IRC may be primitive, but it gets the job done: A bunch of us are waiting for the third debate to begin, hanging out on in an IRC chat room,

I didn't watch the debate last night. Not sure if I will find the time to watch a tape, either. Instead, I caught Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, John Fogerty and crew at the Meadowlands, a fundraiser for MoveOnPac and ACT.

The fact that Jon Stewart's blistering appearance on CNN's Crossfire has now been seen by hundreds of thousands of people on the Web (via Ifilm.com and bittorrent) has got bloggers, like Jeff Jarvis, talking about the "future of TV."

Dan Gillmor makes a nice counter-intuitive point in his San Jose Mercury News column today.

One out of four American adults have rated a product, service or person using online reputation systems, according to this new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And that's not counting the under 18-year-olds!

E&P online edtor Jesse Oxfeld wrote a sensible analysis this week of a panel discussion called "Blog the Vote" sponsored by the Allentown Morning Call.

Jon Stahl reflects on the victory of "a decentralized network of citizens and media activists [that] took on the 'old media' network of Sinclair Broadcasting" and draws some interesting lessons:

Advokit is an open-source grassroots-network voter-file campaign-management tool developed by veterans of the Dean primary campaign and available either as a hosted (ASP) service or as a stand-alone install.

I don't want to put TOO Pollyanna-ish a spin on it, but you have to admit, we all know a lot more about democracy, registering to vote, the electoral college and even (gasp!) the actual issues at stake in this election than in any election I've ever participated in the past.

Guess what? Internet users don't insulate themselves in information echo chambers. "Wired Americans are more aware than non-internet users of all kinds of arguments, even those that challenge their preferred candidates and issue positions." That's the news from a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, done in tandem with the University of Michigan School of Information.