With the US Elections coming in a couple weeks, I’ve started to take a closer look at mobile options for learning about the candidates and issues, and for watching the results. First up, the League of Women Voters site: Smart Voter (m.smartvoter.org) with the tagline: Unbiased Election Information. This site looks very complete, including lots of pre-election information. Not sure about election results though.
Here’s a quick comparison of the market share for US auto sales compared with participation in the Car Allowance Rebate System (aka “Cash for Clunkers”). The distribution of rebates among top manufacturers tracks pretty closely to their recent market share. But, if you look closely, you’ll see that GM, Ford, and Chrysler are all slightly below expectations, while all the imports (except VW) are above. Conclusion: import manufacturers got a larger share of the incentive program than their general market share would anticipate.
With President Obama’s inauguration came a new website for the White House, generating lots of buzz around the internet. Obama supporters have high hopes for his leadership, and for web geeks in particular, high hopes for his web site. For myself, I found the executive orders section interesting and something worth keeping an eye on over time. Unfortunately, that portion of the site doesn’t have its own RSS feed, so I created one using Yahoo! Pipes.
With election time almost upon us, I wanted to do a quick survey of useful voting guides, with a focus on California’s collection of propositions. The California Official Voter Information Guide comes in at a smooth 143 pages, too much for most people to read, so guides like these become essential. Neutral or non-partisan Ballotpedia has a detail proposition list that includes the cost of signatures; also check out their summary of 2008 ballot measures nationwide which has some detailed summaries, including the revelation that California has the most measures on the ballot of any state this election Project Vote…