Is it possible to build a successful web portal and community hub around issues and activism? So far, no one has succeeded in this quest, though there a lot of people trying and one could argue that sites as diverse as DailyKos.com, Townhall.com, and Idealist.org each play this kind of role for tens of thousands of reader/members, and projects like the Facebook Causes platform built by Project Agape, Razoo, Changing the Present, Donors Choose and Kiva.org each have somewhat similar aspirations.

One of the longer-distance runners in this search for the holy grail of social change organizing online is Ben Rattray of Change.org, who Josh Levy and I wrote up back in December 2007. Back then, Change.org was going through its first major re-design, shifting from focusing on individual users looking to connect with specific causes, to a platform for organizations looking for a ready-to-use social network toolset tuned to their members. The elevator pitch Rattray used with us was that Change was "Ning for non-profits," and he thought the new approach would not only meld well with the site's 50,000 members but would also, through subscription revenue, help float Change.org's boat.

Well, now Rattray is on to a new vision and strategy to expand Change.org's reach, and as close readers of this site already know, he lured Josh away with promises of untold riches and seventy virgins to help him build it out. (No, we are not bitter.) Earlier this week I had a chance to chat with both of them about this new approach, and here are my notes on the conversation.

We've talked a great deal about data this cycle, from Obama's use of Catalist and VAN to the Republican National Committee's vaunted Voter Vault. And this election may indeed be the election of databases -- but it might be the states' voter databases we're talking about on November 5th; It's amazing what you can learn about new media while waiting in line at your local bagel shop! The polished, intuitive interfaces that the Obama campaign gives supporters to engage with that data -- from the iPhone app to MyBarackObama to Vote for Change -- may well make it the first campaign to truly master the modern art of interfaces. And the White House might be their prize for it; and a fair amount more.

Employees of some of the biggest tech firms in the United States are financially backing Barack Obama over John McCain by a lopsided ratio of nine to one, according to ZDNet's Robin Harris. Using fundraising data from OpenSecrets that covers donors who have contributed above $200, Harris found that employees of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Google and six other companies overwhelmingly support the Democratic nominee over his Republican counterpart. If you're Obama or a supporter, that 90% figure might seem like cause for celebration.

But you might also spot some room for improvement. Considering that Harris's list encompasses some fairly major companies that boast well-paid jobs, the raw numbers of donors aren't overly impressive; Harris cites just 170 contributors to Obama among Apple's ranks. Google finds itself home to 640 Obama contributors, Cisco, 240. Is there untapped potential for Obama in the tech world -- not only in dollars, but in enthusiasm?

The issues raised by that question are what's underlying Tech for Obama.

The enormous number was breathtaking: six million people sent in questions through the Internet for Tom Brokaw to pose to John McCain and Barack Obama during Tuesday night's presidential town hall in Nashville. Breathtaking -- and entirely wrong; Building on what seems to be growing momentum behind using Twitter as an election protection tool, an online organizer has detailed possible standardized tags; Using donor data from ten large tech companies as a representative sample, ZDNet's Robin Harris finds that tech employees support Obama to McCain at a rate of nine to one; and much, much more.

It's late and it's Yom Kippur, so I'm going to be brief: Go read all of Zack Exley's detailed field report on "The New Organizers, Part 1: Obama's neighborhood teams and the power of inclusion and respect." Exley, one of the country's consummate NEW political organizers, who started out as a labor organizer and then got in early on internet-powered organizing first with his satirical GWBush.com, followed by stints with MoveOn.org, the Dean campaign and the Kerry campaigns, has written a powerful and convincing depiction of the people-powered, hyper-networked engine purring away under Obama's hood.

David Kendall, the University of Tennessee student accused of hacking Gov. Sarah Palin's email account, was indicted today by a federal grand jury. According to the indictment, Kendall is charged with unlawful access to Palin's email account, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a $250,000 fine. One can certainly imagine that with the high profile nature of the case, and the public disclosure of Palin's materials, federal prosecutors will be gunning for Mr. Kendall.

Bill McGeveran, an information law expert, raises questions about the government's case at the Info/Law blog.

Professors Orin Kerr and Paul Ohm, probably the two most knowledgeable scholars in the country on the subject of computer crime, are both dubious about the way the indictment achieves felony charges. (In short, the unauthorized intrusion into Palin’s e-mail needs to have been in furtherance of some other crime or tort; in typical cases that would be fraud or identity theft, but here it isn’t clear what that other crime or tort might be.)

I've twice now registered a note of skepticism that, as has been reported in some high-profile places, the questions submitted by the public through the Internet for last night's town hall presidential debate in Nashville numbered an extraordinary six million. MyDebates, the joint project between MySpace and the Commission on Presidential Debates, offered the chance to whisper in moderator Tom Brokaw's ear by submitting a question online for his consideration. And sure, there does seem to be a growing public hunger for finding some way to engage in these debates more fully. But 6,000,000 questions still seems like an implausibly high level of participation. (Not to mention that that's a fairly absurd stack of questions for Brokaw and his team to go through in the 72 hours or so between when submission's ended and debate day). It's looking like that skepticism may have been warranted.

Was last night's presidential "town hall" in Nashville hosted by Tom Brokaw was a bust?; NPR social media bloke Andy Carvin's launched an intriguing last-minute "distributed dial testing" Twitter experiment yesterday. To participate, you simply included a one to ten rating of the candidates in your tweet, set off by asterisks; expanding upon the idea of using Twitter as an election protection tool, Culture Kitchen's Liza Sabater lays out some provocative ideas for taking advantage of the decentralized, network world and the humble cell phone to mix things up; and a good deal more.

Did anyone use MySpace's MyDebates page, the "official online companion to the Presidential Debates"? Alas, not too many. And it looks like only four questions of the millions submitted online were asked by Tom Brokaw, the event's moderator. That, plus the pre-agreed rules that prevented the studio audience from asking follow-up questions or even showing emotion, made the "townhall" style presidential debate more like a wax museum animatronic replica of a townhall. What a shame.

Not sure how this is going to play out but the video micro blogging site Seesmic just announced a partnership with the Washington Post's and Chris Cillizza''s "The Fix."