At last week's Netroots Nation convention in Austin, online-politics innovator Andrew Rasiej told Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand that the campaign had still not demonstrated clearly to netroots supporters that an Obama administration would commit to online transparency and an open line of communication with them.

(It was perhaps an indication of the campaign's failure to convey that commitment that no more than about 30 people attended that particular panel discussion -- despite it being one of the few sessions during the four-day convention which featured potential powerbrokers in an Obama administration.)

In a follow-up conversation, Rasiej argued, as he did in his remarks to Hildebrand, that the campaign needed to do a better job of telegraphing to online activists that there would be greater openness and more opportunity for them to provide meaningful input in an Obama administration.  read more »

So we're going to be participating in a TechPresident project, along with the New York Times, MSNBC, and a diverse mix of online political commentators. It's a new political forum called 10 Questions in which you, the insightful and inventive reader, get to pose questions to the presidential candidates.

Here's how it works: Submit video questions from October 17 to November 14 on YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo Video or Blip.tv with a "10questions" tag. Afterwards, the candidates will respond to the ten most popular questions, as determined by up-or-down votes on each of the videos, which will be posted on the 10 Questions site. And then readers will determine whether the candidates actually answered the questions or not.

We'll be pointing occasionally to some of the more interesting questions, so give me a heads-up if you're working on anything fun.

Tech President, a site designed and run by the people at Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry's Personal Democracy Forum, just just won the $10,000 grand prize from the 2007 Knight-Batten Awards for innovations in journalism.

Which, in addition to being a deserved reward for a good and original outlet, has the benefit of highlighting our bandwagon-jumping skills: today is the debut of the PDF-designed “2008 Presidential Blog Ticker” on the Politicker and on our politics page, which measures the blog activity stimulated by each of the presidential candidates.

Let us know what you think.

Here’s an interesting marriage of technology with mundane consituent service:

A Flickr page dedicated to the kind of complaints people report to the city’s 311 hotline.

It was started by a member named Ingrid, and here are the rules she has laid out:

1) The title of your photo should describe the problem: "Broken park bench," for example.

2) All photos need captions. Captions should begin with a location, either an address or an intersection.

3) Include only ONE photo of the problem pothole, or whatever

4) Be sure to call 311 to report the condition as well.

The idea is similar to what Public Advocate candidate Andrew Rasiej had called for and seems easy enough.

So far, photos range from things like “sidewalk damage - 540 W 37th” to “monster poison ivy on footpath leading to Fort Washington Park,” to “street tree with rope in it.”  read more »

Also, Jason Horowitz watches as Bob Morgenthau gets into the swing of retail politics.

In Manhattan Transfers, Michael Calderone offers something for political junkies, sports fans, and those of use who haven’t given up on the Brat Pack: Andrew Rasiej buys in Soho, Warner Wolf put the Ice House behind him for the Upper West Side, and Andrew McCarthy sells his 161-year-townhouse.