Engaging voters, recruiting volunteers, and raising campaign funds via new media is simply a matter of few clicks.

Microsoft jumps on this political bandwagon with its cloud-based TownHall app, which claims “to combine the grassroots appeal of the town hall meeting with the reach of the Web”. Launched at this year’s Politics Online Conference, TownHall works on Microsoft’s Azure platform (therefore, it comes at a price) and uses a badges system to convince its users to vote and answer questions.

As promising as it might sound, TownHall is not build to become mainstream and will probably end up being used by large political organizations. Nonetheless, it shows us that the 2008 US presidential election changed the way big players in the IT sector relate to politics.

People that fly to Brussels in the morning typically have to wake up between 4 and 5AM to catch a flight to a meeting starting between 9 and 10 around Schumann. They bring their sleep deprived grumpiness to the tables of European decision making and all they can look forward to are the incredible queues at the Brussels airport security controls in the evening.

Massive replacement of person-person meetings with videoconferencing could also result in a happier European politics.

Similarly, TechPresident’s Micah L. Sifry, himself affected by the plane-grounding Icelandic ash cloud, questions the closed environment of public agencies, which fail to provide their services to the people when most expected to do so.

My friend David Weinberger got stuck trying to head home from a vacation in Barcelona. [...] David titled his post “Volcano 1, Internet 0.01,” but the truth is that what failed this past week was not the Internet, but corporate and government agency websites. They’ve been rendered useless by this crisis because they operate under a no-fail rule: nothing can be posted on them unless cleared from above. Since the “authorities” barely know what is going on, they can’t update the public in real time, despite the need.

Still, the governmental affairs at home in Oslo suffer no delays thanks to the iPad Mr. Stoltenberg is using to keep up with the latest developments.

More on this story here and here.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg on the airport in New York. (via Official Flickr account of the Office of the Norwegian Prime Minister)

Now I wonder how our leaders would have coped with a similar situation, if they were to run the country’s agenda remotely. I mean, during elections their staff set up Facebook and Twitter accounts for them, but – once in office – they abandon any alternative channel of communication with the people.

Brown seemed rather uncomfortable with the situation and he responded to criticisms with unneeded details. He aced the economic questions, but generally failed to provide the audience with a strong enough reason to go out and vote for his party. A more vigorous argumentation, especially concerning internal law enforcement and NHS, was that of David Cameron. Nevertheless, his rhetoric was seriously damaged by Clegg’s pretension to be the candidate of change.

On the other hand, the Lib Dem leader went for a classical discourse of the underdog and managed to embezzle the spotlight from both Brown and Cameron, the two leaders of the main British parties starting some of their interventions simply by “agreeing with Nick”.

The debate last night will be remembered as the first ever American-style electoral debate in British politics, but most probably it will have a limited influence on the final results because of the peculiar configuration of the political system there.

As a further opportunity for politicians to reconnect with the electorate and especially addressing the digitally inclined, Facebook and Youtube sponsor an online prime-ministerial debate, allowing the people to address questions to the three candidates.

In its wait for the mighty iPad, the world put the little object of joy to various tests. Be sure to check out a cat and a dog playing with it. Then see how resistant this little piece of machinery really is via PC World or the famous Will It Blend series.

Below, a crème de la crème analysis made by the guys at Techland:

• An amazing 26-gigapixel panoramic view of Paris #;

• ChatRoulette virals – #1 #2 and #3 featuring Ben Folds;

• Nokia tells us that Internet browsing on our mobiles is highly eco-friendly #;

• On March 21st the world celebrated 4 years since the first tweet #;

• Google.cn is history #;

• The Folding Plug wins Brit Insurance Design Awards (via the Guardian) #;

• Steve Jobs innovates a new channel for marketing delivery through personal e-mail replies #

• MoMA acquires the @ symbol. At least, symbolically #

Latest news from Bucharest:

• Three of the main daily newspapers in Romania revamped their online presence this month: Romania Libera, Gandul, Evenimentul Zilei;

• Autovit.ro gets new look. Finally! (via Orlando Nicoara) #;

• Some unrecognized fraternities: Catavencu and the new Kamikaze magazines #;

• Twitme lists all Romanian companies using Twitter #

• Brand new presentation by chef-superstar Jamie Oliver at TED 2010 #;

• Facebook brings into discussion something about a fully-fledged webmail service able to compete with the big names, dubbed as Project Titan;

• Curious to find out which of the movies nominated for this year’s Oscars were most pirated? #;

• Intriguing point made by Abe Sauer on Apple’s “We’ll be back soon” brand at brandchannel.com # (via Kit Blog);

• Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness talks about slow sex at The Huffington Post #;

• Microsoft demoes its Windows Phone 7 series. Seems amazing! #;

• Symbian Foundation unveiled Symbian^3, the next reincarnation of the popular OS expected to work on netbooks as well #;

• Google launches Buzz, some say it’s more about business than about social networks #;

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Romanian Internet Industry updates:

• Vodafone Romania starts offering its customers personalized phone numbers #;

• About 700,000 people in Romania use Facebook (via refresh.ro);

• The first Web Show episode airs #;

• With the acquisition made by CME, MediaPro Interactiv becomes Apropo Media #;

• Yahoo.ro will become a reality starting July 2010.

Overcoming average in personal branding requires nowadays more than some distinct fonts printed out on a piece of paper. Still, in order to escape from the herd one does not need to entirely ditch old habits. Instead, why not complete common contact information found on usual cards (e.g. street address, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail address and website) with new ones able to update in real-time, like personal tweets or Facebook status updates?  That’s right – this new breed of business cards updates when you need it to, with no other costly reprints and useless tarring down of trees.

Social media-enabled business cards are a better way to be remembered and to ease further discussions online. Business partners can share LinkedIn details in no-time. And long-seen friends can catch-up with their pals’ online presence as simple as it gets. And the entire process is quite straightforward and user-friendly – it’s a matter of connecting via an internet-enabled mobile device, with the user having total control on what to send to whom.

This sounds to good to be true, doesn’t it? Ehm… Unfortunately, at present it is available only among those already having subscribed for a social business card.

The good news is that everybody can get one at mynameise.com or poken.com. Choose between the serious-but-not-at-all-uptight E or the fun-oh-matic-ready-for-business Poken. Or if you happen to have an iPhone, there is also the option to simply bump your phone with similar devices with this rad app from bu.mp. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? And this is just a glimpse at what might be easily called a revolution in contact management.

At this year’s edition (January 7-10) many highly-anticipated consumer technologies are expected to surface: wireless chargers, eco-friendly devices (like the Vaio W, Sony’s netbook made out of recycled soda cans), HDTVs, 3D TV,  netbooks, e-book readers, internet radios, home energy-management devices, mobile DTV etc.

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Just hours before CES 2010, at Google’s Mountain View headquarters the first Google-branded phone was unveiled. Nexus One is truly great phone which can teach Apple’s iPhone some new tricks: multitasking, full Google apps integration, 5Mpx camera, better display and battery, great processing power (1Ghz Snapdragon processor).

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During the first days at CES, Microsoft broke in the news on its motion-sensing Project Natal. The revolutionary Xbox 360 add-on will be available just in time for this year’s Christmas shopping season. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off some Windows 7-enabled tablet prototypes, but no mind-blowing moves here.

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Also at CES 2010, HTC opens its smartphone lineup to the masses with the new HTC Smart running BREW, especially build for European and Asian markets.

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New Internet-ready TVs from LG made their debut at CES. Youtube, Skype, Pandora, Netflix, VUDU are available right out of the box.

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CES 2010: Ford introduces MyFord Touch system, which basically connects drivers with in-car technologies such as air conditioning, 3D maps or HD satellite radio or even Twitter streams through voice commands or touch-screen taps instead of traditional knobs.

More to come.

Nevertheless, gorgeous imagery which often accompany the stories in printed magazines are unattainable on most devices today due to the inherent limits of e-ink displays. Machines like the Apple tablet rumored to be coming out in 2010 are expected to provide digital readers with rich and immersive experiences when going through their periodicals, books or RSS feeds. These portable tablet e-readers which promise to integrate editorial services available via always-on wireless connection help us imagine how information could be delivered in the near future and how readers might interact with journalistic content. For example, check out this video of Mag+, a prototype developed by Bonnier (Swedish magazine publisher) in collaboration with BERG (a design studio based in London) to get a glimpse at how we might expect news to be consumed in the not so far future.

Source: Bonnier

Regardless, before this type of handheld devices could become reality, publishers have to agree on a common format which could be able to deliver visual rich content (preferably open-source) and to offer advertisers with a viable solution to make the best of their campaigns without risking to annoy the reader with the same gimmicks used in print and on the web.

Reading styles vary for traditional avid readers enjoying their morning coffee alongside with the newspaper or finishing the latest novel of their beloved author, computer users who skim though their PDFs or Word documents or for mobile e-mail addicts tapping trough the day. Now, emerging e-reading solutions force the consumer to develop new reading dependencies, but no publisher should expect mediocre content to capture a greater audience that it otherwise deserves.

E-reading can give the publishing industry a much needed breath of fresh air, but it will become mainstream only if editorial content proves worthy of the solicited price.

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Update 1: Amazon just made available worldwide its Kindle DX (the one with the 9.7” e-ink display).

Update 2: CES 2010 brought us Skiff, an e-book reader featuring the next-gen more durable e-paper display based on LG’s metal foil technology. Also at CES, Samsung launched two e-book readers with built-in handwriting recognition: E6 (6-inch screen) and E10 (10-inch screen).