The 2008 general election is almost upon us, but there is still time in most parts of the country to get yourself registered to vote. Luckily there are more and more online resources that can assist you with filling out your forms, provide you with local information, and even help you out if you happen to live overseas.

No matter where you are, make sure to check out what the voter registration deadline is for your state.  Some can register as late as the day of the election, but most are quickly running out of time!

Declare Yourself - Started in 2004 by TV giant Norman Lear, Declare yourself gained some notoriety this year with their “bondage” campaign featuring celebrities such as Jessica Alba (pictured above).  The group is labeled nonpartisan and nonprofit, and aims to help motivate young people to get registered to vote.

Facebook Rock the Vote Registration - Facebook partnered up with Rock the Vote to offer its users the opportunity to register directly from the popular social networking site.

Google Voter Information - Google has teamed up with the League of Women Voters to help you get information on where you need to go to get registered.  Enter your address and learn where the closest office is to you and more.  Also be sure to check out their “Don’t Vote” video featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, and more.

Long Distance Voter - Focused on the absentee voter, Long Distance Voter has partnered with Rock the Vote to help those folks who are away from home register to vote.

MySpace Declare Yourself - MySpace is doing its part to help get people registered to vote by partnering up with the Declare Yourself campaign.  If you reside in a state that allows online voter registration, you can fill everything in from here, or they will show you where you can request a voter registration card from your state.

Overseas Vote Foundation - An organization dedicated to helping Americans who are overseas vote in their home country’s election.

Redeem the Vote - An organization formed in 2003 that is modeled on Rock the Vote, Redeem the Vote focuses their efforts on assisting young evangelical Christians to register to vote.

Rock the Vote - One of the better known campaigns, MTV formed this group to get young people registered to vote.  Rock the Vote has made a section of their site just for those who want to register from home.  Have to love their slogan, “Print it… Sign it… Lick it… Mail it!”

Vote411 - A site run by the League of Women Voters, Vote411 is about educating voters about what is on their ballot, knowing the rules for the state, finding your polling place and also getting you registered to vote.

Xbox Live - Users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service can register to vote via their gaming consoles.  Take a few minutes away from killing terrorists in Call of Duty 4, and exercise your right as an American citizen to vote.

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YouTube has been experimenting with various ways to make its voluminous business a very profitable one.

It’s been months since the company first introduced graphical and text-based advertisements within the bottom third of video screens. And several weeks ago it was said to be in talks with marketers to present grandiose front page banners for viewers to see. (The dimensions would be sort of like what you see at the top right of the page, only extended out to the left.) Now it appears that the website is posting video advertisements at the end of clips published by select official content partners.

Post-roll is the common phrasing for such placements. And this isn’t the first we’ve heard of the idea in the world of YouTube. The site and its parent company have been mulling the idea of streamlined video advertisements for some time. Ever since the service and its parent company made known the need to monetize traffic more effectively, really. And to some degree it already has made such spots available. Much now depends on the level of interaction a viewer has with adverts displayed at the bottom of videos, as well as the subject matter of those promotions. If a display ad markets a particular movie, for instance, you can view a trailer right then and there.

Yet, as Liz Gannes of NewTeeVee attests, the concept of a true post-roll advertisement is quite fresh on YouTube, having only begun to be shown within the past few weeks. And at the moment, they are still in a relatively experimental phase compared to the increasingly common banner spots. Gannes explains that only a segment of the 4 percent of content uploaded to the site by YouTube partners is being treated to automated ad playback. (Before, they would have to be manually requested by the viewer.)

Clearly there is an element of caution being exercised by YouTube in its pursuit of more lucrative video advertising on the site. It might induce a barn burning if it were to introduce from the get-go a noticeable supply of pre-roll spots. So a post-roll trial run is in play.

Still, the move seems to fall out of line with public opinion, which by and large wrote off both polar opposites as unpleasant. Even Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke enthusiastically earlier this year about the in-video marketing it began to pilot last year as opposed to the conventional, TV-like alternatives of pre- and post-roll. But executives are clearly wasting little time in trying what they can to squeeze a more fruitful existence from the mostly user-controlled video venue.

To belabor one option or another surely won’t prove to be productive. And in the world of visual entertainment, linear distribution of content and sponsorships is something familiar to consumers. It may be unpleasant for many, but that is in part a result of ineffective advertising that doesn’t speak to the viewer. Such is the notion that analysts at Google subscribe to, anyhow.

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Watch out, twhirl. There’s a new sheriff in town. Utterli (formerly Utterz) has just released an Adobe Air application that delivers their audio, video and text micro-blogging messages to your desktop. 

The app is small, but don’t be fooled because it packs a lot of features for such a little guy. Many of the most commonly used options are included, such as creating new messages, listening to audio, and watching video.

After logging in, the first thing you’ll see is the public timeline, which displays all of the most recent messages sent by everyone. 

See our screencast for full details via the embed below or download the MP4:

You can change this feed at any time by clicking view menu and choose any of four different options:

- All: The default public timeline with everyone’s messages
- Recent: Only messages from the friends you follow
- Inbox: Only messages sent directly to you
- Sent: Only messages that you’ve sent 

As far as audio and video playback is concerned, the app did a decent job handling media. The quality and the performance wasn’t bad at all. The usual player functions were all there as well: pause, play, volume control.

However, some features seemed missing when it came to creating new messages with the app. For example, there’s no way to record an audio or video message at this time. All you can do is send text messages, which isn’t that bad since that’s all we can do on twirl for Twitter. It’s just that the thing that differentiates Utterli from Twitter is the fact that you can record and send audio and video messages. Perhaps they will add the ability to upload/attach an audio or video file someday if they can’t add recording capabilities. We shall see.

Another minor complaint is that you have to type the names of contacts and groups in their respective fields. There isn’t an auto-fill or dropdown list feature at this time. This could be a problem because it requires users to remember every contact and group name as well as their correct spelling. 

The ability to send private messages to individuals or groups is an excellent option that will be used a great deal by everyone. 

There’s a handy filter for Groups, which Utterli announced recently. This makes it easy to check out only those messages sent to the groups you want to view at that time. It works just like the Rooms for FriendFeed filter on the twhirl client. Once you click the Group menu you’ll see all of the groups that you belong to. After you select a group you’ll be able to get all of the audio, video and text messages from that group.

While the desktop app isn’t as fully functional as the Utterli website, it does provide a great deal of features in a compact little program. You can easily navigate throughout the entire Utterli system with the app, and when desired you can access the full website with the click of a button. Since this is a beta release, we can expect many more features and functionality to come in future releases. In the meantime, it’s a good way to catch up with Utterli messages outside of the browser.

You can grab your copy of the app right here.

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hi5, a social network that already enjoys much of its success abroad, is continuing its international expansion, launching in 10 new languages today. Similar to Facebook, hi5 has been asking its users to translate the site into localized versions around the globe.

This approach allows the social network to enter just about any market it desires, without spending major cash on attempting to effectively reach different cultures. For hi5, translations are also made available to the social network’s application developers, who would otherwise be limited to their own languages.

The languages launching today on hi5 include Catalan, Danish, British English, Finnish, Hindi, Macedonian, Slovakian, Spanish - Mexico, Spanish - Colombia, and Swedish, with 20 more expected to launch by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, Facebook is also adding support for new languages at a rapid pace. Through its Translations application, the site is currently having users localize the site for 63 different languages. Similar to hi5, Facebook developers can also leverage the translations for their own applications.

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I’m not a big fan of reaching for conclusions and unjustified criticism when it comes to tech journalism, because I see it way too often. But although I have no solid data to confirm it, I can’t help the feeling that Steve Ballmer’s announcement of a new OS from Microsoft and its foray into cloud computing, temporarily dubbed “Windows Cloud,” seems rather strange.

At a Software plus Services partner event in London Ballmer said the following “We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks, we’ll even have a name to give you by then. But let’s just call it for the purposes of today ‘Windows Cloud.” Essentially, it should be a bunch of services and products from Microsoft available in your browser in a simplified form. “We’re not driving an agenda towards being service providers but we’ve gotta build a service that is Windows in the cloud,” Ballmer added.

First of all, this sounds like a big deal, and Ballmer is just casually saying they’ll have it out in a couple of weeks? Not Microsoft’s style. For example, they announced their Live Mesh initiative (which is, btw, in many ways related to the concept of cloud computing) 5 months ago, and there’s still not a word about a public or even a closed beta, let alone a finished product. (*correction: to clarify things further, a technical preview of Live Mesh is accessible to the general public. It is very far from a finished product. Furthermore, only users from a select few countries (I’m not in one of them) can get in without a wait list. More here.) Microsoft is big and slow, they announce stuff like this months before it’s ready; so my guesstimate is that Ballmer’s four weeks will turn into months really soon.

This is reiterated by the fact that they don’t even yet have a name for the product. It’s due out in a month, but it has no name? Again, it’s simply not Microsoft’s style, especially when it comes to an ambitious product like this; one that may very well prove if Microsoft is capable of competing with Google or not.

In a nutshell, it seems to me that Ballmer was simply reckless, talking about something that’s most probably set in the distant future as it were an almost finished product coming to our browsers in a week or three. I expect it to go through long stages of alpha and beta testing before it’s actually useful to the end user. Perhaps that’s what Ballmer meant when he said it’ll be out in a couple of weeks, but giving Google enough time to prepare countermeasures (if needed) is probably not the best course of action for Microsoft. In any case, we should hear more about it at the end of October at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.

Ballmer pulled out another interesting observation at the event. According to him, Google is directly competing with Windows and they are building a browser-based OS. “If you talk to Google they’ll say it’s thin client computing but then they’ll issue a new browser that’s basically a big fat operating system designed to compete with Windows but running on top of it,” he said. Whoa, Steve, are you sure about this? Because, from what I’ve heard, most developers think of the idea as preposterous.

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I’ve made no big secret of the fact that I’ve been eagerly awaiting the coming of the PlasticLogic reader, the device shown at DEMOfall 08 that’s due out early next year. Since we talked about the device a couple weeks ago on Mashable Conversations, there’s been a couple other announcements from other manufacturers (including Sony and iRex).

While I’m not completely against the idea of the Amazon Kindle anymore (because if it’s good enough for Matt Mullenweg, it’s good enough for me), I much prefer these other devices in theory. While their price points may end up being higher than the slightly-subsidized Kindle, the open architecture leaves it open to working with other cool applications aside from what the designers intended.

What am I talking about? Things like what Google announced today: a Book Search Data API designed to bring the functionality of its Data APIs to Book Search. ProgrammableWeb has the run down on all the technical specifications:

The REST- and Atom-based API lets applications search for and get information about books and fetch data like reviews and labels (tags) from Google Books’ My Library feature. Authentication is required for writing data back to a My Libriary collection, for which web-based applications can use AuthSub while ClientLogin support is supplied for stand-alone programs.

[..]

To coincide with the API updates, Google has partnered with high-profile organizations like WorldCat, Goodreads, and the University of California’s California Digital Library, all of which are now using embedded Book Search previews on their sites.

In English, this means that through the aid of the API, a lot of free functionality and content is going to become available to applications and devices that grab from Google’s own (and partner) libraries. 

We in the blog business generally salivate over eReaders primarily because it can mean a whole new distribution channel for the content we put our blood, sweat and tears into creating. The average Joe, though, who doesn’t eat, sleep and breathe every post from every tech blogger might actually find it a major selling point for their eReader to access something other than the latest blog posts from their favorite magazines (be they Old or New Media).

Certainly this functionality isn’t outside the reach and ability for Amazon to implement on the Kindle, but given the walled garden nature of the device as opposed to the openness of many of its competitors, I say it’s a pretty safe bet we’ll see it elsewhere first.

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EveryTrail is an iPhone app that lets you record your journey with geotagged photos that are automatically added to a slideshow at their website. These trips can be hikes, runs, bike rides, walks or whatever you want.

The app’s interface is simple and extremely informative. It’s like a virtual stop watch with the built-in camera of course. Once you click the start button to begin your trip, several points of data start getting captured such as the distanced traveled, the elapsed time, and your speed. 

The Photo button takes snapshots and transmits them automatically to your slideshow on the site. The images are geotagged via GPS and the location coordinates are relayed to the site along with the images. You can also add detailed notes all throughout your travels, which is a nice touch. Sometimes pictures don’t always tell the whole story so it’s useful to be able to record your thoughts during your trip as well as the visuals. 

Two important tips:
1. Select “Never Turn Off” under General Settings on your iPhone so that it never goes to sleep, which will stop recording your journey.

2. The other thing to do is lock your iPhone via the EveryTrail app’s recording view option instead of the regular iPhone method, which disables location updating. 

On The Website End of Things
The slideshows on the website reveals more than just photos, which is what makes this app different than others that just share your photos online. EveryTrail slideshows geotag your photos on a map and show all of the information that app records such as how fast you are moving, how long you’ve been traveling, and how many miles you’ve gone.

All of the images taken during the trip are displayed in a slick timeline beneath the map that shows the route taken. Each photo is displayed like a slideshow, but anyone can click on any picture to display it in the viewer.

Your slideshows can be shared via a widget on your blog or other social network profile page. Note that it also includes an RSS feed that anyone can subscribe to with Google Reader or other reader of choice.

Users can rate any trip thus giving a good overall view of what other members of the community think of any particular journey. If you find someone’s trip is interesting enough to emulate yourself then you can actually download the data (KML or GPX files) to your iPhone or to another service such as Google Maps for directions or to view in 3D on Google Earth. 

There’s a cool WorldMap feature that allows you to see all of the trips captured in a specific part of the globe. Click on any marker and you’ll see all of the details and photos from that journey.

There are countless apps and services that allow mobile device users to capture and share their photos, but EveryTrail’s geotagging of photos and slideshow creation is unique and useful. It was created by someone that loves traveling and technology which explains a lot. If you’re a travel enthusiast that owns an iPhone, then EveryTrail seems to be a no-brainer.

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The buzz has more or less died down, at least in the pages of Gawker, MediaShift, TechDirt and Romenesko. But our very own Alana Taylor did a feature for PBS blog MediaShift, a commentary really, on the lack of New Media savvy amongst the students and faculty at NYU in a class called “Reporting Gen Y.”

She did so by mainly remarking on the irony that in a class full of journalism students, she was the only one to have ever posted to a blog before, let alone heard of Twitter, FriendFeed, or any other microblogging utility. After she posted her observations on this, the Professor for the class banned any unauthorized blogging of the class.

Romenesko, in his trademark succinct manner, summarizes the hubbub the best:

“Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper,” writes AlanaTaylor. “I don’t understand why they don’t let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it’s the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it’s a big waste of trees.”

Alana Taylor says after writing about her “Reporting Gen Y” class at NYU, instructor Mary Quigley told her not to blog, Twitter or write about the class again. (Quigley tells Mark Glaser: “I would certainly require a student to ask permission to use direct quotes from the class on a blog written after class.”) Glaser writes: “As a private school, NYU might be able to restrict a student’s reporting on what went on in a classroom — but that would go against everything that journalism schools are teaching students about the First Amendment and freedom of the press.”

Michael Getler has “serious problems” with the “undercover” piece by journalism student Alana Taylor (left), which was published on PBS’s website. Journalism is going to evolve, the ombud writes, but “it seems to me that certain fundamentals must remain bedrock. Among them is the notion that journalists must always, except in the most rare circumstances, announce themselves, go through the front door, say who you are, what you are doing and who you are working for.”

As often happens in these sort of defining process story events, they can very easily turn into fodder for not just commentary but learning.  Alana has told me that a number of professors around the country have said that they’re making Alana’s original piece and the controversy it stirred a part of their curriculum for journalism ethics and New Media-related courses. 

Given that, I took a few minutes over the weekend to talk to Alana and get her side of the story. I know from personal experience when a seemingly innocuous article spins far outside the context in which it was originally written. Last August, I wrote a short little piece regarding confirmations I received for the existence of the gPhone, and the five or six sentences of analysis and information I wrote were duplicated, cited, and spun eight ways to Sunday for the following two or three months until Google made an official announcement.

Similarly, a lot of critical words were written with regard to what Alana wrote, including the words of MediaShift Ombudsman Michael Getler, and according to Alana none of those who wrote highly critical words contacted her a full accounting. We’ll set aside the irony of Heritage Media vangaurds railing against the lack of best practices in New Media while ignoring the most basic of rules they claim to espouse.

Instead, I wanted to focus on some of the more interesting things Alana and I talked about. I commented to her how silly I thought it to create a policy in today’s society that said “you can’t blog about this class.” To me, that’s tantamount to censorship, something that the professor has no right to do. It would be similar to the manager at the local corner-store telling me I can shop there, but not tweet to anyone about my experiences at the store. It’s senseless and outside their jurisdiction.

She concurred, despite the fact it was her intention to simply show the power of New Media.

“A lot of the points I made in my article that were actually re-enforced through all the blogosphere buzz,” she said. “My point was precisely that blogging is powerful and social media should be used for what it is - the newest platform of communication. It should be taught to the kids who will have to use it in the next ten years.”

And despite all the heritage media posturing and smug self-importance, she indeed proved her point. By simply putting her story out there, through the rapid conduits of New Media, her article got attention and further established her name in the world of journalism, landing her letters of congratulations and job offers from editors, publications, and news anchors.

That of course didn’t stop many of her detractors from writing furious letters to the editors as to how insignificant and trivial blogging and New Media journalism was. This lead both of us to the question: if nobody takes blogging seriously, then why are they so furious? It’s a good one, and its answer is probably rooted in the same place that irrational and desparate actions from pop stars of ten years ago are when they sue toddlers for dancing to their music on the Internet. 

Beyond that, I was awestruck that NYU, an educational institution renowned for it’s journalism school, was barely ahead of the community college where I started my journalism education ten years ago. Back then, social media wasn’t a powerful thing (or even a term), but my journalism classes for the first two semesters consisted of being taught the intricacies of the Mac Color Classic as a “twentieth century publishing tool.”

If this is the cutting edge of media education, then our educational system is in trouble. When you look around at the nature of the professional blogosphere, is it any wonder that a minority of them come from classically trained journalism backgrounds?

There are a wide variety of conclusions to draw from the whole debacle, but the one which sticks out most to me, I think, is that our approach to social media in the mainstream in general and education in specificity needs to become a lot more advanced. This technology isn’t going away, and if we continue to let academia pretend like it doesn’t exist, then we’ll end up robbing our society as a whole of what has been the historical basis for much of our country’s innovation and advancement.

In short, institutions for higher learning will simply become obsolete.

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