Top 10 Web Tools for Election Season

From Lifehacker:

10. Compare the candidates.

Unless you're working on a campaign, chances are you don't know where each candidate stands on every issue. McCain's take on net neutrality? Barack's stance on school vouchers? SelectSmart's 2008 Presidential Candidate Selector gives you the skinny on the major-topic stances of every candidate, including most of the third-party contenders. Those are the five-minute takes; for a multitude of quotes straight from the candidates' mouths on the issues, try OnTheIssues.org.

9. Go poll-crazy at FiveThirtyEight.com.

Nate Silver is a total data geek, but he knows how to apply it to interesting topics. He proved that with Baseball Prospectus, which projects performance by players and teams, and he's striking out to do the same for election results. Silver's FiveThirtyEight grabs all the polls it can find, weighs them based on methodologies and past accuracy, projects data for regions where it can't find polls, then runs thousands of simulated elections to come up with a likely outcome. Silver's site currently has Obama walking away with it; if nothing else, it'll be interesting to see, come Election Day, how database projections fared with real people.

8. Get your video fix at YouTube's You Choose '08.

Sure, it's mostly campaign ads, he-said-she-said coverage, and other videos that are, depending on views, reassuring or infuriating. But YouTube's You Choose '08 section is a central source of all attacks, scandals, video evidence of gaffes and quotes, and occasionally, informative video. Bookmark it and feel better about fast-forwarding through the ads when they blanket your television in the coming weeks.

7. Follow the money.

Spending's become a much-debated issue, at least in this part of the race to the White House. Using some cool visualization tools, you can get all kinds of specific data on the wheres and whats of government spending. This Google Earth layer adds pinpoints wherever appropriated money is being sent, although it leans heavily toward military and homeland security bills. The graph-happy folks at Many Works have put together a ton of interactive (and usually Java-required) tools, including this earmarks visualization of per-capita earmark spending. Now you're not just mad, you're madly informed.

6. See what the candidates said about your hot-button topic.

Google Labs offers two neat search tools that let you get beyond the basic talking points and read or see the candidates speaking on any topic. In Quotes lets you type a term and see how Obama and McCain referenced it in speeches, interviews, and other places. GAudi, the YouTube-searching audio index tool, does basically the same thing, but points you to specific points in a video where they said it. Oddly enough, neither candidate has said anything so far about Google, Gmail, or YouTube, according to those tools.

5. Find out how and where to vote.

In all the never-ending debate and fervor of an election season, it can be easy to forget that it's all about, you know, actually showing up and casting your ballot. Google's Voter Info Map, run as a partnership with the League of Women Voters makes short work of finding out if you can still register (today is the last day in New York and others, for example), where you go to vote, where to grab an absentee ballot, and your local board of elections web site.

4. Vote early with a no-excuse absentee ballot.

You probably don't know exactly what your schedule will look like on Election Day, or how crowded your polling place will be. In 28 states, you can skip the early-morning/lunch break/after-work jam and vote with an absentee ballot, no excuse required. The Early Voting Information Center runs down the particulars of getting the jump on your right as a citizen.

3. Track developing stories on blogs and news sites.

Political veterans (or just jaded political wonks) always see an "October surprise" in an election year. See what stories and trends are gaining ground and staying there with two search tools: Microsoft's Political Streams, part of its Live Labs, follows news stories across blogs, portals, and other aggregators, tracking how often, and for how long, it's getting linked and written about. Google's revamped blog search is more specific to blog-generated articles and the buzz they generate. Both are worth checking when you're looking to see how stories are spun, refuted, and propagated across the web.

2 Track fund raising and donations by candidates (and your neighbors).

Want to see what interests, businesses, and individuals the candidates are helping line the candidates war chests? OpenSecrets.org has maps, graphs, and details that can keep you busy for days. But, honestly, it's more fun to see who in your neighborhood is giving to whom. Luckily, you can get just that specific at Fundrace 2008, a Google Map mashup run by the Huffington Post blog network (you'll see their left-leaning post links, but the data is straight-up). You can search donations by street, city, company, or occupation.

1. Get beyond the spin at FactCheck.org.

Run by the non-partisan, non-profit Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, FactCheck.org has been a go-to source for years whenever politicians claims that they, or their opponent, did or didn't so something that just seems a tad bit unbelievable. You can track the latest spins and truths by RSS or email alerts, but the site updates pretty quickly with blow-by-blows after debates, major news stories, and other events that cry out for a little objective double-checking.

Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Web Tools for Election Season

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Tolerate Vista

Great tips for making Vista work for you.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Tolerate Vista

By STEPHEN WILLIAMS

AFTER nearly two years, I’m really tired of reading about other people’s problems with Microsoft’s Vista operating system.

I mean, I’ve got my own problems. Teenagers living in my house and eating my food, a wife training to be an oral surgeon routinely working 36-hour shifts, a van that devours gas.

Oh, and then there’s Vista.

Consumers have had issues with Vista since its release in January 2007, although the latest figures indicate that most holdouts have accepted, if not embraced, the system. Despite Apple’s snarky ad campaigns promoting its Macs, more than 140 million copies of Vista have been sold; Windows remains a money magnet for Microsoft, accounting for more than a quarter of the company’s $60.4 billion in annual revenue.

Taming Vista on my Intel chip-equipped Sony Vaio laptop became, after a while, a measure of maintaining patience, never mind sanity. Sure, there was a day recently when I could’ve thrown the thing out of the window and into the backyard, and then made tracks to the Mac Pro desktop in the basement.

Instead, I turned on a football game. And there was Jerry Seinfeld helping Bill Gates try on shoes in an ad for Vista — I think.

Whatever that was about, the truth is, Vista doesn’t have to be as bad as the competing Apple ads say it is. Here are some ways to make your Vista experience more livable, and perhaps even more lovable.

Say Farewell to the U.A.C.

It’s not just me: Among the features that many users found most annoying early on in Vista’s life cycle was the user account control feature.

The U.A.C. in Vista was to save newbie Web surfers from spyware and viruses that might otherwise install themselves on the hard drive. This is a good thing, of course, as Windows machines attract viruses like candy apples draw flies.

A warning box pops up on the screen every time a program or application is about to be installed: “Windows needs your permission to continue.” The options are to click on “continue” or “cancel.”

“Almost every other question I get was how to get rid of the U.A.C.,” said Karl L. Gechlik, a systems administrator in Manhattan who fields such questions as a hobby on his Web site, www.asktheadmin.com.

Microsoft now allows you to turn off the U.A.C. permanently if you have a newer version of the operating system or have downloaded the Service Pack 1 release. (If you haven’t downloaded Service Pack 1 yet, do it now at www.tinyurl.com/55k8a4; the upgrade fixes a host of bugs with Vista).

Add Memory

Vista is a memory hog.

Microsoft says a computer running Vista needs 512 megabytes or more of random access memory. In the real world a gigabyte of RAM is a more realistic minimum. Two gigabytes is better.

Mr. Gechlik says his systems have been upgraded to three gigabytes of RAM. “You need twice the memory for Vista that XP needed,” he said. “You need a lot more oomph to do what you want.”

Adding RAM isn’t brain surgery nor is it outrageously expensive, but depending on the computer, installation is best left to an expert. D.I.Y. types can search Google for “Installing more RAM” — there are plenty of how-to articles and videos available.

Give Vista a Boost

With a flash memory device — a USB flash drive, CompactFlash or SD card — of at least 256 megabytes, you can make the PC use data faster. Plugged into a USB port or media reader, the memory device serves as an additional memory cache. (The more memory the better, up to 4 gigabytes.) After the device is inserted, Vista asks you if you want to use it to improve performance. You can choose to allocate part of the card or drive’s memory to what Microsoft calls ReadyBoost and use the remainder to store files.

Don’t laugh. This works. And, unlike RAM, you don’t have to mess with the computer’s insides. And because the price of flash memory has dropped drastically — a 2-gigabyte device is only about $25 on sale — it’s a no-brainer. I bet the Mac Guy wishes he had one of these.

Use Only What You Need

You may think you have only the Firefox browser running, but Vista starts a host of programs every time you start it. There is no reason for most of them to be running and using the computer’s memory.

So, back to Control Panel. Click Uninstall a Program and in the Tasks pane on the left, click Turn Windows Features On or Off. You should see a checklist of the programs. Most are incomprehensible. What is “Windows DFS Replication Service”? Hover the cursor over each entry and a pop-up box tries to explain what it is. Uncheck the ones you do not need. This does not remove them from your PC; it just turns them off.

Lose Even More

If you are really serious about tweaking Vista, you can do more to limit what is running in the background — and there is a surprising amount of activity when you think that all you are doing is playing Solitaire.

This is a bit more intimidating process. The easy part: Click the Start button, type in services.msc and hit Enter. A window pops up with a table of “services” running. And it’s a long list. Look at the entries that are labeled Automatic. These run whether you want them to or not. But which ones are necessary? TweakHound.com is an invaluable site for figuring this out.

To change a service from Automatic to Manual, right-click on the name of the service. Click Properties. Click the Stop button and change Startup Type to Manual.

Make Vista Uglier

One virtue of Vista is that it makes your PC’s desktop prettier. But it uses a lot of memory to throw those widgets on the side of the screen and make icons transparent. Yep, go back to Control Panel, this time to Personalization. Disable the transparency feature by removing the checkmark on Enable Transparency. Click the Performance and System Tools tab, and click Adjust Visual Effects. Click Adjust For Best Performance.

The system will also run a little faster if you revert to the classic Windows look instead of the Aero look. The easiest way is to right-click on the desktop, click Personalize and click Windows Color and Appearance. Click Open Classic Appearance Properties, choose a theme in the Color Scheme list box and click O.K.

There are more ways to make Vista run faster. Microsoft has other tricks at www.tinyurl.com/5a439r.

These tips should help until the next operating system upgrade (tentatively code-named Vienna) comes along, and then all of this will happen all over again.

Basics - How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Tolerate Vista - NYTimes.com

Free Photoshop Alternative - Artweaver

Windows only: Free application Artweaver isn't just a Photoshop alternative like GIMP, but a fair clone of Photoshop itself. While Artweaver lacks the polish and advanced feature sets of Photoshop, the menus are laid out like they are in Photoshop and the tools function close enough that use is intuitive. The programs are so similar, in fact, that seasoned Photoshop users will find themselves wondering why a feature is suddenly missing from the menu. While it isn't a true replacement for Photoshop, Artweaver's feature set is robust; it includes layer management, image cloning, a history function, transparency, pen tablet support, and a host of the common filters in Photoshop. Artweaver is available as a full install or in a portable version. Artweaver is a free download for Windows only.

Artweaver

Featured Windows Download: Photoshop Alternative Artweaver Helps Edit Your Images

Microsoft Image Composite Editor Stitches Images Together

Windows only: Microsofts' Image Composite Editor is a free application for stitching several pictures together into one panoramic photograph. We've already shown you how to stitch photos into panoramas with free software or with Photoshop's Photomerge tool, but the dedicated Image Composite Editor won't cost you a dime, is dead simple to use, and works really well. I tested its chops with a quick panorama of my (messy) desk, and it stitched everything together quickly, with no effort on my part. For a one-off tool with very specific goals, Microsoft's done this one right. The Image Composite Editor is freeware, Windows only, requires .NET 2.0.

Image Composite Editor

Featured Windows Download: Microsoft Image Composite Editor Stitches Images Together

Picasa 3 Beta's New Features

If you use Picasa, get Picasa 3 Beta.  It has a great photo viewer, better collages, movie editing and frame capture from video, uploading to You Tube, adding text to your photos, and backup to the web.

From Lifehacker:

Windows/Linux: Picasa, Google's photo management tool, has quietly announced a new beta that adds basic movie editing, fuller syncing to Web Albums, and many other features and changes. Actually, the biggest change in the new Picasa isn't in the software itself—it's a new "quick view" utility, which replaces the basic double-click viewing tool in Windows with a Picasa-friendly, drop-cloth-style window. Five new collage styles have also been added to the offerings, and Picasa's new "Move Maker" tool lets you create slideshow-style clips out of stills or trim and paste video clips together. Check out Picasa's help section for more details on what's new and what's changed, or read on for a peek at some screenshots from the new release.

During the installation process, Picasa 3 will ask whether you want to enable the "Picasa Photo Viewer," the aforementioned quick-view tool that opens when you double-click an image file. I like the way it puts a dimming "drop cloth" on the screen, as well as the scroll-button scaling and Picasa tools—including Gmail-friendly "Email"—available under the "More" button.

The "movie editor" is a bit under-powered, in my opinion. I like how, with still pictures, Picasa gives you an uncluttered selection of basic editing and viewing tools, but makes the geeky stuff available in the corner menus. With the movie editor, there's just basic trimming and ordering of clips. More annoyingly, there's no editing functionality with QuickTime/.MOV files—the kind that many consumer-grade digicams shoot. Still, if you're just putting together shots from a family gathering and you're already a Picasa fan, it's not a bad place to get it done. There's also easy YouTube integration and screencap tools.

Picasa added a whole bunch of collage types to its offerings, as well as jumped the level of control you have over spacing, file selection, and other options.

The text feature is slyly genius. For whatever reason, many photo editors make you outline a "box" to put your text in, and going back to make edits is often a real pain. With Picasa, you can just click anywhere, start typing, then grab and manipulate the box to edit it later.

Importing photos directly from a memory card seems to move a bit quicker, and, in a welcome move, the photos you're importing are now grouped together by the blocks of time they were taken together. In other words, you won't have to click and check through tiny thumbnails to figure out exactly where Aunt Lily's birthday ends and your ragin' BBQ party began.

The Picasa team pulled a major re-design on the bottom toolbar, hiding away some of the more simplistic tools and going big on the social ones. Depending on how and why you used Picasa in the past, this might be a welcome time saver. If not, you can always edit which options get the big-button treatment.

One thing you'll definitely notice is the continuing emphasis on uploading to, and using, Picasa Web Albums to share and back up your photos. There's a new button in the upper-right of every album folder that allows you to "sync" your photos to a web album, which would push your local changes to the web and pull down data to your desktop. If you're more of a Flickr user, the Picasa2Flickr button plug-in has been updated for this beta.

You can grab a copy of the free Picasa 3 beta for Windows and Linux at the link below. Already on-board the beta and got some grievances or glad-hands? Tell us about them in the comments.

Picasa 3 beta [Google]

Screenshot Tour: Picasa 3 Beta's New Features