Advercation = Advertising + Education

Here a simple and fun way to hack a twitter badge:

1) Visit a Twitter profile you liked to hack.  Try Rudolph Giuliani’s Twitter or John Edward’s Twitter

2) Right click > View Source and grab this:

<a href=“http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/5672592.rss”>RSS Feed</a>

3) The 7 digits before the .rss is the User ID for Mr. Giuliani

4) Go to the Badges section and grab the following code to create a flash badge:

<div style=”width:176px;text-align:center”><embed src=”http://twitter.com/flash/twitter_badge.swf”  flashvars=”color1=52275&type=user&id=XXXXXXX”  quality=”high” width=”176″ height=”176″ name=”twitter_badge” align=”middle” allowScriptAccess=”always” wmode=”transparent” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” /><br><a style=”font-size: 10px; color: #00CC33; text-decoration: none” href=”http://twitter.com/RudolphGiuliani”>follow RudolphGiuliani at http://twitter.com</a></div>

5) Replace the “user&id=XXXXXXX” with “user&id=5672592″ or any other user id.

6) Post the new code to a blog/website and you’ll have created someone elses badge.  If you hack a bunch of these together you can create an odd “fly eye view” with windows (badges) constantly updating with tweets.  If you make something like this please comment…it would be cool to see.

Living and working in DC almost necessitates that you become integrated into the political scene somehow.

I’ve largely avoided this reality, but one element of the 2008 campaign has forced me to engage and watch every carefully - the innovative interactive implementations campaigns are using to reach their audiences.

While broadband video was an obvious path to take, and certainly one that should help and hurt candidates this election season, there’s a less obvious tactic being employed; candidates are using Twitter.

Official Twitters:

Barack Obama’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/BarackObama

Note: Confirmed official today by Ravi and Scott Goodstein (who’s running it). Barack we want to see you start using this tool more. If you do, more of us with come to your May 23rd rally in DC.

John Edward’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/JohnEdwards

Note: Staff updates are cool and all. But we’re looking for your posts mostly.

UnOfficial Twitters:

Rudolph Giuliani’s Twitter - http://twitter.com/rudolphgiuliani

Note: Rudy, being the nice Italian American boy from NJ that I am, I reserved your twitter for you so that when you r campaign decides it’s worth using I’ll donate it to you. I had to back Barack this go around thought!

Hillary Clinton’s Twitter - http://twitter.com/hillaryclinton

Notes: Boring.

Mitt Romney’s Twitter - http://http://twitter.com/mittromney

Notes: Double boring.

John McCain’s Twitter - http://twitter.com/johnmccain

Notes: Triple boring.

Satirical Twitters:

Bill Clinton’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/billclinton

Notes: Super NOT boring. Someone has taken Bill’s twitter. Why does that sound vaguely dirty?