But being submersed in the drama of American politics makes it really easy to forget about what’s going on elsewhere. This month’s issue of Wired changes that with a story on what social media’s doing to slowly crack the tightly controlled structure of authority in Egypt & the Middle East:

Back in March, Maher and a friend launched a Facebook group to promote a protest planned for April 6. It became an Internet phenomenon, quickly attracting more than 70,000 members. The April 6 youth movement — amorphous, lacking a clear mission*, and yet a bull’s-eye to the zeitgeist — blossomed within days into something influential enough to arouse the ire of Egypt’s internal security forces. Maher is part of a new generation in the Middle East that, through blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and now Facebook, is using virtual reality to combat corrupt and oppressive governments. Their nascent, tech-fired rebellion has triggered a government backlash and captured the world’s attention.

The article also ends with an interesting line of thought:

But Maher isn’t tortured. No one can say why his treatment in custody is more lenient this time around. One possibility is that, lacking specific orders to beat or harm him, his captors in Alexandria just went easy.

There is another hypothesis, though, one that many people familiar with Egyptian politics have suggested: Maher’s star has risen. His real-world profile is now high enough that torturing him could backfire, inspiring countless networked young people to take action. The last thing Hosni Mubarak needs is to turn this Facebooking regular guy into a full-fledged hero.

In a seemingly unrelated event, my favorite news website online, Socialmedian, is releasing an election widget with the Washington Post today:

The http://election.socialmedian.com site aggregates news and user-feeds related to the election and enables users to join in the election coverage and discussion.  We created this site with The Washington Post to enable people to track all the election news from thousands of news sources as well as from Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and more all in one place, and (importantly) to join-in and add their own feeds from their favorite sites to provide user reports leading up to and on election day.

You can see what looks like to the right and although It’s not election day just yet, it’s never a bad thing to get a feel for what’s underfoot going into the election, so play with it (click “Join In” on the widget if you’re not a member) and let the games begin! (follow me at follow bushmanbill when you sign up).

*If the whole thing sounds “amorphous” & “lacking a clear mission” to you too, read Seth Godin’s latest book (aptly named Tribes), which is all about movements, what their made of, the things that happen to make tribes possible to begin with and how to keep them going. In what amounts to one long essay that goes by all too quickly, Godin explains the situation and then presents the opportunity:

A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It’s our nature.

Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they’re enabling countless new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.

And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?

According to Wikipedia, a “web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of reusable code that has existed for years. Nowadays other terms used to describe web widgets including: gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Web widgets often but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash.”

Here’s a list of some of the widget resources out there (e-mail us if you think something should be added to this list!):

• Google Gadgets (“Google Gadgets are miniature web objects that you can copy & paste into your own webpage, for free”)
• Widgetbox (“world’s largest directory and gallery of web widgets”)
• SpringWidgets (“a widget directory for the desktop and the web”)
• Yourminis (“widgets for your blog, website, startpage, and desktop”)
• WordPress Widgets (enhance your WordPress blog with widgets)
• Shopit (“Shopit’s storefront profiles, portable store widgets and networking tools are built for social commerce; use them to buy, sell, trade, or to just promote yourself, anywhere on the web”)
• Cartfly (“you can customize your portable store to fit your business’s look and style; the emphasis is on a simple interface with a fast setup that will help you get your store out and about on the web in no time”)
• Cooqy (“create customizable widgets you can embed in your website, blog or social networking page; the widgets are free for non-eBay web pages; using the widgets on eBay pages such as item listings is free if you have fewer than 500 active listings; it’s $4.95 per month if you have more than that”)
• FormLogix (“FormLogix is an online form builder tool for creating web databases and web forms; forms may be embedded in your website, blog, or may be used internally”)

A note about widget selection: remember, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Exercise care and judgment when choosing your widgets and remember, less is still usually more. So only add a widget or two when it actually enhances and adds value to your web presence instead of distracting or overwhelming your visitors.

Related Reading: Widgets Are The New Black

A Sample Widget: