14 DAY TRIAL // Perspctv is a website created by an independent developer who wanted to make available a tool to forecast all the developments on the political scene and to render an exhaustive image of the moment. The website offers charts that illustrate people's preferences three months before the presidential elections. The categories that the predictions bank on are "news," "blogosphere" and "twitter" mentions, "CNN national poll of polls" results, "electoral-vote.com" survey conclusions and "tweets" since June 26th, the date when the creator of the website came up with the idea.
Based on the same criteria, vinnet_sc, as the webmaster calls himself, without disclosing his real identity, configures a map of the United States, which shows which are the states where McCain or Obama have the best chances of winning. The number of mentions is also the foundation of the electoral map. In both cases, the drawback comes from the fact that the developer only took in consideration the number of references, and not their character. A positive remark is considerably better than criticism, but the web designer does not weigh this matter in the balance as well.
"The idea of the site came from the interest and the observation of how the 'internet' as it stands today can play a role in and shape an election. The internet is a dynamic conduit of information. It is the active voice of its constituents, which is ever-evolving. This constant flux of information is spectacular, but can also be quite daunting, so what I've done is try to simplify all this activity down to rudimentary charts and graphs. This simplification inherently may be erroneous in nature, though I believe the broad numbers tend to balance the errors out as there maybe negative pull in both directions." says the man behind the website, making a clean breast of its cons.
Vinnet_sc admits that his site leaves room for improvement and, in this sense, also encourages people to donate money in order to boost the development of the project.