Non-Partisan Election Information Online

Nov. 4, 2002 -- This week's Cybershake notes a non-profit group's effort to provide unbiased information about political candidates on the Web. Plus, we take a quick look at a device that will turn your old home movies into digital video disks for your DVD player.

The Online Truth About Election Candidates?

It's campaign season and citizens have been inundated with advertisements, fliers, and editorials about this year's candidates and political issues.

"There's an unprecedented amount of information out there on politics and candidates and the election," says Adelaide Elm of the non-profit and non-partisan group, Project Vote Smart. "The unfortunate part is that most of it is filtered through special interests or selfish interests."

But there are real differences on how candidates stand on taxes, prescription drugs and other matters such as the economy. And Elm claims that the organization's Vote-Smart.org Web site is one of the few places citizens can find unbiased information on political candidates in thousands of races.

Each year, volunteers at the Vote Smart Organization send candidates and incumbents a questionnaire called the National Political Awareness Test, or NPAT. The NPAT asks politicians to highlight their position on political issues ranging from abortion to welfare.

"[These] campaigns are job applications," says Elm. "If we say, 'I expect you to come into this interview process and tell me how you are going to do this job if I hire you,' then the candidates realize they can't just snowball us with the nonsense that we get over the airwaves and in our mailboxes."

Of course, not every candidate may answer the questionnaires truthfully — or even at all. But the Web site does give visitors other valuable information to help voters figure out where a candidate may stand on issues.

For incumbent candidates, for example, the site displays how the candidates voted on previous legislative bills and if those positions were supported by major special interests groups — say, the National Right to Life Committee or Planned Parenthood.

"Look at the Web site and we can actually tell you where the candidate stands; how they voted if they have been in office, where their money is coming from," says Elm. "It's information that is protected from any hint of slander."

Elm says that the Vote Smart organization is an unbiased because it collects public data without financial support from any partisan group.

"We're not accepting corporate money, special interest money, [political action committee] money," says Elm. "We don't take money from sources that lobby government on any issue."

What's more, the information on Vote-Smart.org isn't limited to just the Web. The organization also runs a toll-free hotline number staffed by volunteers to answer voters' questions about candidates using the same data on the Web site.

— Richard Davies, ABCNEWS

Digitizing Videotapes to DVDs

If you are one of the millions of people who own a video camcorder, you probably have tons of recorded videotapes just lying around somewhere in the home.

Eventually, you may plan on watching those taped memories of vacations and kids' soccer games of yesteryear. But according to some, those videotaped collections just don't last.

"[Video tapes] get damaged, they get brittle or they lose their color and their quality," says Jeff Loebbaka of Adaptec, a Milpitas, Calif., company known for its computer storage technology. "What's going to happen over time is they're going to fade away and go."

The ideal solution, according to Loebbaka and others, would be to transfer those memories from old-fashioned videotape to the digital world of DVDs. And Adaptec is one of the latest companies to make a device to help home moviemakers do just that.

Its VideOh! DVD digital video converter kit plugs into the USB port of a Pentium-powered PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system. The box contains the circuitry to digitize any analog audio and video into digital code.

"You simply attach your VCR or your camcorder into the device," says Loebbaka. "Turn on your computer and you load the software and it just says 'capture.'"

The software also allows users to do simple editing. "Maybe cut out some of that dead time — when maybe you left the camcorder on and you taped the floor," says Loebbaka.

Once the minor edits are done, the software will help organize the video scenes into "chapters" such as the ones found on commercial DVDs made from movies.

If users have a DVD-recording drive on their PC, they can then "burn" the video onto a blank DVD disk. Or if they have just a plain old CD-recording drive, users can create a Video CD, which can hold only an hour's worth of video compared to a DVD's two-hour capacity.

Adaptec's VideOh! DVD will set owners back about $180. But the company also offers a $70 version that creates only Video CDs.

Other companies — such as ATi, ADS Technologies, and Pinnacle Systems — offer similar digital video conversion kits for about $50 to $500, depending on the level of sophistication and digital editing capabilities.

— Larry Jacobs, ABCNEWS

Cybershake is produced for ABCNEWS Radio by Andrea J. Smith.