With over 18M channel views and 113k subscribers as of November 1, the Obama campaign works "to use their popularity on YouTube to get out the vote."

I came across this endorsement of Obama by Tim O'Reilly, who is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., which hosts conferences on technology topics, including the Web 2.0 Summit and the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Tim is an extremely respected tech leader and his lengthy endorsement is very thoughtful and convincing. Instead of badgering him to make an endorsement on this website, I give you the link and the top of the essay below:

In my talks this year, I have been outlining some of the world's great problems, highlighting some of the things that are being done by technology innovators to solve them, and urging my listeners to "work on stuff that matters."

Arguably, the world seems more complex and challenging because we are becoming more easily connected to people, information, and resources around the world.  Ubiquitous communications and information technology carries a flood of information about the world into our homes, workplaces, cars – everywhere we go.  We can learn of election frauds in Africa, tsunami victims in Asia, global shifts in economic activity, or a student's arrest in Egypt on our mobile phones.  In addition, we are all becoming increasingly aware of our planet's limitations.  The most recent technology explosion involves information technologies that move us from a "broadcast world," where a handful of voices set information priorities, to an interactive world – where we access information on our own terms and shape perspectives. The 21st century world is more connected – our economies, information, and awareness are shared like never before.

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The last sentence in a Wired News article by Nicholas Thompson from October 2nd sums it up well: "John McCain is a big reason that the Internet in this country is so slow and a big reason why customer service at your DSL or cable provider is so bad." Allowing one sentence for the tech issues McCain has promoted intelligently, the rest of the piece extols McCain for opposing policies that could have made the United States a leader in broadband service and for supporting those that have stifled broadband competition.

The Merc News of Silicon Valley compared the presidential candidates in a recent story and dug deep to come up with reasons that the tech industry might be interested in McCain as well as Obama. It was utterly unconvincing, but did provide some numbers that make the Obama case.

One metric is: Follow the money.  As the story said: “The non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics found that tech-industry political action committees, entrepreneurs and employees gave Obama four times as much money as they gave McCain.” That would seem to be an indication of preference.

The chart that accompanied the story shows a breakdown between the two candidates by company. Pretty lopsided right down the line. Google stuck out: $485,961 for Obama, and $20,600 for McCain. That works  out to Obama getting 23 times as much.

I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion on how Obama's technology policy could stimulate the Nevada's innovation and technology economy in Reno, Nevada on September 23rd. 60 people attended the groundbreaking event to hear a distinguished panel discuss how Nevada could capitalize on certain aspects of the policy like the proposed $150 billion investement in renewable energy--already a targeted area of economic growth in the state's strategic plannning.

The panel included:

David LaPlante, CEO of Twelve Horses

Tim Casey, Co-Founder and Partner at Silversky Group L.L.C.

Donica Mensing, Associate Professor at University of Nevada, Reno's Reynolds School of Journalism

Here's an interesting article by on Raymond about Obama vs. McCain on technology policy proposals, including Obama's idea for a CTO.

"If McCain worked in the industry, he'd be the kind of manager that tech guys would take advantage of, and then he'd then try to micromanage them when it's too late."

"Obama wants to appoint a CTO to manage and guide technology on a national level."

"Obama is also very concerned about open access to the internet and wants to guard against any corporate concerns that would thwart this to their advantage."

And much, much more...