Allen Fuller has a great post up discussing Fred's online announcement on September 6th. For whatever reason, people's antennae seem to go up whenever there's an inkling of Fred running a video-based campaign, and this is no exception.

Fred Thompson will launch a legitimate campaign for President via webcast. That's just unreal. Sure, Hillary and Edwards and all them did it months ago, but that was months ago when there was no pressure and relatively little media attention. I'm as much of a new media guy as anyone, and I applaud them for going for it, but this is risky at best. Friends of Fred Thompson will not get nearly the attention from the mainstream media as a big event on the square in Lawrenceburg, Tenn. would. On the other hand, this does play to his strength. He is a professional TV actor after all. I'd imagine they will allow networks to play the broadcast-quality video live as well. Either way it is a go-for-broke strategy and I'm interested to see how it plays out.

I for one applaud Fred for announcing on the Web. It's a strategy I've advocated for candidates in different settings for months. With that said, context matters. And to put it mildly, I don't think they've handled the run-up to this announcement very well.

Facebook has given us an unprecedented look inside the demographic breakdowns of its user base. For the first time, there's a model for quantifying who the early adopters on the Web are, and how they vote.

Read this post for the full data.

There just aren't that many of them.

But there are plenty more interested in the Bible, Country music, Sportscenter, watching 24, and playing Halo 3 on their Xbox.

Meanwhile, liberals watch the Daily Show, love Radiohead (by a 6-to-1 margin over conservatives), and (speaking as a Republican) let's just say I like who Stephen Colbert takes votes from.

This is all part of my deep dive into Facebook demographic data provided at by the Flyers Pro advertising engine. I've just updated the spreadsheet. The data looks like this...

New vs. Traditional media is apples and oranges, Cybersecurity advice for the next President, DNC responds to "Democrats Praising McCain" ad, McCain offers prizes to spammers and realizes his recent YouTube dominance, and the #dontgo Twitter debate continues...

Obama texts his supporters his choice of VP, is Obama the first "cybergenic" candidate?, What will McCain do for VP?, Obama hits back at two McCain ads, the blogs respond to Edwards' extramarital affair, Bush enjoys women's beach volleyball, and Barack gets "Rick Rolled"

DemocracyInAction and Catalist have just made a remarkable new deal.

Let me back up. DIA is one of the core components of the progressive political infrastructure, providing online advocacy tools to a wide range of left-leaning non-profits. And Catalist is the political data giant that grew out of the Clinton camp's upset over how the DNC was keeping up with the GOP on the tech and data front. More on that here. The deal? DIA's clients get free access to Catalist's world-class data. In exchange, they must turn over to Catalist the details on their own donors.

Apps for Democracy is a remarkable contest for software developers launched by the city government of Washington DC. The challenge? Build applications for Facebook, iPhones, Google Maps, and more that make the lives of DC citizens better. And do it while making use of the city's rich data catalog, which contains structured data on everything from ongoing construction projects to crime reports to sites along the African American Heritage Trail. Up for grabs is $20,000 in prize money, including two $500 people's choice awards voted on by fellow coders.

If President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team are looking for a model that uses the power of social networks and citizen democracy to open up government, they ought to bring their own homepage - Change.gov - and replace the g-o-v with a little o-r-g.

Online social activism portal Change.org, whose origins predate (by just a little bit) the theme of the Obama '08 campaign, has opened up a super-connected suggestion box on national policy - and if they're smart, the new Obama Administration will dive right in. I can almost picture a Capraesque scene in the Cabinet Room come January: Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dumps a huge hamper of Change.org suggestions on the big, shiny and table and calls on the startled Secretaries to "dig in" as President Obama nods in approval.

Not that you'd divine that sort of attitude from the dot-gov side of the Change domain spectrum: Change.gov is a handsome, well-designed billboard with a light Obama agenda, the latest transition news, and the ability to apply for jobs and send in suggestions. It's the polar opposite of the much-lauded MyBO site of the campaign, where the campaign allowed organizers to - well - organize publicly using the Obama team's digital plumbing. And no, your once-prized MyBO log-in and identity won't work in the Office of the President-elect.

Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google and Chairman of the Board of the New America Foundation, spoke earlier today about technology, innovation, the economy, energy, and how they are all linked. Schmidt is on the short list for Obama's CTO, and he is a member of President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, so here's an opportunity to learn a little about how he thinks on these topics, through a transcript from his talk.

Back in the day, when Yahoo! was the only search game in town, many wondered why Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), and eventually Google would attempt to break into that market. The answer continues to be the same - although they're good, there's still a lot to be done with Search. Contextual search is still being explored, and in terms of government and campaign information, most documents are not publicly or easily available to the search engines. With the goal of open government in mind, I decided to take a look at five relatively new search companies that recently launched sites, hoping that perhaps some of them could help make search of government and campaign data a little better, honing in on the FEC, OMB and more.