Tools

Twiangulate – Twitter tool for search, analytics and mapping of connections between Twitter friends and followers.

Townhall – Microsoft’s new out-of-the-box online toolkit for running political campaigns.  Email me for the login for the demo.

Goodmail – creator of CertifiedEmail,  helps get your emails delivered.

Varnish – a caching system to speed up your web site

Social Media Communities

Myspace Non Profit Page – a great resource for non-profits, and proof that MySpace is still relevant

Black Planet – “the largest Black community online” run by Interactive One

MiGente – “the largest Latino-American community online” run by Interactive One

Concepts

Augmented Reality – If you like your car’s GPS and your phone’s applications then you’re a fan of augmented reality.

Books

Everyone Communicates, Few Connect

The PayPal Wars: Battles With Ebay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth

The buzz concentrates on the relative education-level and wealth of internet users: More well-educated people are more likely have access to computers and to use them frequently. But you knew that.

The more interesting — and unfortunately somewhat ignored — findings focus on who uses the internet and social media for some form of political engagement. And this “online participatory class” is growing. As many as 19 percent of people online use the internet for political action, when that number was previously believed to be only 5 percent or 10 percent.

Adults ages 25 to 65 tend to take part in online activities similar to those they’d do in “real life” like signing petitions and making donations. Surprisingly the 55-64-year-old demographic had the highest percentage of these kinds of online political activities, though younger people dominate the political social media arena.

Read Pew’s full report.