The Obama and Romney campaigns have announced that they will be using Square to collect political donations. Romney's Believe in America jobs plan is #9 on the Amazon Kindle best-seller list; supporters can download a copy by tweeting about the book via Pay with a Tweet.  These moves signal an embrace of new technologies and new social ways of engaging with the electorate.

Simplifying donations Obama campaign volunteers have started to receive Square readers for use on iOS and Android devices. Campaign spokeswoman, Katie Hogan, said that the Obama team is developing a branded app that will send funds directly to campaign headquarters, eliminating the need for the volunteer to collect and record donor information. With the  donor information, campaign headquarters can make follow-up solicitations in the succeeding weeks and months. Zac Moffatt, digital director for the Romney campaign, planned a few tests of Square in Florida this week. Moffatt hasn't yet reported on the results of those tests.

Neither Google Wallet nor other NFC solutions from major credit cards are in play. The only candidate to accept PayPal is Ron Paul. In what might be a related story, PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel gave $900K to Ron Paul SuperPAC.

Targeting local users Moffat tells Fast Company that geo-targeting makes the messages more effective, bringing endorsements by local politicians into Google ads. Mobile users in the same area receive an ad that directs them to a local campaign contact or event.

It is always about money  Small donations are the still the base of the Obama campaign, with 71% of the contributions at $200 or less. Donations in this amount could fit well with the Square deployment. Sixty-percent of Romney's donations are at the $2500 per-person maximum, more likely to be checks. The other three Republican candidates are raising money in small, medium, and large amounts in roughly the same proportion. In order to collect the money, in whatever denomination, you need to know who your supporters are.

It's not just the money in hand  Using Square or other mobile payment options are less about being able to generate large amounts of money in the field and more  a means to help with paperwork that generates mailing lists. Clay Johnson, who set up the Obama fund-raising mechanism for the 2008 election, reminds us that donor contact information is nearly as valuable as the currency itself. He reports on some of his experiences in his new book, The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption. Online petitions, he notes, are a familiar way to rally supporters to a cause. "[O]nline petitions that you sign are not meant, primarily, to cause change. They’re meant to get your email address so that you can later be bombarded by emails asking for money."

Square eliminates paperwork and generates cash. A Twitter promotion can put a political tract at the top of the Kindle best-sellers.   The few sparks in social media political advertising and solicitations are bringing fresh perspectives to political operations. These changes aren't as dramatic as we saw in 2004 with MoveOn.org or 2008 with Facebook and YouTube, but they're very real in an election that is likely to exceed $6B in spending.

The continued Awful Awful saga

We learn from today's Boston Globe that Harsha Agadi, CEO of Friendly's, is, um, stepping down.  Just a few weeks ago, Agadi was featured in the Globe's Sunday business section, where he outlined the ice cream and restaurant chain's path to something like success. The company is, or was, developing a new concept for its stores, as well as improving its french fries.

Read the rest of the blog at my TelegramTowns.com blog, The continued Awful Awful saga.

The challenges of a site editor

There are a couple of good stories out on the Fast Company website.  One profiles Nancy Lee Gioia, Ford's director of Global Electrification and her views on leadership in an business  that is in an innovate-or-die mode.

The other story shows how a young British bartender is financing a startup from his own earnings.

Good stories that, when placed on the same page, remind us that many bloggers never quite outgrow their smirking adolescence.

[caption id="attachment_3193" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="via Fast Company on Leadership"][/caption]

Problems copying and pasting HTML links in Chrome browser

The release of Chrome beta for Android has led to, once again, try to use Google Chrome as my preferred web browser. It's fast, secure, and has a number of slick features that make it an enjoyable resource.

The biggest problem that I've had, and one that continues, is the way in which it handles copying and/or pasting of HTML and other rich text elements. Lemme explain:

When I am writing a blog post, I often need to link to other stories or sites. The Make Link extension for Firefox allows me to copy the page address and either selected text or the page's title. I can then paste it into my blog editor.

For example, if I want to include a link to a story on The Onion, I go to the page, use Make Link to grab the title and URL, come back to this window, and paste it so it looks like this: New Biography Reveals Einstein Devised Theory Of Relativity On Paper Because He Wasn't Smart Enough To Invent Microsoft Word | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Doing the same thing  with a comparable extension, such as Create Link, in Chrome results in this:  

<a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-biography-reveals-einstein-devised-theory-of-r,27313/">New Biography Reveals Einstein Devised Theory Of Relativity On Paper Because He Wasn&apos;t Smart Enough To Invent Microsoft Word | The Onion - America&apos;s Finest News Source</a>

When I use a clipboard viewer, I can see that sometimes the info is created as an HTML fragment and, other times, it's just text. I'm not sure why Create Link or similar extensions aren't creating true HTML links.

Chrome on Android, I should note, is an excellent replacement for the stock browser on my phone.

Whelmed is an archaic word

A VP at a former company used to say, "The easy stuff should be easy." The idea was that our energies, time, and money should flow toward the hard problems. Sandra has another way of phrasing it, creating a Jetsons type of life. The ordinary things can be automatic. Sounds great, until we remember how the show ended, with George shouting, "Jane, stop this crazy thing."
This, as you might have guessed by now, has been an odd week. Some things have gone quiet well. My course on social networking started yesterday. The class is interested, engaged, and fun. (Reminder: if you are going to do a live demo of your Facebook page, expect the unexpected. The people in the class were good-humored about the picture of the swearing cat that showed up in one FB post.)
Other work has been a struggle. A couple of writing assignments stumbled and needed rewrites. A web project is stalled. I'm overdue on a couple of reports for another project. Stuff like that. Nothing really bad in and of itself, but, the whole is more than the sum of the parts.


So, today I'm feeling whelmed, which, I've learned, is a word we don't use unless we need it.

Cloud Solutions Help Third-World Banks

Coupled with local mobile systems, cloud services are bringing innovative banking to the most underserved markets of the world.
Read the rest on Cloud Solutions Help Third-World Banks at Better Bank Systems - The Community for News and Analysis about Banks' Core Systems