Yesterday, I made it across town to hear from Rep. Jeff Flake at the conservative bloggers briefing at Heritage.

Rep. Flake came by to talk up a new site he's launched: PorkParade.com (disclosure: PorkParade.com is proud product of DAG, that I worked on.)

The site's goal is to put pork on parade and help build a movement to push back on Washington's wasteful spending. Cool tech features on PorkParade.com include:

* Email capture.
* Twitter - any tweets with the hashtag #pork are displayed in real-time and top twitters are also listed.
* YouTube videos.
* del.icio.us bookmarks, anyone can "tag" links with "porkparade" and those items will show up on the site's feed.

When Rep. Flake goes down to the floor of Congress he'll tweet about the earmarks he's going after and using #pork the tweet will show up on PorkParade.com. But the site isn't just about Jeff Flake, anyone can share examples of wasteful earmarks, help spread the message, and follow the discussion.

In addition to PorkParade.com, Rep. Flake shared his views on the possible bailout of Wall Street.

He noted his extreme skepticism to the whole plan and opposition to Wall Street executives walking away from failed firms with a golden parachute.

Rep. Flake noted that despite Treasury Secretary Paulson's pleas to the contrary, this bailout should come with costs for firms that take government funding.

According to Paulson, we can't make this bailout a punitive measure, but Rep. Flake asked the sensible question - why should we have to bribe companies to participate in this bailout? If we have to, then apparently this proposed bailout isn't all that necessary.

I have to nod my head agreement to that - failure comes with a cost, and Wall Street firms should not be able to escape their bad investment decisions without facing certain costs. Bottom line.

I'm heading over to the Xcel Center right now for the last night of the GOP Convention here in Minneapolis - St. Paul. After Sarah Palin's home-run last night - the expectations are high for John McCain to equally deliver. I'm confident he will.

If you're not watching the Convention on TV scope out the action live on UStream and follow the back channel chatter on Twitter at RNC08.com.

Lastly, check out David's interview of Erick Erickson of Redstate on how bloggers are being treated at the Convention.

It's day 2 of the GOP Convention in MSP and right now I'm backstage at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis waiting for Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic to get started.

The lack of posting yesterday was due to the fact, that well, there was nothing to cover as almost all convention activity was suspended. But as I predicted, Hurricane Gustav wasn't the mother of all storms that some feared it would be, and we've now returned to our regularly scheduled program here in MSP.

Because Paul wasn't invited to speak at the GOP Convention - he's throwing his own gig - and according to reports the venue's been sold out.

David and I walked in just as Paul was wrapping up a press conference - but Matthew Yglesias has the round up here.

I'm blogging this from the press filing center - a collection of folding tables backstage - and we're seeing a pretty heavy media presence for the rally - lots of tv cameras and reporters. I think it's because the GOP Convention doesn't kick off until 6 or 7 tonight and everyone's looking for something to cover this afternoon. Smart planning by the Paul campaign to hold this now - the only problem is that Dr. Paul doesn't take the stage until 7PM - a time when most media (including myself) will have already moved down the street to the Xcel Center.

As always check out RNCO8.com for up-to-the-minute Twitter coverage.

Updated: 1:44PM Check out David's interview with Ron Paul's communications director Jesse Benton:

More videos of the rally on the TechRepublican YouTube channel here.

Will the GOP Convention actually happen? That's the question that's on my mind as I watch the cable news from my hotel room in Eagan, Minnesota just a "tad" outside of Minneapolis - St. Paul (or MSP as I now call it).

We know the that the political portion of tomorrow's program has been canceled and that President Bush and VP Cheney won't be coming to MSP on Monday. The rest of the week's schedule is up in the air and we'll find out about Tuesday's schedule by noon on Monday.

Personally, I'm predicting that the convention will be be back to normal come Tuesday - it looks like Gustav will miss New Orleans and the storm won't be nearly as strong as Katrina was three years ago.

Aside from Gustav, one of the big stories surrounding the convention is just how tech-savvy the event plans to be - and the media has been picking up on the story - for more check out the articles below, David and I are quoted in each respectively.

Convention's cacophony of voices will include blogs, vlogs, tweets and phlogs, MinnPost.com.

Bloggers Plan To Blanket GOP Convention, National Journal.

As happens during any convention or conference - people's twittering kicks into overdrive. As others have noted, I think Twitter is at its best for these large events, lots of people in the same venue each sharing their own unique perspective on the proceedings.

And the best way to follow the Twitter conversation for the GOP convention is by scooting over to RNC08.com where you can follow a live feed of tweets with the hashtag #RNC08 as well as Flickr pics tagged with RNC08. Follow along and join in - #RNC08.

Special thanks to Jordan for stepping in on Friday and blogging the news to the people while I was out sick. It's good to have a team behind you.

Obama's failed text-message ploy, The Guardian.

Indeed, less than two weeks ago, Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe assured supporters that they would be the first to know who Obama chose for his VP – via text. I worked for John Kerry in 2004, and we announced the John Edwards VP pick to our supporters via email, then the grassroots technology du jour. We were scooped by the press, but not by much. The emails were cycling through the queue on a Tuesday in July. It felt like a victory for the millions of grassroots, online supporters, although I don't think it was ever recognised as such.

On the blog TechPresident, Republican strategist David All summed up the Obama text effort in one word: "Disappointing."

Yes, the mainstream media scooped the netroots again this time around.

New C-SPAN Sites Get Way Unboring With YouTube, Twitter, Qik, Flash…, TechCrunch.

But today C-SPAN gets fairly cool with the launch of two new sites dedicated to the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver and Republican Convention in Minneapolis. C-Span is still workingout some technical issues, but TechCrunch readers can get an early preview by clicking on these links for DNC08 and RNC08. Both are similarly formatted sites that incorporate citizen journalism via blogs, Twitter, YouTube and Qik into portals to cover convention and related news. They will complement the existing C-SPAN Politics site.

The sites also incorporate normal C-SPAN video content. But unlike the unwieldy content on the main C-SPAN site the new sites will show video in Flash format and allow embedding on other sites. Third party blog content from sites like Huffington Post, Instapundit, Gateway Pundit, RedState, etc. will be incorporated into the site and Twitter messages marked with hash marks #RNC08 or #DNC08 will also appear on the site (with moderation). C-SPAN employees will be given Qik cameras to record the action when not on main camera.

McCain up 5 points, increasing youth support, CR Voice.

Also interesting is that the poll shows that Obama’s lead among young voters age 18-29 slipped 12 points from July. His lead among our age demographic is now only 12 points, 52-40. This is the second major poll that has shown Obama losing his grip on this group of voters.

Where Politics Reigns, So Do Political Blogs, NY Times.

Then, there is CWA-NJ Conservatives with Attitude! (www.gopusanj.com). The counterpoint to Blue New Jersey, CWA bills itself as the home for “home-grown, rock-ribbed, All-American patriots.” The site offers new posts on most days, with supportive fans largely echoing the authors’ sentiments.

Text messaging could help Obama's turnout, AP.

"What Obama is creating is this army of individuals, these grass-roots activists, who are out there trying to change the world in 160 characters or less," said David All, a Republican strategist who specializes in technology.

Obama's electronic outreach is the most prominent example of a larger movement by members of Congress and political campaigns to present their message and connect with voters through text messaging on cell phones, social networks such as MySpace and Facebook, and the microblogging site Twitter.

In Congress, some Republicans turned to Twitter in their protest of the Democrats' energy policies on the House floor. When the House recessed in August, microphones on the floor were turned off, the TV feeds to C-SPAN ceased and the lights dimmed, but the Blackberries worked.

Obama Selects No. 2?, CBSNews.

How Obama Really Did It: The social-networking strategy that took an obscure senator to the doors of the White House., TechnologyReview.

The MyBO tools are, in essence, rebuilt and consolidated versions of those created for the Dean campaign. Dean's website allowed supporters to donate money, organize meetings, and distribute media, says Zephyr Teachout, who was Dean's Internet director and is now a visiting law professor at Duke University. "We developed all the tools the Obama campaign is using: SMS [text messaging], phone tools, Web capacity," Teachout recalls. "They [Blue State Digital] did a lot of nice work in taking this crude set of unrelated applications and making a complete suite."

Blue State Digital had nine days to add its tools to Obama's site before the senator announced his candidacy on February 10, 2007, in Springfield, IL. Among other preparations, the team braced for heavy traffic. "We made some projections of traffic levels, contribution amounts, and e-mail levels based on estimates from folks who worked with [John] Kerry and Dean in 2004," recalls Franklin­-Hodge. As Obama's Springfield speech progressed, "we were watching the traffic go up and up, surpassing all our previous records." (He would not provide specific numbers.) It was clear that early assumptions were low. "We blew through all of those [estimates] in February," he says. "So we had to do a lot of work to make sure we kept up with the demand his online success had placed on the system." By July 2008, the campaign had raised more than $200 million from more than a million online donors (Obama had raised $340 million from all sources by the end of June), and MyBO had logged more than a million user accounts and facilitated 75,000 local events, according to Blue State Digital.

Obama's Wide Web: From YouTube to Text Messaging, Candidate's Team Connects to Voters, Washington Post.

The launch began in early 2007, when Joe Rospars, a veteran of the Dean campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was hired as new-media director. In the following weeks, the 27-year-old assembled a group that included one of the co-founders of Facebook, an award-winning CNN producer and a text-messaging enthusiast. BarackObama.com was born.

A year and a half ago, Rospars led a group of 11. It's easily double that now, with staffers taping signs on the back of their furniture that read, "This is not an extra chair! This chair belongs to . . ." Rospars won't divulge the total number of people in his team. "We don't want to give away our entire playbook," he says.

What Makes for a Good Blog?, 43Folders.

# Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute — even when it’s “just” curation. What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?

# Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?

The Politics of Digg: Understanding the complex network that drives stories to the front page, Bloggasm.

As the site grew increasingly popular, it became the target of more and more users who wanted to game the system; entire companies sprouted up offering to promote stories for money and homogenized groups worked together to promote their own agendas and content. The site administrators eventually rolled out new algorithms that necessitated a “diversity” of votes to make it harder for a group of 50 or so malicious Diggers to hijack the site for its own purposes.

...

As many relayed to me over the past few days, it’s a game that takes a good bit of persistence and an abundance of spare time. And, because of a lack of transparency from Digg employees, there has been a growing tide of conspiracy theories about this group and others, claims of “bury brigades” and secret cabals of editors that comb through upcoming categories, bashing down any links that don’t promote a particular viewpoint or bias.

In the past week I’ve conducted phone and email interviews with over 50 of Digg’s top users in an attempt to piece together the cohesive links and strategies that make them so successful. It was during these discussions that I discovered that these Diggers are much more than a team of link pushers and self-marketers; many of their conversations have later developed into real-world friendships.

Google Plans Big Presence at Summer Political Conventions, Wired.

To that end, Google plans on having a large presence at both the conventions. Delegates, reporters and bloggers will be able to use computers to upload their photos and videos to the web. The company says that it also plans on offering free smoothies and massages.

Google staffers gave presentations on some of the projects that its teams have been working on on Monday. In addition to the Google Power Reader in Politics project, the company also showcased its political video search tool, which it rolled out in July.

Company staffers also provided a preview of a project that will enable people to look up their voting registration status, voting precinct location and ballot information online. During the primaries, one of the most consistently searched-for terms on election days was voter precinct location information. Google is working with the Pew Center's Electionline.org to launch the project this fall. The company plans on demonstrating an example of its collaborative efforts with the Ohio Secretary of State at the convention.

Young Republicans campaign in cyberspace: Group uses new media to woo youth vote, Seattle PI.

Since Cowman began making videos after MoveRed.org was created last year, the UW senior and former Marine has become a minor Internet celebrity, specifically for the "Republican on the Street" series, where he interviews passers-by about politics. He posts the clips on Facebook and YouTube.

"The videos are really unique and something a lot of people saw on a grass-roots level," Cowman said. "I went to the state Republican Party convention in Spokane and people came up to me and recognized me from the video -- and that kind of freaked me out a little."

Even the campaign manager for GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi stopped to say hello, Cowman said.

Congressman Gresham Barrett Launches Cool New Site, GreshamBarrett.com.

The website features the latest news, videos, and blogging by Congressman Barrett concerning the issues facing the 3rd Congressional District and South Carolina. The website also features a special Solution Center focusing on the hard-hitting issues of the day, such as energy independence and wasteful pork-barrel spending, and bringing comprehensive solutions to those issues.

The new site will launch featuring the “Bring Congress Back Now” petition to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Can technology bring buzz to conventions?, Politico.

The GOP National Convention will be using Microsoft's Surface, a desktop touchscreen interactive program with information about the events for the visitors that will be available on monitors located around the convention hall.

"This is going to be the most tech-savvy convention in GOP history," GOP National Convention spokeswoman Yohana De La Torre said.

The GOP also will have up to six live video streams of different views of the convention simultaneously and will make them available at its Web site.

Max Everett, chief information officer of the Republican National Convention, said the main goal is to let people at home feel like they are at the convention.

Flickring here, twittering there , the Economist.

Peter Daou, Hillary Clinton’s internet director, says that YouTube, even more than Facebook or MySpace, has had a huge impact on the campaign. Will.i.am’s ode to Mr Obama, “Yes we can”, has had nearly 9m views since it was uploaded six months ago; some 1.9m have watched the McCain Girls’“Raining McCain” over the past four months. Thousands of clips created by ordinary people have been uploaded, to be shared in blogs and often covered by traditional media too.

The "Colbert Bump" is real—at least on one side of the aisle, ars technica.

The picture is not nearly as rosy for Republicans. Far fewer have appeared on the "Better Know a District" segment, making analysis more difficult, but none of the ones that did showed any improvement in fundraising post-Colbert. In fact, the Republicans that did appear had previously been doing quite well, only to slump following their appearance. Dr Fowler suggests three possible reasons for this effect: that the Colbert Report selects the Republicans because they've been doing well; that the only Republicans who accept the invitation are ones that have been doing well; or that a peculiar rift in the space-time continuum means that Republicans see their Colbert Bump in the weeks preceding their show.