We just received this letter from Benjamin Katz, founder of CompleteCampaigns.com, responding to our posting of a lengthy letter from Aristotle about our Consumer Guide to Software-as-a-Service. (We will reporting the results of our updated survey shortly.)

Dear Mr. Phillips,

We recently received an email from the general counsel of Aristotle, one of the software-as-a-service companies featured in our online guide, complaining about our efforts, that arrived just as we sent out an email to our subscribers asking them to help update the survey data in the guide. We are reprinting his letter below, followed by our response. Feel free to join in the conversation in the comments thread.

At the 2006 Personal Democracy Forum conference we released a print-only consumer guide to software-as-a-service providers -- companies that provide software and support to political and advocacy campaigns. The guide included descriptions of the services offered by each vendor and ratings from users of the vendors, culled from a survey we sent out to our readers .

Now, we need your help. We're expanding and updating the guide and will be offering it online (details to come...), so we need to update the vendor ratings, too. If you work for a political campaign, advocacy organization, non-profit, or any other group that might use a software-as-a-service provider, we'd appreciate you taking five minutes to complete our survey. You'll be asked to rate three things about your vendor:

1. The quality of their customer service.

2. The capacity and flexibility of their software products.

3. The fairness of their pricing.

Swivel, a web site that lets you mash up your data any which way you like, went public yesterday and it promises to be an easy way to make graphs out of almost any data set.

The home page features graphs that makes some interesting sociological claims. Today I've learned that:

Chicken and bottled water are in, red meat is out.

More wine was consumed and over the same period that violent crime went down, suggesting a correlation.

Last weekend, Cnet News ran a special on the new political implications of ringtones. The possible politics of ring-tones is one of the many discussions that developed out of the MobileActive conference that took place last month in Toronto where representatives from the Philippine group Txtpower shared the way they used ring-tones to severely criticize President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. A conversation that took place between Arroyo and former Commission on Elections commissioner Virgillo Garcilliano (a.k.a. Garci) before the elections were made public was recorded and converted into a ringtone by TxtPower. The “Hello Garci” ring-tone features music and the voice of Arroyo saying, “Hello? Hello? Hello, Garci?... So, will I lead by more than one million?” Although possession of the audio file was declared illegal under a wire-tapping law, it spread quickly throughout the country, where SMS is a major form of communication, and the ability to share ringtones over SMS is also widely available. While the Filipino story was already a couple of months old when demonstrated at the Toronto conference, it was the first time many of us, especially from North America, were able to play with and see the technology of homemade ringtones first hand. It also afforded us the first opportunity to consider the implications of homemade ringtones for U.S politics. We also spent some time trying to find an easy way to get the ringtones downloaded fom the txtpower website onto our phones.

The Democratic Party's new site is up, but the Big Things that might make it cutting edge are apparently still on the way:

"Over the next few months, Democrats.org will add more tools and features -- including event listings of Democratic activities on the national, regional and state level and new event organizing tools."

Still to come. Where have I heard that before? After looking at the site for a while, I can't find much here that's different from the old Democrats.org, except that there's the Democracy Bond -- (read here monthly political subscriptions), but that isn't great web design, just a marketing concept.

While the world waits for the organizing tools to arrive, how about a simple directory of links to the state parties -- they often list their local events with some efficiency -- with a subdirectory listing for contacts to county chairs? It would give at least some appearance that the Democrats are including the web in their 50-state strategy.

Convio just unveiled a tool that automates messages to members of advocacy organizations based on their representatives' voting records. According to the press release, the software services company's "Advocacy Center" houses and tracks data on past and pending House and Senate votes including amendments that could block passage.

So, say Citizens Against Government Waste (a Convio client) wants to get the word out about all the pork padding a pending farm subsidy bill. The group can automatically customize site content or email newsletters to feature details on the fat that Joe Citizen's Congressman wants to funnel through the legislation to his favorite hometown butcher.

And I'm still waiting for my local paper to cover my Congressman's votes....

And you thought the only ads for sale on eBay were for placement on foreheads and naughty bits. Not for long: on March 14 political advertisers and vendors will be able to bid on PoliticsOnline newsletter ads.

Through its PoliTicker and NetPulse email newsletters, PoliticsOnline has been covering all things politically interactive for quite some time now (seems like it must be at least two or three years). Although the media company doubles as a consultancy and Web tool provider, it hired campaign management and web marketing services firm CampaignAssistant to handle its eBay auction service which will offer ad space in the newsletters. It looks like CampaignAssistant has a service called "MarketRates Advertising" that sells and implements ads on websites, email newsletters, blogs, and print mags or newsletters.

As someone who's followed the online ad industry for...sheesh...about 7 years now...I've gotta say I'm surprised to see an ad space auction originate in the political ad sphere. Typically, political advertisers lag years behind corporate marketers.

Has Blogads finally met its match? BURST! Media, an online advertising network composed of niche content sites, announced today that it has formed a network of blogs on which companies can place ads. BURST! has taken an entirely different approach than Blogads. For example, BURST!

- sells on a CPM rather than a flat fee;
- allows advertisers to run rich media creative;
- follows the lead of Drudge in offering pop-ups;
- allows for geographical targeting; and
- generally offers a wider variety of ad sizes, placements, and sponsorships on each blog.

The initial impact of BURST!'s network will likely be minimal. They have only 20 blogs in their network -- although it counts Gawker Media as a member -- and political advertisers are more likely to stick to the inexpensive, flat fee Blogad model vs. expensive CPMs and minimum spend requirements.

While this blogger has suggested a few improvements to the Blogads product, many of which have been incorporated into BURST!'s offering, the jury is still out on which ad model will ultimately generate the most revenue.