(With Nick Judd)

When it finally came time to tallying the votes late Tuesday night, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg's victory over Democratic challenger and city comptroller Bill Thompson turned out to be remarkably narrow -- and surprisingly so, in part because of the gap the size of the Hudson between what the candidates spent on this race, some $81 million from Bloomberg's pocket to the $6.6 million Thompson dropped according to recent filings. What's particularly interesting for us here is how that difference in spending played out not only offline, but online as well.

PaidContent's Joseph Tartakoff reports that once and future Mayor Bloomberg poured some $2.1 million into online advertising though late October. And those records thus don't include Bloomberg's burst of web ads during the last week of the campaign, a blitz that made him nearly ubiquitous for online New Yorkers. A Google rep described that network-wide spending burst as "massive."

Indeed, spending records from the New York City Campaign Finance Board show that Bloomberg handed over more than two million dollars to Connections Media under the category of "Internet ads." Do the math, and it turns out that out of the whopping $145 that Bloomberg spent to pull each of his voters into the polls on Tuesday, just about $3.75 per voter went to buying Google ads and other online advertising. The DC-based Connections Media is headed up by web veteran Jonah Seiger.

Thompson, on the other hand, spent about $13 per voter, in his 46% to 50.6% defeat at the hands of Bloomberg, and while Thompson's spending records don't break down online advertising costs as cleanly as Bloomberg's do, the underdog Democrat laid out just $205,000 in consulting fees to the Obama-affiliated firm Blue State Digital. The one spending burst identified as going directly towards online ads came at the end of August, and rang in at just $10,000.

Both candidates, though, spent multiples more on television advertising than they did on online ad spots. Here too, getting Thompson's buying power anywhere in the neighborhood of Bloomberg's would require shifting the decimal point. Bloomberg handed over $29.5 million to the DC firm Squier Knapp Dunn, and Thompson spent $1.7 million in TV ads, directed to the Philadelphia and California admakers The Campaign Group.

When all is said and done, the number reflect just out outmatched financially Thompson was in his competition with Bloomberg, online and off. Thompson, for example, spent just slightly more on the web gurus Blue State Digital as Bloomberg paid in postage.

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced his "Connected City" initiative, rolling out a series of programs aimed at transforming how New Yorkers interact with and get services from city government. Building on his administration’s valuable 311 program, he promised to make government more accessible by translating city websites into six languages, distributing more information via Twitter (follow @311nyc) and social networking sites, enabling users to fine-tune their usage of NYC.gov around their personal information needs, and creating a free iPhone application allowing people to submit quality-of-life complaints to 311 directly from their phone.

It's time to open up the public's data, argues John Geraci, a leader of DIYcity.org. What follows is his open letter to the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. The arguments he makes are applicable to every government body: federal, state, municipal and county.

Obama's neglect of the netroots bores progressive bloggers; Obama's broad coalition of supporters, cultivated online, may negate the need for the netroots; dueling "red telephone" ads and a much-needed parody; six seconds of silence on a Clinton campaign call; a new aggregation site has a misleading about page; what if Bloomie were stilling running?; and Off The Bus profiles a whopping 200 superdelegates.

The Internet lets us be armchair pundits like never before; it's official: it's no longer cool to be a presidential candidate who's ignorant about technology; jymomma4obama gets the text out; Googlebombing from the right; Google Trends points to Obamentum; a new widget shows the candidates' fundraising hauls; Mike Bloomberg is NOT running for president; Obama has the most complete graphic design package around.

Whither third parties and independents in 2008? Unity08 is fading, as expected. But Bloomberg may yet run, if the conditions are right. With the right message, he could even go all the way.

Is it me, or are the citizen-filmmakers of the world getting behind? This week, only one citizen-created video — the George Bush gender bender clip — caused much of a stir. Most of the other notable vids were either clips taken off of TV, or well-produced campaign ads like John Edwards’ “The Politics of Parsing.” While some campaigns are starting to produce better videos, it’s now up to you, the voters, to counter back with your own work.

If you have a video you think we should seee, drop us a line at info AT techpresident DOT com.

Harry Shearer moderates the hysterical silent debate; MySpace and MTV kick off their presidential forum series with John Edwards next week; Marc Cooper heads the Off the Bus team; Bloomberg for Prez supporters organize on Facebook; Newt shows up in Second Life; Hillary Clinton hosts an "interactive" webcast that's not quite interactive; and Dennis Kucinich sports a new website, bringing him firmly in step with the 21st century.

A connection between the Romney campaign and an anti-Fred Thompson website; the College Republicans are encouraging their minions to use YouTube; Mike Bloomberg's social networking profiles have been slow to take off; Rudy Giuliani is looking for ex-employees to shoot promo videos; Fred Thompson is out with a new and slow campaign video; and Hitwise stats show a huge market share for Thompson's website.