David All live-blogged a therapy session conference call between conservative bloggers and John McCain's campaign. "We’re looking to build relationships with all of you..." says McCain's senior advisor Terry Nelson. More at Beltway Blogroll.

AirCongress is webcasting daily snapshots from HotlineTV, a YouTube channel produced by Chuck Todd from the National Journal. Yesterday, Todd and senior editor John Mercurio discussed the chances that Rudy Giuliani will run for president. “There’s a track record here. He ran for the Senate in 2000. He got into the race for all intents and purposes and then got out,” said Mercurio. But, said Todd, “Rudy has been doing little things every day to look more and more like a candidate, and this is yet another little thing. … He’s doing as many things as Mitt Romney.” (via AirCongress)

We're pleased to announce our newest feature: Technorati tracks, a series of dynamic charts that show how often bloggers are mentioning the presidential candidates over the last 30 and 90 days. The charts are broken down by party, and we've also included a third set showing how bloggers are also talking about prominent non-candidates like Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Wesley Clark and Michael Bloomberg.

Just a day after I posted about John Edwards texting campaign, a friend told me that Edwards was now using Twitter, a social networking tool that enables users to let friends and strangers know what they're doing.

Obama may be on to something here: candidate coffees designed for voters.

Voters play a fairly significant role in elections. It seems like a relatively obvious point, but it seems to have been lost by all but one of the top tier Presidential candidates.

The goal of any campaign is to reach, identify, and mobilize voters. The common thread of all voters is they're registered.

Only one of the Presidential candidates has an option for interested visitors to register to vote.

ParkRidge47 melds the medium and the message: Think for yourself. But rejecting the credit for something popular will always makes the MSM suspicious – anyone who refuses a byline must be hiding something.

Twitter became very popular the past couple of weeks, as all of the A-List bloggers, and folks attending SXSW in Austin started signing up and inviting all of their friends. Because of this, Twitter has proven itself as a great means by which candidates can make connections with potential voters.

I did a quick search on Google for "President 2008" hoping to find a collection of links to the major candidates. After all, some people think the campaign has already started. But instead of finding Hillary, Rudy, Barack, John, and the gang at the top of the free links, I found MyDD, the Polling Report, Walken 2008, and Draft Hillary atop that list, while John, Mitt, and Bill (Richardson) showed up in the sponsored links (Hillary did, too, but not her official site).

Now, while some of you may ask why the official candidate websites don't rank higher, I am stunned that Walken 2008 ranks third on this list.

Walken.

That's Christopher Walken.

A friend sent me a link to a very good post on how PR firms should approach bloggers. It's sort of a "what to and not to do list". While aimed at people doing corporate PR, it is certainly applicable to campaigns as well. If you're thinking of opening your campaign up (and you should be), it is sage advice for you to follow.

Blogs are community-oriented web properties where readers are encouraged to engage in conversation. It's not supposed to be a one-way street like the mainstream media. This is why it's important to keep an informal, conversational tone when responding to the blogger and readers. Constructed and flat statements will be called out as "spin" and you will be accused of not addressing the issue. Remember, companies and organizations are made up of humans, so act like a human, not a computer delivering a line of programming.

This is well worth a read for anyone who interacts with bloggers - be it the candidate or the communications guy.

At first, I didn't "get" Twitter. But then I stopped, took a deep breath, and started engaging and connecting through Twitter.

Once I "got it," I started thinking about how I would soon deploy the modern technology with Republican politicians.

Here's what I'm thinking...