More tidbits of new media goodness from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe's book, Going Rogue. Oh wait, that's not right. This one is called Audacity to Win, and in it Plouffe's offers tasty bites from the innerworkings of the innovative campaign. There's a theme: new media decisions often came from the top down and were intimately tied to the Obama campaign's strategic roadmap, and the campaign's leadership was willing to stand up and vigorously defend unconventionality even in the face of naysayers. Here's Plouffe on how the decision to announce Joe Biden's selection as VP via text message went down:

Joe Rospars came into my office one afternoon with the idea of telling our supporters first, before the media or politicos. "While our e-mail list is growing exponentially, our mobile list could use a big kick start," he explained. "Why don't we ask people to sign up for a text alert? We can tell them that they'll be the first to know who Barack picks as a VP.

The idea appealed to me on two levels. First, it was consistent with other key junctures in our campaign -- reporting fund-raising numbers, the decision to limit our primary debates, opting out of the public funding system -- where we had communicated first directly to our supporters...

Second, this was a great way to grow our text-messaging list. Rospars was right about the increasing gap in our contact figures; our email list was now over 6 million, but our list of mobile numbers was in the low six figures. Making a big announcement by text would ignite a spark and juice the latter number.

Virginia's new governor-elect, Republican Bob McDonnell, ran an online campaign that caught the eyes of many who pay attention to this sort of thing. McDonnell went what you might call the snout-to-tail route, building up a gorgeously branded online presence which, as Colin Delany highlights here, consisted of a website full of tools and resources, a custom Ning network transformed into the McDonnell action community, and more. McDonnell also swamped the competition, Democrat Creigh Deeds, when it comes to online spending. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that McDonnell outspent Deeds online at a rate of 5-to-1 through October 21st (via Blue Virginia and Shaun Dakin), in a race that seemed to serve as an experiment in whether the Obama campaign's online innovations could be co-opted by Republicans and applied to a statewide race.

And one area where McDonnell had what seems like a particularly good run is worth taking a closer look at: mobile.

You heard here and there during the race that McDonnell was running a strong and creative mobile campaign. This morning, TechRepublican's Meghann Olshefski heaped praise on how McDonnell was able to use mobile messaging to really pester supporters to turn out and vote yesterday. So we caught up with Chris Taylor of Tusk Mobile, which directed McDonnell's online efforts. He highlighted for us some of what made McDonnell's mobile push tick, and gave insight into just how mobile can provide a boost to a campaign...

Text message "nysenate marriage" or "nysenate Adams" or "nysenate S427" to 41411 and get back a list of relevant bills or a short description of the bill in question right to your cell phone. It's part of the burgeoning Open NY Senate initiative, and while developer Nathan Freitas admits that the trial is proof-of-concept and will likely only appeal to the wonkiest of state government nerds, it's a demonstration of what parsed, searchable legislative data makes possible. The ultimate goal, says Freitas, is to make finding out what's happening in government "as easy as looking up sports scores." Might be useful the next time you're trying to settle a bar bet over what Albany is up to.

The forward-thinking State Department provided back-up for President Obama's address from Egypt earlier today by reaching out to foreign audiences where they live: on their cell phones. The State Department set up a program to text out "highlights" of the speech throughout the Middle East -- in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian, as well as English. Sign up took place on America.gov, though not for Americans back at home; the New York Times' Roy Furchgott explains that State Department funds can only be used to engage with foreign audiences. State did, however, broadcast a handful of reply texts viewable both here and abroad on america.gov/sms-comments.html. (The first, as of this moment, is in Arabic. The second, from Egypt: "I love obma very much.")

Also lending a hand to the administration's goal of making Obama's address ubiquitous: the White House's official Twitter feed and Facebook application.

Miss the speech, sleepy head? The White House blog is promising to post a transcript and video shortly.

Have you gotten a text from either the Obama campaign or McCain campaign today? While McCain campaign hasn't done much on the texting front yet, the thinking has been that Obama will used the millions of mobile numbers he's collected over the last two years to turn out voters today. The question is -- how exactly? If you're getting texts today, from either campaign, let us know about them in the comments. In particular, don't forget to included details on what the messages say, how they seem to be targeting you as a voter, and where in the country you are (or, in some cases, where the texts think you are).

When it finally arrived, I was disappointed. Barack's team missed an enormous opportunity to communicate personally, to me, from Barack.

Let me explain to you where I'm coming from...

Shortly after 3 AM on the east coast, the long-awaited text message from Barack Obama announcing Joe Biden had finally arrived. But it was something short of letting the cat out of the bag. At 10:50 pm on Friday night, ABC News confirmed that Biden was getting Secret Service protection. The first official confirmation that I could find came from CNN at 12:45 a.m. The promised "be the first to know" text message came a full two hours later.

The Sunlight Foundation takes *all* the fun out of the upcoming political conventions by highlighting who's paying for the crudites; a new profile of the X-Men-like Obama online team sparks a bit of professional jealousy in competitors; the Democratic candidate's economic advisor roots his thinking in the networked world; and a good deal more.

Barack Obama's campaign has an interesting example of the online-offline integration I talked about a few weeks ago. Having signed up for their text messaging list, I texted in my addresses to get a free Obama bumper sticker. It came yesterday and looks like this:

Aside from feeling some mild disappointment in not receiving the standard Obama'08 sticker to add to my collection, I got to thinking, and this is an interesting viral strategy. If I had to guess, the last thing they want is for this to actually be placed on cars -- you can barely see the call to action. Rather, the point is for it to be stuck on the outside of dorm room doors, where it can spread virally offline among college students. The amount of thought that went into this campaign (I got an SMS telling me my bumper sticker was being packaged up in Chicago with some TLC) shows you the premium they are placing on text messaging versus other forms of online communication.

A few months back, I chided John Edwards's team for not effectively using its mobile text campaign. Then I softened my stance a little bit as they started using Twitter more effectively than their own text program, and now I truly believe that they have the entire mobile messaging strategy right.