speaker line-up pre-produced and almost turn-key. A more expensive option is to have a pro writer develop content for you to speak on. Google ghost writer and put up an elance or better yet visit a Local NSA (national speakers association) chapter. If your CEO can’t speak, hire an actor (kidding!). Or go to an acting class.

3. Get a PR person: Specifically, one who works with an external agency to place speakers. Get one like Marie Williams, see Flackette from Shift Communications.

4 Do Not Wait For a Savior: This is a HUGE Pitfall. ‘Oh, we are waiting until we hire a marketing executive.’ Wait a minute… there’s 12 of you and no one can promote?? Danger Will Ferrell! Danger!

5. Have product message that isn’t KISS-able: Keep It Super Simple. Make sure your word-of-mouth message is easily cut and paste-able. This word-of-mouth-message is easy enough for a drunk UCLA hoops fan to reiterate/recall/regurgitate at a Stirr mixer.

6. Add value during the promotion process : During engineering school when I sold ads for the Daily Illini, I’d offer off-print-ad promotion ideas. Don’t buy an ad from me… I just wanna meet to share promo ideas. Set aside your need to sell something (SSG), and add value while you pitch them.

7. Never make legacy hires for the marketing team: I cringe when I
hear, “oh, we are hiring the CFOs daughter to do marketing. She just graduated
from USC.” Eek!

8. Murder-in-the-650 : Just like getting away with murder, there are 650 ways sales promotions can go wrong. You’re a genius if you can figure out the 400+ ways not to get caught. You’re a business genius if you can cover 300-400+ bases necessary. Every pitfall spiders to 30-100 details, so use this blog posting as your springboard.

9. Thinking you can only launch once : Wrong! We aren’t launching a space shuttle here… unbake the pie by getting your users to activate their visit. How? Get users to go to third base first. Get users to do something and set aside transferral of money- personal information- commitment. Movies can only premier once. Your product can relaunch, prelaunch and postlaunch.

10. Develop the illusion of a waitlist : I’m In Like With You uses invites, Spinvox used TechCrunch to give out beta subscriptions, we have a backlog of students waiting for free subscriptions to get a FICO of 750. Waitlists make you cool! Restaurants have known this for years. I book Evvia three weeks out for a Fri lunch in the booth. People feel better about clearing the waitlist.

11. Put up a Scoreboard in the office: Keep track of your staff’s three-pointers. Some folks use a white board, put each employee’s name on it and right next to it, their current sales. It’s ‘monkey see, monkey do’.

CONCLUSION: Remember, these pitfalls (and their solutions) took over 20 years to learn. Don’t get demoralized if you can only implement just one! Hey, if you get bogged down or log jammed, call me during my office
hours @ 650-283-8008.

Larry Chiang is the founder of duck9 and a frequent contributor to Found|READ. Two of his most popular posts are: 9 VCs You’re Gonna Want To Avoid, and 9 Things Stanford B-School Won’t Teach You, which he is turning into a book.

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“Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail.” — Eliot Spitzer, (then) Attorney General, New York State.

This is what New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had to say in late 2005, the year before he became NY governor, when I asked him for a contribution to Business2.0 magazine’s annual My Golden Rule feature, a collection of “life lessons” from admirable leaders worldwide.

Spitzer’s contribution was popular with my B2.0 editors — playing, as it did, off the raft of corporate criminal trials taking place across the country at that time (Martha Stewart, Frank Quattrone, Tyco, Worldcom, Adelphia, Enron).

Now The New York Times has broken the story that Spitzer has been linked to a high-end prostitution ring. People were expecting a resignation yesterday, bringing to a cataclysmic end what was — only a few years ago — one of the most respected legal and political careers in the country. The great irony here: Spitzer was caught in the FBI’s dragnet thanks to some taped phone calls and a few unseemly text messages authored by, none-other-than.

Irony #2: it was suspicious money transfers that led Feds to the Sheriff — they thought he was hiding bribes! Only later did they discover the money was his payments to something called the Empire Club.

As NY’s Attorney General, Spitzer rose to national fame between 1998 and 2006 for his take-no-prisoners ethics campaign to clean up Wall Street after the excesses of the dotcom boom.

It was Spitzer who, in 2002, broke the analyst-investment banker-racket that helped fuel the Internet IPO bubble, forcing a $1.4 billion settlement from a phalanx of banks including Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley. He went after mutual fund brokers for market timing, NYSE chief Dick Grasso for “excessive” pay, and in 2005 he filed a civil fraud suit against AIG CEO Hank Greenberg when criminal charges wouldn’t stick. Spitzer does not believe in sacred cows.

For such feats Spitzer was dubbed the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” and became a thought-leader on ethics and good governance to business people, politicians and journalists who frequently sought his pithy commentary — of which there was plenty, until yesterday.

Here is a transcript of Gov. Spitzer’s “apology to the public,” delivered from his Manhattan office Monday. (We get it from Sewell Chan of the NYTimes):

Over the past nine years, eight as attorney general and one as governor, I’ve tried to uphold a vision of progressive politics that would rebuild New York and create opportunity for all. We vowed to bring real change to New York and that will continue. Today, I want to briefly address a private matter. I have acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong. I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, to whom I promised better. I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas, the public good and doing what is best for the State of New York. But I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard that I expected of myself. I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family. I will not be taking questions. Thank you very much. I will report back to you in short order. Thank you very much.

There is so much irony in this downfall it exhausts even the most evil humor, dripping uncomfortably into tragedy. Did I mention that Spitzer prosecuted a prostitution ring in 2004?

Spitzer was unforgiving of those who transgressed, so this will get ugly. (Calls for his resignation are getting louder today.) At a FastCompany magazine event in Miami in 2003 he trumpeted the high value of pursuing criminal trials, rather than merely civil trials, for white collar wrongdoers:

“The only thing that forces [people] to change their bad behavior is shame, and by this I mean, the shame of a perp walk in front of the cameras….seeing their picture on the front page of the papers.”

Such a “corrective shaming” Spitzer is now experiencing for himself. “A private matter” he says? Not when you’re an elected official, it’s criminal behavior, and you’ve made your career off of prosecuting others for the same. Come on, this isn’t leadership. No sacred cows here, remember?

So take this as just one more cautionary tale: Power corrupts, absolutely. Do we really need to learn this over and over and over again?

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