Let's help get a better sense of what tools political professionals are using, both for advocacy and to help elect candidates: take the 2008 E-Voter Institute Survey of Political and Advocacy Communications Leaders today.

An interesting new GOP anti-Obama site, CanWeAsk.com mixes social media techniques and video to try to undermine Obama's credibility. But does the featured video actually backfire?

I hate to risk alienating my new BFF Mark Zuckerberg, but has Facebook's moment in the sun as a hot political tool passed? And if so, what does that tell us about the future of social networking sites for online political organizing, and even about the future of Facebook itself?

As the Democratic primary process grinds on, the candidates' supporters are using just about every electronic tool available to swing the race their way. Two cases in point from the Obama side: super.del.egates.us is a wiki-based contact list for voters to use to reach the precious unpledged delegates to the Democratic Convention, while Yrmomma4obama aims to help young voters (and those too young to vote themselves) to use text messages to persuade their friends and family to jump on the Obama bandwagon.

It's always fun when dueling campaign emails arrive in the e.politics inbox only minutes apart, particularly when they're so gently massaging the same issues-of-the-moment. Today's edition: Obama vs. McCain. The weapons: "bitter" vs. "out of touch." The immediate stakes: the contents of thousands of wallets. The long-term stakes: the public perception of each man, and ultimately his electoral fate.

Well, sorta.

Update from the Politics Online Conference: some quick numbers from Patrick Quinn of PQMedia on how candidates are expected to spend their money online in 2008. And, what will it take to boost the percentage of political media money flowing onto the internet?

Marketer Brent Rosengren has embarked on a journey through the wilds of presidential email campaigns, using commercial email marketing standards and practices as a standard, and guess what: ALL of the top-level campaigns fail the test. Each of them makes critical mistakes that limit the effectiveness of their mass emails, their primary means of communicating with steady supporters and converting them into donors and activists.

The Obama campaign seems to have shifted at least some of its online ad buying towards a general election strategy, at least judging from a display ad on a decidedly non-political site

The Clinton campaign has started advertising for donations on Washington Post online properties.