I saw a fascinating presentation by the guy who help make this. It is quite a fascinating attempt to summarize rich personal opinions and bring people together. Although the linked page, never seemed to take off, it shows potential.

I think it is important to remember that at the end of the day, policy is about influencing people. Influence often isn't found persuasive arguments or rhetoric, instead it can be found in the smallest of word choices and cues.

An interesting look at how a political campaign tried and failed to use big data and web technologies to help reach and get out their supporters. Additional reporting at: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/orca-was-no-fail-whale-says-romneys-digital-director/ and http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/which-consultants-built-romneys-project-orca-none-of-them/

A new app that lets voters flag polling-place irregularities will be tested at the primaries on Thursday and, if it works well, will be rolled out citywide for the November general election. The program, PollWatchUSA, enables voters to report in real time if they are experiencing undue delays, having trouble getting or casting a ballot, or being subjected to harassment or intimidation.

What people think about politics through what they read. Unfortunately, only for the US, but quite interesting. It looks by reading material, that the Democrats will have a hard time this November.

About the project The USA Today/ Twitter Election meter is a graphic representation of the Twitter Political Index, a daily number produced by Twitter in partnership with Topsy labs and polling firms The Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research.

Watch the video on the video at the link. It's a fascinating look at some of the "indie" approaches the US government is taking to using web technologies to reach people.

Have you ever wanted a mobile app that ties your location to crime statistics, government environmental and health data, and weather and solar flare data to calculate the hourly probability of a zombie apocalypse?

Amazing platform provided by Amazon that many web sites use to host their services. However, this can also be used by modelers and science to crunch big models that would be too big for a desktop computer. This is basically the "communization" of supercomputers for low prices.

Hooking into public available data like Twitters, allows real-time monitoring of ongoing challenges.

In my opinion, the best book on applied statistics and the task of extracting meaning from data. Also available as a free download.

Open source System Dynamics modeling software.

Large set of data collections in addition to analysis tools.