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."

Carmeron Marlow of Overstated.com and Blogdex has created a tool that displays the relative frequency with which phrases are used on the candidates' stump speeches.

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:

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.

I've been reading blogs and watching TV to see how the media's spinning the Osama Bin Ladin Tape that came across the airwaves last night. Here on Saturday morning, it seems like the guy is dropping in the ratings and hardly worthy of any spin. He's just not that interesting. Americans have better things to worry about, like what to serve at your The Boston Red Sox Parade Party. Nachos? Chicken Fingers? Barbecued Wings?

The Democrats are spinning him one way (the fact he's alive proves Bush has blown it) and the Republicans are spinning him the other way (now he's back -- the Freddy Kruger of the Middle East -- and only Bush can save us) to add up to a big spin of ... ZERO.

We've got important stuff to think about like Halloween costumes and the Sox Parade. Heck! This is the old US of A -- it's the weekend, let's party!

While we're on the subject of last-minute October "Surprises," here's a hot tip: CBS 60 Minutes tonight will reportedly air a segment by Leslie Cockburn on troop conditions in Iraq that reports that some of them are constructing their own makeshift armor out of sandbags and plywood.

So says Chuck Spinney, whose website Defense and the National Interest has been a thorn in the side of the military-industrial-congressional complex for many years. He tells his email list subscribers that he received a message from Andrew Cockburn, Leslie's husband and himself a top investigative journalist, informing him.

So far, 60 Minutes's website isn't promoting the story, but maybe they'll bump their segment on Ashlee Simpson's lip-synch malfunction on Saturday Night Live for this. (Can you believe that they're even playing that up as an "exclusive"?)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting that voters are already reporting that e-voting machines are going wrong. Some handful of voters have noticed that the summaries shown before their votes are recorded don't reflect their actual votes. The EFF press release is here.

I've had trouble connecting to Talking Points Memo and Political Wire today and I hear that sites such as Instapundit and Eschaton are also having problems dealing with today's traffic spikes.

Ironically, the popularity of some of these sites has generated an unintentional Dos (denial of service) "attack" from the hordes looking for the latest gossip or news about today's election.

(via Hardblogger)

Update: Josh Marshall has gotten TPM back up. He was having server problems. Chalk it up to Murphy's Law.

Second Update: 601am, a conservative blog hosted by the same service that hosts Instapundit, Powerline, Michelle Malkin, and VodkaPundit (as well as the centrist Buzzmachine), confirms that their host was in fact suffering under a DoS attack.

Despite cautions against leaking exit poll data before polls have closed, Slate has made an editorial decision to publish what they've got, and Jack Schafer is posting updates, including (at the moment) Kerry barely ahead in Florida and Ohio, Bush slightly ahead in Nevada and North Carolina, Kerry taking New Mexico and Bush taking Colorado.

Meanwhile, Zogby is projecting a solid electoral margin for Kerry and a slight popular edge for Bush.