Bill Richardson has relaunched his website, coinciding with his announcement that he is officially running for the Democratic nomination for President. On the heels of his highly successful Job Interview web commercial, his newly redesigned website is essentially his resume 2.0.

After delivering up more than 150,000 views of his subtle but hysterical Job Interview commercial on YouTube, the Richardson campaign has decided the candidate’s resume needed a new look and feel. In the age of digital elections, a candidate’s website is his/her resume, providing voters with information regarding experience, issue positions, and plans for leading the nation. It is a place where voters can create their own relationship with the candidate and the campaign. And it is a place where the press can gather fodder for its stories. A good campaign website is all of these things.

A great campaign website also mobilizes the voters to become more actively involved in shaping public policy, not just by voting, but by voicing their opinions to policymakers, the media, and their own personal networks. This broader view of a campaign website or, more appropriately, a political website has yet to be taken up in earnest by most of the candidates. As I alluded to in an early post about Barack Obama’s petition drive to pressure Senate Republicans up for re-election to overturn the President’s veto of the supplemental war funding bill, real presidential candidates lead people to take control of their own country. They do not just ask voters to give them their votes. This is the difference between a visionary candidate and a candidate who is “in it to win it.”

The sudden interest in Obamagirl's Crush on Barack music video provides a great opporunity to talk once more about the nature of internet communications. As I have often argued, the net is a chaotic message environment precisely because it enables anyone, as long as they have access to a wired computer, to post their own ideas and opinions. And this content has no editor other than the poster.

So, just as the 1984 video before swept through the campaign news cycle, the Obamagirl video may be starting its sweep now.

But what does this mean for the candidate?

So what's it gonna be once and for all -- should we treat bloggers as citizens or as journalists? The debate rages on over at Buckeye State Blog, where a blogger named Jerid posted about being blocked out of one of Barack Obama's "Faith, Action, Change" forums at Keene State College in New Hampshire.

James Kotecki, a.k.a. EmergencyCheese on YouTube, is likely a well-known personality for this crowd. And James' appeal as a citizen journalist and YouTube "guru," dispatching his advice to candidates on how best to connect with the YouTube community, has doled up its fair-share of press from the mainstream media.

But now, James... is the mainstream media. At least, sort of. And its his experience jumping from "Citizen Journalist" to "Journalist" that I wanted to include in this space through an email interview with James.

The quick background is that James went to the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa as a paid freelancer for one of our favorite stops, the Politico.com. You can see all of the products of his experience on his YouTube channel.

Let's dig in...

MTV takes another innovative step into social media with the launch of its new citizen-journalist press corps.

The Huffington Post's OffTheBus project hits a milestone; Color of Change, MoveOn and hip hop superstar Nas join forces to push back against Fox News' coverage of race; we have a look at who is a self-proclaimed card-carrying liberal: we've got your beach reading list ready to go; and a great deal more.

Citizen-journalists chosen by Decision '08, contest for "Why are you a Democrat/Republican," what do pollworkers of the 21st Century look like?, fears of security threats at the Democratic National Convention, Twitter scandal erupts over fake "speakerpelosi" account, and coded messages directed at Evangelicals in John McCain's "The One" ad.

Liveblogging the DNC; sleuthing out McCain's VP pick; Sarah Palin will make these bloggers happy; Get your ObamaTaxCut.com; McCain's classy and messy moves; Obama's text-messaging machine revs up.

After all, it is Friday afternoon before a three-day weekend. You can afford to take a few minutes to learn more about Sara Palin and maybe have a quiet chuckle...

Upon hearing the startling news yesterday that John McCain had tapped Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate, the first thing many of us in the Lower 49 did was to hustle to our computers, BlackBerries, and iPhones to try to get up to speed on her. What we found: the Republican vice presidential nominee is being defined by what's been written about her on Wikipedia, rather than by what the McCain campaign wants the world to know. It's hard not to see that as a missed opportunity of Alaskan proportions.