While network TV has cut back its coverage of the national political conventions to an hour a night, and within that hour we often get more of the network "stars" bloviating than straightforward speechifying from the convention floor, the internet is, as my colleague Andrew Rasiej likes to say, "the Tivo of our times." A glance back at the speeches and media moments in Denver and their YouTube views suggests a couple of episodes must have strong word-of-mouth, since people are going to watch the stuff they heard about but missed.

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.

Here are two words that have yet to be uttered from the stage of the Democratic National Convention: BarackObama.com or Democrats.org. I've slogged through the posted transcripts of the first three days speeches in Denver, and using the "find" tool on Firefox could not find one occurrence of either phrase. This is more than a minor slip by Team Obam, in my humble opinion.

We kick off our on-the-ground coverage of the just-begun Democratic National Convention in Denver with a look at the Big Tent, a glance at how bloggers are reacting to the event's corporate sponsorship, what gear the new media folks are packing, and much more.

No, not really. Instead, we look at the seemingly instantaneous response yesterday to the hubbub over where John McCain hangs his hat(s); C-SPAN does a convention-inspired upgrade, pulling in an impressive amount of third-party creative content; we challenge you to record your electoral vote predictions; and a tremendous amount more.

When will the political conventions enter the Connected Age? That question has been bouncing around my mind recently as we at techPresident keep fielding phone calls from reporters doing stories on Barack Obama's decision to announce his VP choice first by text message. Don't get me wrong: It's a great attention-grabbing gimmick, and it's helping his campaign build a powerful new way to reach people (primarily the young), but it's hardly a revolution in politics.

The Big Tent seeks to be a refuge and workspace for new media types gathering in Denver next week, and we wonder if what happens there might not be more interesting than what happens inside the Pepsi Center; McCain's tech policy is tracked back to his campaign's ties to the tech industry; a fake VP SMS fools some Virginia politicos; and a whole lot more.

It simply boggles my mind that neither the Republican or Democratic Party websites link to their respective convention websites from their homepages. Nor do they even mention the conventions--no dates, no locations, no nothing!

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.

America is using these relatively quiet days of summer to carefully weigh John McCain and Barack Obama's differing visions for putting America back at the cutting edge of scientific innova...no, not really. Sigh. We're busy talking celebrity this and celebrity blah blah blah blah; Sprinkled across the U.S.A. are nearly 200,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers, and now some of them are trying to bring home some votes for Barack Obama; The Democratic side of the House Education committee has released a snappy movie-trailer style short video promoting the upcoming premiere on the House floor of the Higher Education Opportunity Act; and so much more that it would take a full two episodes of "Behind the Music" to cover it all.