The Web on the Candidates

• Mapping solutions specialists Linkfluence have created a site called Presidential Watch 08 that shows off some really impressive maps of the political blogosphere. These sorts of maps of been done before, but they’re rarely this visually stunning or easy to navigate. (via Data Mining)

• Living Liberally’s Justin Krebs posted on OpenLeft about a site called Voter Search that let’s New York State voters find their voting status by searching for their name, birthday, and zip code. If you live in New York and can’t remember if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or Independent, maybe the site can help. I searched for my info but the site came up empty. YMMV.

• Have you watched those videos from John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama explaining the Iowa caucues but still a bit confused? No worries; The Iowa Caucus Calculator can help. Created by physics PhD student Asa Hopkins, the simple site handles the complicated math of apportioning delegates in an Iowa caucus based on the number of precinct delegates and total number of voters. There’s also a mobile version at http://caucusmath.com/m that should come in handy for caucus-goers on the ground.

The Candidates on the Web

• The indefatigable Kate Kaye reports on ClickZ that just two presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and John McCain, have dominated the buying of online display ads. Citing data from Nielsen Online AdRelevance, she reports that those two ran "over 70 percent of the online display ads purchased by the candidates this year between January and December 16," while Barack Obama's campaign accounted for another 25%. The rest, she says, "merely dabbled in display." The lion's share of the money went to Yahoo.

• Andrew Romano notices that the Republican National Committee seems completely obsessed with Hillary Clinton. Fifteen of the last seventeen email alerts he's received from the RNC's spokesman have been attacks on Hillary, he reports.

In Case You Missed It…

First we highlighted our favorite the candidate-generated videos of 2007; now, in our second installment, we present our favorite voter-generated videos.

Facebook grapples with Boyd’s Law of Social Networking, but Greg Bloom thinks it might be missing the point.

Today John Edwards is launching a contest called My Vote, My Voice, which gives Edwards supporters the chance to create their own ads for the campaign. While it should generated plenty of participation from supporters, it could benefit from a more transparent selection process. Yours truly spoke to Elizabeth Edwards this morning, and she provided some more details.

Alan Rosenblatt picks up on Colin Delany's discussion of Matt Bai's recent NYT article, and makes a subtle point: "the internet has not killed message control, but rather language control. Campaigns may still be able to shape the message, but citizens are free to internalize it and restate it in their own language."