OK, so I've now heard from a bunch of friends, including several wiser and cooler heads with many years of experience in the trenches, and they've convinced me that I overstated things in my previous post attacking TechCrunch.

The announcement last Thursday by the TechCrunch blog that it is organizing a "Tech President" online primary and "Tech President Endorsement" is a violation of our copyright and an abuse of our name and reputation. We've asked them to stop. So far, they haven't even bothered to reply. So it's time to make this public.

Who will be America's first techPresident? It's time to grade the candidates on their understanding of the power of the internet to transform America's future. We start with the Democratic field...

We received an email today from Ole Tangen Jr., the English Editor of "The BOBs" telling us that techPresident has been nominated "as one of the best blogs in the world" out of more than 7,000 submitted. If you agree, go here to cast your votes for your favorites. Voting is open until November 15.

Here's something else that Hillary Clinton said at Yearly Kos, something that had nothing to do with lobbyists but was a similiar peek into her governing psyche. In her morning breakout session, Clinton warmed my little geek heart with her offhanded praise for the idea of electronic school records. It was a reminder that a true Tech President would see beyond a free and open Internet to a fleshed-out vision of how hard a wired government and nation could rock.

Welcome to our new group blog on how the presidential campaigns are using the web, and how the web is using them, TechPresident.com. This blog is an extension of Personal Democracy Forum, our online zine and annual conference on how technology is changing politics. Over there, we'll continue to cover all the ways the political arena is being reshaped by new tools and practices born on the web, while over here we're going to drill down on what the presidential campaigns are doing online, and vice-versa, how bottom-up initiatives launched by ordinary people, what we call voter-generated content, are going to impact the campaign.