Peter Grandstaff

Web Marketing for Your Small Business

Covering the Web Coverage of the Election

I remember the first election that I followed the results of entirely online. It was the 2000 election. CNN was so bogged down with traffic that it took minutes for the page to load. I was using a T1 connection, so I had no shortage of bandwidth.

Tonight, there are a wide variety of very high tech approaches to covering the election on the web. I’ll be posting as I come across things as I work here in my Situation Room. I’ve got two computers running three monitors all displaying something different. At the moment, I have the New York Times on my secondary monitor. I’m surfing on my primary monitor, and I’m using my laptop to blog here.

At the moment, Obama has 87 electoral votes to McCain’s 8. The democrats have gained a seat in the House, and three in the Senate.

Here in North Carolina it looks like Kay Hagan has beaten out the incumbent Elizabeth Dole. In my district David Price has beaten Lawson. The North Carolina gubernatorial race is still too close to call, but Bev Perdue has a slight lead.

Here’s the nicest looking widget I’ve found so far for those of you keeping score at home:

Where does Google come up with all these ideas?

Google has grown from a web search engine into a massive provider of web services and applications.  You can use Google to keep track of your calender, search a gigantic archive of video (growing at the rate of 13 hours video per minute,) use email, work with spreadsheets, presentations, documents, and even get satellite photos of most of the planet all from one site.

I started using Google as my primary search engine early on.  It was still in the beta testing phase.  You’ll notice some Google features have a ‘beta’ indicator in the upper left by their logo.  This means they are not considered a final product, or release quality, yet.  Final testing is being carried out to work out the last of the bugs.  All quality software products, and web applications go through this process.

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