We were pleasantly surprised last month when C-SPAN launched an innovative website for covering the Democratic and Republican conventions. Today, as the nation prepares for the first Presidential Debate, the cable network is launching an even more impressive effort with a number of interactive features for keeping up with the proceedings as they happen and analyzing them after the fact.

Named Debate Hub, the site includes the same Twitter integration as the Convention Hub site that C-SPAN launched last month, which, like Twitter’s own election site, cascades real-time updates of what people are saying about debate topics. Debate Hub also archives all of the Tweets and tracks the most active users.

Beyond the Twitter integration though, C-SPAN has created multiple ways to sort through video from the debate, which will run on about a 10-minute delay from what’s happening live. The first feature is the Debate Timeline, which allows you to navigate through the debate chronologically and see which issues are being discussed at what times and who is talking. In a demo this morning, the site was filled with content from the Kerry/Bush debates from ’04, so, for example, you could jump to six minutes in and see video of both Bush and Kerry responding to questions from Jim Lehrer about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. All videos can be embedded elsewhere.

Moving on, Debate Hub also features a word tree, allowing you to click on specific keywords that were mentioned during the debate, and then filter by candidate. For example, click on “nuclear” and you will see the 14 times that the word was mentioned during the first Kerry/Bush debate, and then be able to watch the video from that segment of the debate. While watching the video, you can also pull up the text transcript from the segment to follow along.

Finally, the C-SPAN site also pulls in blog and mainstream coverage from dozens of sources from all sides of the political spectrum. You can either opt to view all posts as they come in, or filter to a specific site if you’d prefer to see posts from only one source.

Debate Hub is expected to go live today sometime after 1PM ET, with the debate starting at 9PM ET tonight.

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Source:Mashable!

Company Name

TellmeTwin

20-Word Description

On TellmeTwin you map your character to find your personality “twins” - people who think like you - and use their profile to discover.

CEO’s Pitch

TellmeTwin aims to be one of the Internet’s most dynamic tools for collecting and analyzing large amounts of user generated data. On and outside our website you will create and rate literally anything you love or hate. It can be an architect, painter, movie, celebrity, favorite food, travel spot… The list goes on. You can also take personality tests. Through deep data mining we match you with your Good or Evil twins. As you travel the Web you take them with you, get their recommendations, or stay in touch. Your profile is your asset.

Mashable’s Take

Differences of opinion can be good to help people step away from the familiar and experiment with the new and the unknown, but as is our natural habit, we like people who like what we like. In celebration of that fact, TellmeTwin presents its recommendation engine to the world.

Nearly the entire premise of TellmeTwin is to document what you like, what you don’t, and the degree of intensity with which you regard such feelings. Atop that sits the membership complex, where you essentially discover others who the service determines you might like to have a beer with. Or maybe just a simple chat and a point in the right direction. This is for everything from media to food to artists, actors, automobiles, and most any name, object or item in between. TellmeTwin is designed to house a community to rate, discuss, argue over, as well as bookmark or buy if want or need should enter the picture.

The fodder provided is already quite extensive. CEO Einar Sigvaldason, based in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, claims that “users are pouring in” following its official opening last week. That’s likely because the user experience is fairly well designed. Some might find it to be rather ordinary. And in several ways, it is. There is little that is unique about the dimensions of its pages. But interact with members enough and you could have yourself involved to the point that the standard elements you see are secondary to you and your “twins.”

At first glance, you’re shown a search bar and tabbed sections, followed by a menu of “Popular Items,” arranged by rating, recent picks, and alphabetical organization. A drop-down list of categories is also present. As for the main subject matter, the way items are previewed is to emphasize volume. But it is somewhat peculiar nonetheless. What does this mean, exactly? Well, you might think that the five-star feature below product names and images would be filled to some level. Instead they are entirely blank, awaiting your input.

Now, in some sense this can be thought of as providing a more personal (and less passive) view to the user. A sort of “don’t rely on others to think for you” framework, so to speak. But the juxtaposition of the buttons for ‘Buy’ and ‘Bookmark’ next to the rating bar seems strange, then. If you’re not going to see what popular opinion is, and you have to rate it yourself, why would you make a relatively random purchase, or save the pick for future consideration? You’d want to delve a bit deeper before spending any cash, no? (To be entirely forthcoming, clicking on the shopping cart icon won’t take you to a checkout counter. But the arrangement within the “Popular Items” menu still could use an edit.)

On the whole, I have to say TellmeTwin’s delivery of unique pages filled with basic descriptions, columns for proponents and contrarians, plus placements for YouTube clips, images, tags, comments, and an Amazon shopping connection to boot, is substantive. It’s a hybrid that could find its niche rather quickly. It’s as much a content discovery mechanism as it is a place for casual discourse in the wide world of popular culture. There are some things that might do with some changes, but for a launch that made its official public debut just days ago, TellmeTwin is a curiosity that many will find to their liking.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Intel’s net income rose 51 percent to $10.71 billion in the last quarter. But that’s not good enough for investors, who dropped the company’s share price by more than 10 percent in after hours trading. [WSJ]

Source:Valleywag

Who needs a YouTube channel when you can have your own cable network? Estrogen-drenched media mogul Oprah Winfrey has formed a cashless 50-50 joint venture with Discovery Communications to launch the Oprah Winfrey Network in mid-2009. The channel will replace the Discovery Health channel and, in exchange, Discovery will operate the Oprah.com website. With her name all over the network — and her aspirations for global dominance spelled out in the channels acronym — Winfrey appears fully committed to this latest venture. Unlike her last cable channel, Oxygen.

Winfrey backed out of of the hybrid Internet-cable venture when she quietly sold her stake just prior to NBC Universal’s acquisition of the languishing property. “Fifteen years ago, I wrote in my journal that one day I would create a television network, as I always felt my show was just the beginning of what the future could hold,” says Winfrey. What happens to a dream deferred? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. (Photo by George Burns)