Which news website wins New Zealand Election?

In first place: TVNZ. There is no rolling text commentary:

But despite a tag saying video is only available to NZ viewers the video link actually works and I am now watching TVNZ’s coverage. It seems to have been filtered through a smeared lens but it’s coverage nonetheless.

I do find it amusing that commercials are not sent offshore. Actually it is great because the signal just goes quiet rather, which is bliss.

In seocond place: Stuff - Updates every 5-15 minutes, has a bit of commentary as well.

It’s interesting to see the rebranding they have done to “Fairfax media”, showing the Stuff logo alongside the major mastheads.

In third place NZHerald. Great commentary but updates are a bit slow at 30 minutes so far. The have sped up a bit as the last one was at 10 minutes.

Twitter/NZElection is next with updates every 5-15 minutes, but less comprehensive than Stuff and just repeats election.co.nz results.

Last is TV3 who have a basic summary page which seems to be the election/govt data.

Stuff.co.nz NZ election webpages screenshots

Today is New Zealand election day, unlike US election, Google doesn't launch its logo for New Zealand election. I was surfing around, none of website has its logo for election day. Poor New Zealand!

The screenshots below are some webpages done by me, those webpages is live on New Zealand election day on stuff.co.nz

Yahoo logo -- US Election

 

11月4日，2008年美国总统大选的投票日，最终民主党候选人奥巴马率先赢得足够的选举人票(270票)，战胜共和党候选人麦凯恩，取得本届美国总统大选的胜利。这是美国第44任总统，也是美国首位黑人总统。

Google logo -- US Election

(Require US IP to see the logo)

Today is the 56th consecutive quadrennial United States presidential election and will select the President and the Vice President of the United States. Can Democrat Barack Obama beat Republican John McCain and step towards becoming the first African-American US president today? 还是用中文表达真切：让我们拭目以待吧......

Google Maps mashup -- NZ Election Tracker

Today another New Zealand's popular news site nzherald.co.nz launches the election tracker, allowing you to find out where the leaders of the main parties are.

Using a Google Maps mash-up they've developed an application which shows where the leaders are and when. Click here to see the election tracker. This is a static Google map mashup, which is simply to use.

Google launches NZ election page

A link "New Zealand election tool" on Google.co.nz , which takes users to its newly released NZ election page. The page contains two tools:

iGoolge Gadaget. Users can follow the latest election videos, blog posts, happenings and have the latest in election news delivered right to users personalised iGoogle homepage.

Election Debate on Youtube. Allows users to submit their questions to Helen Clark and John Key and you could see it live on the ONE News YouTube Election Debate, Tuesday October 14th on TV ONE.

The Google NZ election tools are pretty handy, and I am thinking if Google adds my NZ election map on its election page, it would be prefect! What do you reckon?

New Zealand Electorate Map

I have been developing a Google map mashup on New Zealand Election 2008. The election map below is 100% accurate boundaries data(data from www.stats.govt.nz), which contains 63 general electorates and 7 Maori electorates.This map widget helps voters figuring out which electorate they belong to by ticking the electorates and will be used for the election section of www.stuff.co.nz.

After researching some different methods of visualizing the data, the most reliable method utilises is Javascript with the Google Maps API , and Keyhole Mark-up Language (KML) to create a thematic map of the regions. There are a few limitations. Large KML files don't load in Google Maps, medium-sized files load very slowly—it seems Google is parsing the KML using Javascript.
Here is an example Australia 2007 Election, which takes 14.31 seconds, a significant initial loading time.