Gadgetory

what starts as a quick quip brought us whole binders full of women can take on a life of its own online the binders full of women blog received thousands of submissions within a few days internet memes are one way technology is impacting the elections social media is another from Twitter to Facebook to YouTube candidates have embraced the medium free marketing and all it lets them a bypass traditional media and say this is actually what we're thinking lets them do very fast push out very fast responses to what the other guy is saying both camps are also using highly sophisticated data mining techniques to collect information on individuals from publicly available records such as voter files so the mom who tweets about organic food gets an email about the president environmental record not about how he took out Osama bin Laden data mining also arms campaign volunteers who go door-to-door with valuable information that volunteer has a profile of that woman and actually a script of what they're going to say to try to get her to go out and vote Tech isn't just for candidates for voters there are apps and sites galore trying to size up the congressional races Congress plus tells you every lawmakers voting history the committee's they serve on and their contact info for muckraking types Paula troops tracks tweets from elected officials even deleted ones in San Francisco I'm Sumi das cnet.com for CBS News