Credit: Republican National Committee

Of course, at least half the point of something like the RNC ginning up a Valentine's Day e-card generator is getting a press hit out of ginning up a Valentine's Day e-card generator, but we'll oblige.

The Republican National Committee's "GOP Valentine's Day Cards" won't let you customize a Feb. 14th message for your loved one, but it will let you hit them with a lovingly illustrated Republican talking point or joke. The card graced by Harry Reid's face reads "Wishing You a Happy Valentine's Day, in Any Dialect!" Some of the cards, though, you're only going to want to send to friends and family who follow the ins and outs of the congressional process pretty closely. The card featuring a tired-looking Blanche Lincoln, for example, finds its humor in the Senate health care fight. "I Caved and Cast the Deciding Vote to Send You This Valentine," it reads. Legislative funnies!

The international e-organization Avaaz, which was founded three years ago and describes itself as a "new global web movement with a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have, and the world most people everywhere want," is undergoing explosive growth around the Copenhagen climate change summit. Its e-petition campaign for a "Real Deal Now" is up to 13.7 million signers; that's a jump of 2.7 million since a week ago when activists staged a sit-in and started reading names of petition signers in an effort to dramatize their cause. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW.]

There's an interesting little story, having to do with the Republican National Committee's new GOP.com, that sits at the intersection of online public data and the growing interest in using the nuts-and-bolts of technology as a point of political debate. (See the White House's supposed "spam" list, the pretty empty dustup over Rep. Michelle Bachmann's SMS opt-in, Texas gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison's deserved troubles with search-engine-tricking slipped into the code of her new website, etc., for proof that the latter is quickly becoming a trend.) The Sunlight Foundation's Luke Rosiak recently tweaked the Republican National Committee for financial disclosures that showed what the GOP paid out in technology costs at the time it was overhauling its GOP.com website.* Among other expenses, Rosiak focused in particular on a $1,039,155 payment to a hosting company called Smartech, comparing it to $203,000 spent by the Democratic National Committee for similar services.

Only they weren't similar services, writes James Richardson, who once worked in online communications at the RNC; they only seem that way because of the crudeness of the public data. "Hosting" on a disclosure form, the argument goes, is a catch-all label for a variety of services -- making the comparison to what the DNC pays to host Democrats.org like comparing apples to a fruit basket. Richardson spoke with former RNC "e-campaign director" Mike Turk, who said, "I can tell you from my tenure there that the Smartech bill includes a lot of things that aren’t GOP.com." According to GOP officials, writes Richardson, that million-dollar-plus tab bill covers Internet services at GOP headquarters, the hosting of 31 state party websites, and bulk email services for the national party and 40 different state GOP branches.

*Note: Our Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry are senior advisors to the Sunlight Foundation.

The new GOP.com has launched, featuring a tiny talking Michael Steele, a shifting logo made up of "GOP Faces" submitted by the public, and most importantly a collaborative hub based around user accounts. Steele's RNC has hopes of using the new site as a platform upon which to grow the Republican Party. Dive in and see how they did. (via RedState)

You can be the face of the modern Republican Party, report the good folks at TechRepublican. As the Republican National Committee builds its new website, a project that kicked off in late May, it's collecting photos of a diversity of Republicans, along with 128-character-or-fewer responses that complete the phrase "I am a Republican because..." Of course, the fact that the party is after such Twitter-friendly statements of party commitment -- along with the fact that it asks for Twitter handles, Facebook names, and blog URLs -- suggests that they have their eyes on a more networked, social media-y new web presence.

Woo boy, was this not the story that the RNC wanted to come in response to its latest dabbling in online experimentation. When it comes to technology and new media, the establisment GOP has been arguing in recent months that the party and its new leadership are moving steadily down the comeback path. But when it comes to the GOP and tech, it's one step forward and two steps back. The project in question is the ObamaCard Challenge. Under the tag line "Life Costs Nothing," the microsite makes a game of how the Obama Administration handles a dollar. At least I think that's the point of the thing. Nowhere on the site is there any real explanation that lays out the political narrative GOP HQ was aiming at here. And now the project has reached a premature end, or, at least, pause.

ObamaCard, it seems, grew out of some messing around in the RNC labs. According to a blog post by Republican Party new media director Todd Herman, ObamaCard was developed by "a young republican in the RNC New Media Department."

The "funky little game for Young Republicans," writes Herman, was a side project designed to blow off some steam as the Republican new media team works to launch a new technology infrastructure and web platform. In his keynote speech at PdF '09, Herman promised to deliver the latter later this summer.

Yesterday, though, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis pointed out that searches on the site turned up racially offensive products one might buy with one's ObamaCard (a search for "Jew," for example, suggested that you might like to purchase a copy of Martin Luther's 1543 treatise On the Jews and Their Lies.) There seems to have been a straightforward explanation: the site is pulling from the Amazon API, and Amazon, yes, offers some unsavory reading material. But rather than defend the site and tweak the backend to cultivate a more appropriate product selection, reports Politico, the RNC yanked ObamaCard down.

Well, kinda. While many of ObamaCard's constituent parts are dead, the hull of the site lives on. Have a poke around.

Via TechRepublican, we have video of RNC new media director Todd Herman's presentation at PdF '09 earlier this week. Herman's talk certainly caught attention, but what was also fascinating was to take in the reactions to it amongst the conference crowd. Our Andrew Rasiej described the audience as falling about 80% on the left side of the political spectrum and 20% on the right, but the more interesting split might have been between the political and the technological. While generalizing is generally a dumb thing to do, one impression take from the contemporaneous Twitter stream was that some more tech-minded folks applauded Herman's words about making transparency a "purple issue" while the more political amongst the crowd tended towards skepticism of the idea of a more open Republican Party.

But that's admittedly just a crude read, and you don't take my word for it. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, you can watch Herman's preso while reading the Twitter stream and it will seem as though it were happening in real time. Wow.

With the admission it's been a few days since my last visit to GOP.com, the Republican National Committee has a new splash page up that applies a considerably more modern, polished, and frankly, hip look to the site. (Here's a peek at the old design.) The RNC, of course, has been eager to reboot its digital operations and close what is seen as a gap between its online activities and that of its Democratic counterparts. "What you see here is a placeholder between what was and what is to come," blogs new Internet director Todd Herman. There's not much to the redesign, yet. But if this temporary home page is any guide, the GOP plans to focus increased attention on state and local networks, as well as social tools like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The site also includes a prominent call for software developers to "Get Involved."

In other Republican National Committee news, Michael Steele's shop has released a hard-hitting new web ad that uses LBJ's famous "Daisy" TV spot -- which depicted the supposed risks of entrusting our nuclear future to Barry Goldwater -- to highlight differing statements by Democrats over closing the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay.

National Journal's Lucas Grindley chats up Cyrus Krohn, the former e-campaign director at the Republican National Committee who recently headed back to the West Coast tech world whence he came. There's some interesting stuff in there about how Krohn grew the RNC's email list -- organically and otherwise -- and on why joining a Facebook group made in your honor might not constitute lobbying for your job. But most interesting is what Krohn has to say is about the challenges of being a technologist trying to develop and deploy long-term projects while the political world around is thinking in terms of the two-year churn of the election cycle. (That's not a struggle that's limited to the right side of the political aisle, of course.) Give it a read.

The RNC is out with a new web ad that borrows the theme from those famous Mastercard "priceless" spots. The ad somewhat strangely lumps in $700 billion-plus in stimulus spending with Bo the dog, some court-side tickets to a Washington Wizards basketball game, and that Manhattan flyover of Air Force One that Obama knew nothing about. But the familiar format is an easy way in to the complicated matter of deficit spending.