We’re about to launch a new PDF blog on the 2008 presidential campaign that will focus on how the candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how voter-generated content is affecting the campaigns. One feature of the blog will be a daily digest, out each morning, that reports the latest news in both categories. What follows is a taste; stay tuned for launch details.

- The Editors

TPMCafe's Election Central has video highlights from six possible Democratic presidential hopefuls from the Democratic National Committee's Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. Among the official, exploring, or rumored candidates: Senators Christopher Dodd (CT), Hillary Clinton (NY), Barack Obama (IL), John Edwards (NC), Congressman Dennis Kucinich (OH) and retired General Wes Clark (AR). ABC's Political Punch has more, including a podcast from the DNC meeting.

Obama (D-IL) drew over "3,000 mostly sign-waving students" in Virginia, notes New York Times political blogger, Sarah Wheaton. The event was sponsored by the George Mason University chapter of Students for Barack Obama, a national, student-based grassroots organization. The group used Facebook, a social networking favorite among college students, to handle RSVPs for the February 2 appearance. More from the Associated Press here.

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A Rightwingnews.com poll suggests that Duncan Hunter has gained significant new support among the conservative netroots. Newt Gingrich was the most popular potential candidate, followed by Hunter and Mitt Romney. Chuck Hagel, George Pataki, and John McCain were very unpopular among the 230 participants in the poll.

The Politico and MSNBC are sponsoring the first GOP debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA on May 3. It will be broadcast online on the Politico's web site, where viewers can submit questions to the candidates.

The Web on the Candidates

"If the liberal blogs want to understand why so few people outside their narrow echo chamber take them seriously, and what it will take to gain the broader credibility they crave, they should look no further than their handling of the recent flap over John Edwards’ foul-mouthed blogger hires," says Dan Gerstein in the Politico.

Patrick Ruffini calls John Edwards' site a "mess," in part because, as Todd Ziegler notes, there are icons for and links to 24 social news/social networking sites. "I get it. The Edwards campaign is really into the whole Web 2.0 thing. Message delivered. I understand the power of these networks. I do. But 24 accounts? This just strikes me as sort of ridiculous," Ziegler says. Ruffini says there's also too much text on the home page: "A homepage should be made for scanning, so a big graphic with your message of the day, with icons and 5-6 word descriptions of your key features is what works best."

The Web on the Candidates

Danny Glover at AirCongress posted a 45-minute video (it's hosted on YouTube; since Google owns it, they made an exception for the 10-minute video length rule) of Hillary Clinton speaking to with Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Google headquarters last week. According to the Mercury News, Clinton first discussed policy issues with Google execs before speaking before a crowd of 200 Google employees. Although Bill Clinton enjoyed high popularity in Silicon Valley, Hillary still needs to work for their support. "She can draw on what Bill Clinton meant to the valley; it's definitely an asset. But I don't think it's immediately or fully transferable," says Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone. [via AirCongress]

Chris Cilliza of the Washington Post takes a look at the battle for netroots support among Democrats and sees that, unlike 2004 when the nascent movement supported Howard Dean, "the support of the netroots is less unified this time around." His three measures of support? The fundraising numbers on Act Blue (John Edwards leads the pack with over $900,000 raised), the DailyKos monthly poll (Edwards is first place with 26; Obama trails at 25 percent), and... techPresident, who provides the MySpace stats (Obama's on top).

The Web on the Candidates

The search for parkridge47: It's been two weeks since techPresident's Micah Sifry first posted his email exchange with "parkridge47," creator of the Obama/Clinton "Vote Different" video, but the search for his or her true identity continues. In the video's wake, Micah and PDF co-founder Andrew Rasiej have been quoted and interviewed all over the place, including CNN, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Townhall.com.

Jeff Jarvis has an idea: let's videotape ourselves asking questions of the presidential candidates, upload them to YouTube, and tag them PREZCONFERENCE. "This way, we’ll see which questions the candidates answer and which they don’t. In the UK, Conservative leader David Cameron answers five questions a week, three of them selected by the voters. We need to hear our candidates answer our questions here." He offers five examples of such videos, taken at at the VON conference at San Jose.

I've been completely enraptured by Google Earth for about the last day or so. What Google Earth has done to so grab my attention is to partner with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in the Museum's Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative. The idea is to document and display the effects of mass atrocities in their early stages:

Beginning with Darfur, we are building an interactive "global crisis map" that will provide citizens, aid workers and foreign policy professionals with a new tool to share and understand information quickly, to "see the situation", enabling more effective prevention and response.

The Web on the Candidates

Colin Delany at e.politics links to a post from the French blog Netpolitique responding to PoliticsOnline's assertion that Barack Obamacould be the JFK of the web. Instead, the French writer thinks that the U.S. is far behind the French: "Not to sound haughty, but French presidential candidates have been there and done that, and more, for over two years. They are now headed into the final stretch of a bruising political campaign which has ignited the French blogosphere for months now..." But Delany thinks his fellow Americans have been doing a comparable job: "American candidates have been using video-sharing and social networking applications extensively for months now, and if the French candidates are doing it more comprehensively, they’re also much closer to election day (as in, weeks instead of the nearly-a-year we’ll be waiting for the first primaries). Remember, the American candidates just unveiled their initial sites a few weeks ago. And, as [s]he acknowledges, online organizing isn’t winning elections yet — mainstream media still rule (as does local organizing, something that he doesn’t touch on at all)."

The New York Times has produced a great Flash feature that lays campaign contributions (unfortunately, only those over $200) over a map of the United States, divided by candidate. There are no real revelations here, but it's a great way to visualize how much money the candidates received, and where it came from.

The Web on the Candidates

MSNBC produced a very cool interactive feature called "Rate the Candidates" to accompany their broadcast of the Democratic presidential debate last night. The Flash voting site has handy sliders that let viewers rate each candidate's performance with a rating of -1, 0, or +1. At 44%, Mike Gravel has the highest number of negative (-1) votes, perhaps as a result of his particularly stormy attack on the war in Iraq ("A law making it a felony to stay there" would be the best way to bring the troops home). Chris Dodd had the somewhat dubious honor of having the most neutral (0) votes, with 51%, and Barack Obama had the highest positive (+1) rating, with 44%. We don't know the total number of people who voted (it's not clear they promoted it at all during the debate), though to submit a response voters must rate every candidate.

Jeff Jarvis was completely frustrated with the way MSNBC handled last night's debate. The debate should be online, Jarvis wrote, so we can actually catch and consider what the candidates were saying, and so we can "download and remix the questions and answers so we can compare and contrast them." While there's a link to the debate on the MSNBC site, there's no video of it anywhere. Jarvis concludes that "It’s painfully clear that NBC doesn’t understand the internet and its role in i[t]."