Congress 2006: Online Tools the Campaigns are Using

Nancy Scola had a great piece up at MyDD today detailing many of the ways Congressional candidates across the nation are using the internet in their campgaigns. Go read the whole thing, of course, but here are a few excerpts:

"Charlie Melancon, running for reelection in Louisiana's 3rd District, has a full-color downloadable walk card (.pdf format) that supporters can print and hand it out door-to-door in his district in the southeastern part of the state. Darcy Burner, a first-time candidate in Washington's 8th, lets volunteers add “Doorbelling for Darcy" events right to Outlook using vCal. Diane Farrell, in Connecticut's 4th, has a running tally of the cost of the Iraq war. ($297,121,600,300 as I write this.) Farrell has also begun a weekly podcast, now in its second week.


Running in Columbus, Ohio, Mary Jo Kilroy's website features an animated photo display, courtesy of the free Flickr photo-sharing community. Ken Lucas, running to reclaim his old seat in Kentucky's 4th, has a tool by which constituents can post their own personal endorsements like this one by “Bill from La Grange.” Lucas updates the time-tested Write a Letter to The Editor with contact information for the Bluegrass State's newspapers, as does Chris Murphy, running in Connecticut’s 5th. Murphy's site also features a straight-to-the-web biographical video, hosted by the free YouTube video distribution service."

There's a lot of good ideas here. What do you think of them? Any inspired ideas to add?