US news organisations — and Google — rolled out out their latest gadgetry and new interactive graphics to explain the primary election results last night.
CNN is using a new interactive display for its coverage. The Wall, as the device is called, allows a presenter’s movements to direct “zooming maps and flying pie charts“.
“The Magic Wall — its inventor calls it the Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall — might be the gee-whizziest TV-news gizmo since the animated weather map,” the Washijngton Post enthuses.
There were lots of interesting lessons to learn from websites outside the usual news organisations.
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Google News added an election section and provided a widget to track each of the candidates. (The Telegraph has incorporated the tool into its online coverage.)
More impressively, Google Maps teamed up with Twitter to produce the Google Super Tuesday Map, which combined live results down to the county level with commentary from users of the micro-blogging site. YouTube, another Google property, also mapped its users reactions to the election.
(Google’s Super Tuesday projects have gained lots of attention, including posts on TechCrunch, LostRemote, ValleyWag and the Bivings Report)
Mapping has also been used to cover the fundraising race.
Want to know how much your neighbours have been donating to Mike Huckabee or Hillary Clinton? The Huffington Post, has FundRace2008, which plots publicly-available campaign donations data on a Google Map.
And they are not the only ones with this idea: the independent web site PoliticalBase has mapped donations from the rich and famous.
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