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So unless you live under a rock (which happens more often than you’d think) it’s nearly voting time.

Discussions are heated, campaigns are getting nasty, and Barack Obama and John McCain are trying to get those last minute in-the-middle voters.

This is an important election.

A great way to follow the candidates leading up to the election is on Strands!

We’ve added two new accounts, one called VoteObama and one called VoteMcCain. For each, we’ve pulled in all of their stuff…from YouTube, Flickr, blog posts, and news about them.

What can you do? Follow who you’re voting for! Interact with posts. Agree or disagree by liking and disliking items in their Strand.

Filter by videos, blog posts, and photos to dig into what you want to see!

Not on Strands yet? Go to http://www.strands.com and use the promo code “VOTE” without the quotes.

John and Drew team up for this fun screencast showing you the power of the new search feature on Strands.

Enjoy!

http://screencast.com/t/8NekXmmpu

So we announced Operation mainSTREAM last month with a search for non-geek contest, and y’all responded and invited some of your friends…hopefully some of them being not so geeky and online savvy.

While you’ve been doing that, I’ve been reaching out to startups all over the US about how they are planning to get more of a mainstream audience using their site or service. And when I say mainstream, I mean people aren’t your typical web user, the Anti-Scoble if you will Robert knows I love him so I can say things like that.

I talked to Evan and Biz from Twitter, Daniel from Disqus, Tim from Pandora, all of which I’ll be sharing as we go along.

The most interesting story that I wanted to share came from a sitdown I had with Pownce’s Leah Culver. We talked a little bit about what makes Pownce different and why/how someone like my mom could use it to make things easier for her or weave it into her normal non-geek web experience.

Leah and I agreed that it’s not always realistic that someone would sign up for Upcoming to share events, Twitter to share updates, Flickr to share photos, and some other unknown file sharing service to spread your friend’s indie MP3. That’s where Pownce comes in, because it does all of that. Not only that, it’s really simple to use and it’s easy to get started.

That’s the type of thing I’m looking for when I talk about mainstream. Facebook is mainstream because it sets up real life interaction and relationships. Pownce is similar. If you follow me on Pownce you can see the events I’m attending, images that I’m sharing, an mp3 I like, a link I want to share, and my micro mini status update or message. You can also see my Pownce updates on Strands!

It’s useful, it’s easy, and it’s awesome.

While the geek community always compares Pownce to Twitter and either kills it or promotes it more because of Kevin Rose’s involvement, the broader goal for anyone involved in technology is getting people outside of our normal circle using what we spend all of our time and passion on building.

Leah and her team have the right idea with Pownce. Maybe it’s not getting a mention on Techcrunch every single day, but they’re working hard on making the system stronger and easier to surf around and use, and with their AIR app…fun to interact with without having to even using your browser.

That’s mainstream.

That’s the spirit of Operation mainSTREAM, and that’s where we need everyone’s help. Stop, look and listen. Stop talking to each other, speak to some non-geek friends, look at things how they look at things, and listen to what they have to say…maybe it’s frustration or maybe they just don’t understand what you’re showing them. But listen. Spend the extra time explaining how something like Pownce can help and entertain THEM…not how you use it.

Keep up the great work! We’ll be announcing the contest winners this weekend, keep on inviting….you can still win!!!!

(photo of leah culver by brian solis)

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Today we’re excited to announce the first version of search on Strands.

Why would you want to search on Strands? Well, maybe you want to find all of the people who listen to Britney Spears. I know I do. Shoosh, it’s my guilty pleasure

You can search on yourself or everyone on Strands, and then filter on the type of stuff you want to find…such as blogs and notes, videos, movies, bookmarks, events, and of course music.

This is very early days for us and search, so please give it a whirl and as always, let us know what you think by emailing us at feedback at strands dot com!

Congrats to the Strands team for kicking serious butt on this one, and congrats to all of you for letting us know how important search is to you.

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w00t w00t! love from the UK!

http://www.strands.com/wehttam

We just updated our Strands Tracker today so be sure to update or install it. We’re going to do a screencast on it very soon so keep an eye out for that.

Until then, here’s what’s new with the Strands Tracker! The sweetest improvement is the support of Songbird, the sweet open source music player. Now whatever you listen to with it, it’ll post to Strands automagically! W00t!

Download it here if you haven’t already and of course let us know whatcha think

So a few of you took me up on my offer to do Screencasts on various Strands related stuffz.

So here ya go. This Drewcast is on how to add images to Strands easily.

http://screencast.com/t/2hqaDDjk

There ya have it! Wondering how to do other things? Drop me a note at drew at strands dot com.