The main feature of the tool is that it organizes your contacts by state in order of electoral priority. You can then call through your social network based on how important they are to Obama winning. While I believe the app will look at any address information associated with your friends, it organizes your contacts into states based on their ZIP area codes if no address information exists.

Also included in the app are news feeds, local events (hooked into your GPS), and a directory of where Obama stands on the issues. Of course, you can also donate with the application.

It's a slick application, but is it useful 33 days from the election? The campaign seems to think it's a GOTV tool that will generate "thousands of personal contacts" up to the election.

I think the idea of an application that organizes your most personal social network - the one trapped in your phone - is a solid concept. For people with a large address book who want to call through their friends, it could be useful.

But why not connect the iPhone app with the campaign's other voter contact tools? You could tap into the GPS and find people within 50 miles of your location who you could call.

Overall, this iPhone application is a well-executed technology project that will have minimal impact in how voters are organized for November 4.

And as a contributor to and supporter of Obama, I'm disappointed campaign resources were put into this niche technology project instead of into boots on the ground.

UPDATE: I've received a flurry of tweets that this application was actually an all-volunteer effort that was later adopted by the Obama campaign.

This definitely changes my perception, and makes me feel better that the campaign didn't decide to dump money into development right before the election.

It makes me happy that 1.) volunteers created this slick application on their own, and 2.) that the Obama campaign embraced the application as their own.

So - congratulations to the volunteer developers, and kudos to the campaign for embracing volunteer efforts. I'm looking forward to seeing this kind of collaboration continue.

John McCain's often aimless email messages are something of a recurring theme here at techPresident, so much so that we're dubbing the topic "McCain Email Watch."  Patrick Ruffini got us started when he noticed a "fundamental disconnect" between the real, relaxed John McCain, and his "stitled" online personality.  I followed up on a distinct lack of links in a recent McCain campaign email.

But McCain's email problems are worse than we first thought.  Case-in-point: today's fundraising message that offered a 3'x6' personalized banner for the low price of $250.

Where to start?

This is a fundraising message, but there's only one way you can participate.  For the vast majority of potential donors on any campaign's email list, $250 is a steep ask.  The message doesn't offer any other option; if you can't contribute $250, move on to the next email in your inbox.

The campaign passed on a potential opportunity to actually engage its email list.  They had the right idea: open up part of the campaign and let people make it their own.  Unfortunately, $250 for a banner isn't quite the best way to start.

There are small, easy ways to get supporters involved without asking them to break the bank on a banner.  George W. Bush and Howard Dean's campaigns both offered online tools to tailor campaign signs for individual supporters.  Hillary Clinton's campaign is holding a vote on the design for the next campaign t-shirt.   Obama's campaign is now selling supporters' art in its online store.  And over at techRepublican, there's an idea for a Threadless-style campaign shop, where supporters vote on the most popular merchandise variations, which the campaign would then sell.

Digging into the details of the message. this message broke from the campaign's normal names who send emails.  Titled "Get Your Name on a McCain Banner Today," this message came from "Team McCain: Frank and Becki Donatelli," two people who say they've been McCain supporters since 1999.  There's even a nice picture of Frank and Becki - in business dress - holding their banner, which reads "Donatelli's for McCain" (ignore the extra apostrophe). 

One problem though:  Frank and Becki aren't just any McCain supporters.  No, McCain just appointed Frank Donatelli to "act as the main liaison between the [Republican National Committee] and the McCain campaign," a promotion from his previous position as a longtime lobbyist.  (Tip of the hat to Matt Ortega at the DNC blog.)

Could the McCain campaign not find any actual grassroots supporter to feature in the email?  Maybe someone who's not on McCain's staff?  Or not a lobbyist?  Someone real, perhaps?

On the bright side of this email, there's more than one link in the body of the message, which only ran at 272 words.  That means since the last McCain email, they've doubled the number of links, and halved the length of the message.  (Did they read Luigi's recommendations?)

We'll continue monitoring McCain's messages in the McCain Email Watch, and add your thoughts in the comments.  What I'll be looking for are continued improvements in the structure of the emails - which shouldn't be hard to implement - as well as a fundamental focus on connecting with the email list, an objective that requires a restart of the campaign's relationship with its supporters.

The message, titled "3 Days to Go," directs supporters to a page with all of their friends who have some connection to Iowa. You can check off the friends you want to invite to the caucus, and then send them a reminder to caucus on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Jose Antonio Vargas reports in the Washington Post that Obama's Iowa staff engage people in a variety of contexts, new and old, including Facebook messages:

In Sen. Barack Obama's Iowa headquarters, young staff members sit at computers, analyzing online voter data and targeting potential backers. They zip one e-mail to an undecided voter and zap a different message to a firm supporter.

Depending on the voter, they follow with Facebook reminders, telephone calls, text messages and, most important, house visits.

It's getting down to the wire. If Obama's new voter contact strategies work, there could be an unsuspecting wave of caucus-goers completely missed by traditional tactics and polling surveys. For reference, here's how Jerome Armstrong predicts the caucuses will go based on turnaround alone:

Turnout numbers        Favors

< 150,000                Edwards

150-170,000              Clinton 

> 170,000                Obama

Michael Whitney works for a labor rights nonprofit, but any views and opinions in this post are his alone, and cannot be attributed to anyone else. He regularly blogs at his website, MichaelWhitney.net.

I wrote about this survey on Huffington Post's Off the Bus, but come take a look at some of my findings after the jump.

In early December, chief Clinton strategist Mark Penn's private polling firm, Penn Schoen and Berland Associates (PSB), administered a nearly 100-question survey to subscribers of the Clinton campaign's email list. The list members received an email from PSBSurveys.com, a website owned by PSB that pays people for participating in web surveys. The email, sent with the subject line "Election 2008: Who Would You Vote For?", asked recipients to participate in a "fun and interesting" research study about their opinions on the 2008 election. The only explanation as to why people received the survey is a sentence toward the bottom of the email: "You received this email because you subscribed to receive emails about politics."

Penn, Schoen, and Berland Associates is the Clinton campaign's pollster.  PSB took what is currently understood by Internet strategists as an unusual approach for a political campaign's online survey, emailing a web poll to subscribers of the campaign's email list without telling recipients that the message or survey questions were from the candidate.

PSB is allowed to send email to Clinton's email list because each person opted-in to the privacy policy on HillaryClinton.com, which states: "On occasion, we may also use the information that you provide online to contact you for other purposes or to solicit you for contributions." This sentence is a near-catch-all for any type of communication from the campaign, and there was nothing unseemly about the way Hillary Clinton's campaign and PSB conducted this survey given this policy.

The first part of Clinton's web survey asks broad questions about the 2008 election, but about halfway through the survey, begins to ask specific questions about Hillary Clinton, including asking what it would take for the person to`donate to Clinton's campaign. Throughout the survey, respondents are reminded that answers "remain strictly confidential and [are] used for research purposes only. We will never give or sell your personal information to any third parties."

The approach taken by PSB stands out among political campaigns' surveys of its email lists.  The Clinton campaign's purposefully unbranded survey is not an innovation in itself, but it does mark a significant new extension of old politics into the new.