WebProNews

Tag: Dashboard

  • Obama’s New App Puts a Lot of Trust in Volunteers’ Scruples

    Even the people living under rocks know that this is a presidential election year in the United States, meaning both candidates, President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, have been amping up the ways to get out the vote. As it’s no longer reliable to simply put all of a campaign’s eggs in the basket of a million-dollar television ad onslaught, the candidates have been traveling into the vaunted land of social media in order to gin up support from voters.

    President Obama is already way ahead of Romney in terms of Facebook presence, which may prove to be a decisive factor in the election if Obama can parlay Facebook supporters into actual voters. Continuing with that social media momentum comes the latest implementation that builds on the medium of online communication, Obama’s re-election campaign has launched a new organizing app that harks back to the President’s roots in community organizing.

    Simply called Dashboard, the platform is designed to put supporters in touch with each other in order to organize meet-ups as well as keep up on the latest news from the Obama campaign. For those joining, you will have the option of logging in with your Facebook account or, if you’re not sure you want to publicize your support for the President just yet, you can also simply sign up with your email address.

    Once you’re logged in, you’ll be able to link up with other volunteers based on what district is near you. Also, you get welcomed by this guy, Obama Campaign National Field Director Jeremy Bird:

    One peculiar campaign tool on Dashboard that immediately struck me is this one:

    Obama Dashboard

    Upon clicking the “Make Calls” button, I’m presented with a primer on one of three campaign issues – economy, environment, and women’s health – along with a related phone script replete with various responses I’m to say according to how the person I called answers the question, “Who do you support for President in 2012?” I’m also given the name, telephone number, city, and state of (what I presume to be) a documented supporter of Obama or, at least, a registered Democrat. With this person’s information, and aided with my script of answers, I’m to call these people and then submit my feedback to Dashboard by indicating whether or not the person I called wants to volunteer with Obama’s campaign.

    And I’m to do all of this from my personal phone.

    This is wildly peculiar to me because I’ve worked at political phone banks before where this is exactly what we did except I was required to go to the physical location of the phone bank, get briefly trained, and then I was put into a desk farm of other people all calling supporters. However, the Obama campaign has seemingly outsourced its phone banks to supporters’ personal phones, which is not only leaving a lot of faith in the fact that this service won’t collect opposition trolls but also trusting that the sincere followers are competent enough to follow directions and not go off-script.

    I realize by what I’m about to say could potentially inspire some insidious behavior, but I had to go through zero vetting to become part of Obama’s network of supporters and within literally a minute I had phone numbers of real people. Maybe the campaign has some type of secret shoppers who Dashboard members unknowingly call just to make sure everybody’s behaving – in fact, I hope there’s something like that in place because it seems that this novel idea of a campaign hub could easily get turned on its ear by a few dedicated trolls. As we’ve already seen with the insurgency of jokers using Romney’s “I’m With Mitt” app (although it didn’t help that Romney’s campaign misspelled the name of the country that Romney wants to be president of), people don’t really consider these sorts of campaign promotional tools as off-limits. However, Obama’s Dashboard could make for some slightly more serious trouble than Romney’s camera app did.

    It’s a shame that Dashboard appears so vulnerable because it really is a brilliant concept. It’s nice that the Obama campaign has that much faith in people that they wouldn’t believe that anyone would take advantage of Dashboard, but if anything should be painfully apparent in politics, it’s that there is no such thing as stooping too low.

  • Google Webmaster Tools Gets Better Navigation, New Dashboard

    Google is continually updating its Webmaster Tools to bring the best features to users. This week brings some pretty major changes in the form of an updated navigation, new dashboard, and a compact view for the home page site-list.

    The features that you know and love in Webmaster Tools have been regrouped which facilitated a change in the navigation structure. Some of the features have been renamed as well. The example provided is HTML Suggestions is now called HTML Improvements. All the features can now be found in one of four new groups:

    Configuration: Things you configure and generally don’t change very often.
    Health: Where you look to make sure things are OK.
    Traffic: Where you go to understand how your site is doing in Google search, who’s linking to you; where you can explore the data about your site.
    Optimization: Where you can find ideas to enhance your site, which enables us to better understand and represent your site in Search and other services.

    The dashboard has received a complete redesign. With the new design, you’ll find recent, important and prioritized messages regarding your site sitting at the very top now. Equally important, there is now a brief summary of your site’s current status just below that. Three of the new feature navigations have widgets with Crawl Errors, Search Queries and Sitemaps representing Health, Traffic and Optimization. In what may be the best change, however, is that more messages and charts are now on the front page. With this, you can see how your site is doing without having to dive into the tools if you don’t have the time to do a thorough check.

    The final change is the addition of a “compact” layout. This allows you to see your sitelist without having to view the site-preview thumbnails. You have a choice between the two, but I personally like the compact view more. It also has the added benefit of loading faster since it doesn’t have to stream in large images.

    Google Webmaster Tools Gets Better Navigation, New Dashboard

    These new updates should make it easier to see site statistics at a glance. You can still dive in and get all the detailed information you’ve expected from Google Webmaster Tools, but now a lot more of it is on the front page. If that’s not convenience, I don’t know what is.

  • Xbox 360 Dashboard Update Makes Questionable Changes

    If you’re connected to Xbox Live, then today you’ll enjoy an update to the Xbox 360 dashboard. Generally, Microsoft will make some cosmetic changes and perhaps add new features or menus to try and make the interface more accessible and interesting. With their latest update, they’ve instead decided to make things a tad more difficult for people and mess with their judicial rights.

    Oh that Microsoft.

    First things first, one small but head scratching change looks to be a switch in controls for looking up game details and ejecting a disc. What was once “X” to eject and “Y” to look at details is now switched in the latest update. One upset 360 user couldn’t have summed it up any better.

    Xbox 360 dashboard update

    While the change above is something noticeable and will affect a large amount of people, the second change is something which will go unnoticed by many but is actually pretty scary. In order to download the update, you must accept a new Terms of Service (ToS) agreement. Usually, ToS’s are ignored by everyone because who wants to read through a bunch of law jargon, when they just want to play Gears of War?

    However, in the latest ToS, Microsoft added this nifty little clause which is very eye-opening. If you don’t want to read all of it, I’ll summarize afterwards:

    IF YOU LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES, YOU AND MICROSOFT AGREE THAT IF YOU AND MICROSOFT DO NOT RESOLVE ANY DISPUTE BY INFORMAL NEGOTIATION UNDER SECTION 18.1.2 ABOVE, ANY EFFORT TO RESOLVE THE DISPUTE WILL BE CONDUCTED EXCLUSIVELY BY BINDING ARBITRATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE ARBITRATION PROCEDURES IN SECTION 18.1.7 BELOW. YOU UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT BY AGREEING TO BINDING ARBITRATION, YOU ARE GIVING UP THE RIGHT TO LITIGATE (OR PARTICIPATE IN AS A PARTY OR CLASS MEMBER) ALL DISPUTES IN COURT BEFORE A JUDGE OR JURY. INSTEAD, YOU UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT ALL DISPUTES WILL BE RESOLVED BEFORE A NEUTRAL ARBITRATOR, WHOSE AWARD (DECISION) WILL BE BINDING AND FINAL, EXCEPT FOR A LIMITED RIGHT OF APPEAL UNDER THE FEDERAL ARBITRATION ACT. ANY COURT WITH JURISDICTION OVER THE PARTIES MAY ENFORCE THE ARBITRATOR’S AWARD.

    THE ONLY DISPUTES NOT COVERED BY THE AGREEMENT IN SECTION 18.1 TO NEGOTIATE INFORMALLY AND ARBITRATE ARE DISPUTES ENFORCING, PROTECTING, OR CONCERNING THE VALIDITY OF ANY OF YOUR OR MICROSOFT’S (OR ANY OF YOUR OR MICROSOFT’S LICENSORS’) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS.

    and…

    18.1.6. CLASS ACTION WAIVER. YOU AND MICROSOFT AGREE THAT ANY PROCEED­INGS TO RESOLVE OR LITIGATE ANY DISPUTE, WHETHER IN ARBITRATION, IN COURT, OR OTHERWISE, WILL BE CONDUCTED SOLELY ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS, AND THAT NEITHER YOU NOR MICROSOFT WILL SEEK TO HAVE ANY DISPUTE HEARD AS A CLASS ACTION, A REPRESENTATIVE ACTION, A COLLECTIVE ACTION, A PRIVATE ATTORNEY-GENERAL ACTION, OR IN ANY PROCEEDING IN WHICH YOU OR MICROSOFT ACTS OR PROPOSES TO ACT IN A REPRESENTATIVE CAPACITY. YOU AND MICROSOFT FURTHER AGREE THAT NO ARBITRATION OR PROCEEDING WILL BE JOINED, CONSOLIDATED, OR COMBINED WITH ANOTHER ARBITRATION OR PROCEEDING WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT OF YOU, MICROSOFT, AND ALL PARTIES TO ANY SUCH ARBITRATION OR PROECCEDING.

    Basically, both of those clauses protect Microsoft from being sued should you desire to take them to court over Xbox Live or your Xbox 360 console. Instead of going to court, any dispute will be handled by private arbitration. These arbitrations keep these disputes out of the public eye, which really only benefits Microsoft.

    There are many states which provide citizens’ rights to always be allowed legal action, so you might want to check your state before accepting Microsoft’s ToS.

    This is certainly not what you wanted to hear before starting your Xbox 360 dashboard download. Just don’t shoot the messenger.