Tools for political activism

Public Opinion Audio Forum. In following with the spirit of the Internet, ElectionAudio.com is an exchange of audio presentations from Presidential Candidates.  ElectionAudio.com grants our listeners the ability to quickly preview our Presidential Candidates and share their views with their friends, family and colleagues. In addition, our listeners have the ability to use any telephone to record voice messages and comments for publicly sharing their opinions and views over the Internet.  Call 1-213-873-2508 and enter code 238716 for Barack Obama, or 097896 for John McCain. http://voice2page.com/info/electionaudio.html

A blabber is a talking picture. They are often used for political satire.  Just upload a picture, create a mouth, call a specific telephone number to record your voice, and the mouth on the picture moves to your voice.  Then e-mail it, post it, or share it on Facebook.   http://www.blabberize.com/

Gizmoz animate yourself. Upload a picture of a person, it creates a 3D model of the person’s head (or use an existing gizmo), then give it voice using either the microphone on your computer or using text. Then post to your blog, e-mail to friends etc.  http://www.gizmoz.com/create

Express Yourself with Gizmoz Video Clips

Make your own talking character by phone.  Voki enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character. You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc. Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or it can call your phone. http://www.voki.com/

Create your own Presidential debate with speaking avatars. Create your own presidential duhBATE by adding your voice to your favorite politician (or the ones you love to hate). Send them to your friends, family and co-workers. Post them on your MySpace, Facebook, blog or Web site.  http://www.duhbate08.com/

Committee Caller

A free application built on open source VoIP software designed by a grad student to allow you to call any Congressional Committee and connect with democracy.  http://www.committeecaller.com/

Hear interview about Committee Caller

Voice your support for your presidential candidate.  Utterz gives you a simple way to make sure your voice counts during the 2008 election. In just a few simple steps, you can create a badge to display on your blog, web site or social network with your own personal message of why you support your candidate.  You can record it using a microphone or dial-in to the web site using a provided number. http://blog.utterz.com/index.php/voice-your-support-with-utterz-badges/

Cause Dialer.  Cause Caller is a new way to power participatory democracy. It takes all the hassle out of creating phone banks and contacting politicians.

Simply create a cause, and enter the names you want to contact. Now you can click to call immediately. Send everyone the URL, and they can start calling too. All calls are free and completed over the Internet.

http://www.causecaller.com/

How to use Cause Dialer

Subscribe to campaign podcasts on your cell phone.  Foneshow offers a quick and easy way to for people to access political podcasts (some directly from the campaigns) – using their cell phone instead of downloading. The service uses SMS automatic notifications to let you know its there, and provides a number to dial to listen to and control the feed.  You don't need a data plan or a smart phone. Foneshow!  A list of the political shows is here:   http://www.foneshow.com/series/20

Advomatic – creating click to call online advocay.  Developed by Howard Dean’s Internet gurus, the tool establishes a connection to your phone, plays you a short introductory message, and rings up your Senator's office -- all at no cost to you. Once your lobbying call is complete, it pops up a form that allows it to track your feedback. All in all, a pretty snazzy demonstration of how to use gadgets and gizmos to facilitate -- not replace -- human-to-human political interaction.  It has been used by Senator Dodd’s presidential campaign and by the progressive group Blue America to fight the FISA bill in Congress.           

http://www.advomatic.com/raise_your_voice

Read: Click to Call VoIP as a political tool

During the 2008 presidential election cycle, individual volunteers were able to make their voice heard with innovative voice tools.  For example, one of the ways the Clinton campaign won primaries and made history was with Activate. The Clinton campaign made 20 million calls using Activate to help them get in touch with individual voters and with some of her most critical wins.

http://www.talkupactivate.com/ 

Create your own political satire animations. 

Create online animations, like an oval office scened using your favorite or not so favorite politiciacians, dial into a special number from your phone to give them voice.  http://goanimate.com

Vote with your voicemail greeting.   YouMail lets you use different voicemail greetings for different callers.  Vote with your voicemail greeting – and choose who gets to hear it.  (tell your Republican friends to vote for Obama, and your Democratic friends to vote for McCain with customized voicemail greetings.)  Set your cell phones voicemail greetings to different messages for different people. 

http://www.youmail.com/home/index.do

See the special Elections 2008 section http://www.youmail.com/login/channel/channelView.do?id=1000

Join in face to face discussions with political leaders.  My ooVoo Day Political is an eight day online video chat event joining leading political bloggers covering the entire spectrum of belief and persuasion with their communities, fans and friends - enabled by ooVoo, the leader in face-to-face multi-person video communications. http://www.myoovooday.com/political/