• The John McCain campaign has unleashed its first ever Facebook application: a video tour of the "Straight Talk Express," the McCain campaign's 45-foot 550-horsepower bus. (See, it's an educational video.) Guided by photogenic advance chief Davis White, it's no Barney Cam romp through the White House. Is this the sort of thing Facebookers have been waiting for from the all-but-certain Republican nominee?

• TechPresident's Colin Delany has released an updated version of his free 52-page guide to online politics, focused on the tools and tactics of web-based advocacy work. Well worth a download.

• Google has launched a fun Elections '08 Map Gallery that features maps showing the life trails of both the Democratic and Republican candidates, overlays of donor data, and more. The collection is, however, shall we say, anemic, and we look forward to even more mashups of political data and maps. Lucky for us, there's an API. Get to work.

The Candidates on the Web

• Given his past support for the public financing of elections, Barack Obama had to know that when he opted out of the system for the general election it would raise some eyebrows and more than a few questions. He announced his decision this morning not by calling a press conference and opening himself up to inquiry, but by taking his arguments right to supporters via a video posted on YouTube and emailed to his mailing list. Despite his professorial mien, Obama didn't mince words. He called the public-financing system "broken" and John McCain and his allies "masters of gaming" it. Micah Sifry has more on Obama's announcement. One reason that Obama might feel pretty good about depending on donors heading into November is...

• His email list is, officially, technically, ginormous. Obama has contact with somewhere between four and eight million supporters, more than 1.5 million have kicked in some amount to the campaign. Politco's Daniel Libit has a first look at what a list of that unprecedented size might mean for a President Obama. Could it free him from fundraising burdens a president normally carries? If gelled into local networks, could those contacts give him leverage in the districts of uncooperative congressfolk? Check out the take of Steve Westly, former eBay exec and Obama's California co-chair, who ties the potential of a list that size to this question: "Are you willing to let go of some control?"

TechCongress and Beyond

• Capitol Words is a fun new project out the Sunlight Foundation that uses text frequency analysis to distill the Congressional Record down to a single word for each day Congress is in session. The LA Times has a good write-up. For September 12, 2001 that word was "nation." March 21, 2003 -- the day after the U.S. entered into war in Iraq -- it was "amount." But the question is, amount of what? Troops? Potatoes? Hours until recess? It'd be great to eventually track "word bursts," to borrow a phrase from computer scientist Jon Kleinberg's tracking of the popularity of phrases in State of the Union addresses, to give us insight into the changes in Congress's zeitgeist over time. Again, there's an API. So again, get to work.

In Case You Missed It…

Italian media consultant Antonella Napolitano fills us in on lessons learned from 10domande, an experiment in Italian politics modeled after our own 10questions.

Clay Shirky is mixing it up over on TPMCafe's Book Club, discussing his new book "Here Comes Everybody." Clay will be a keynoter at the upcoming PdF '08. Three days and counting!