The Mike Huckabee exploratory committee launched a new web site. It is a big improvement over the previous iteration that I blogged about when announced he was running for president. Some of the improvements in the sight include a title (I Like Mike), campaign blog, video, links to social networking sites Huckabee groups, refer a friend link and email sign-up for more information. My main criticism of the site would be the lack of meta tags, circa 1999 table based design and failure to use alt tags. Adding meta tags, using appropriate alt tags on header images and using semantic markup on the page would really help increase the sites’ SEO.

Texas Republican Congressman, Lamar Smith, has introduced a bill that will require ISPs to record all users surfing activity, IM conversations and email traffic indefinitely. Smith cites the increasing sophistication of cyber-crimes and cyber-terrorists as the motivation for the bill. Unfortunately, I don’t think we can trust the government with access to this kind of information.

I just recently started posting on politics, particularly focusing on politicians use of online media to promote themselves/their causes. For some of my regular readers (all two of you) my interest in politics will come as a shock, but I guess I am trying to integrate (converge) my interests in online interactive media and politics.

I’ve been interested in politics and social studies since I was in high school. I was political science major in college (along with another major in mass communications). I used to tell people that I majored in journalism to make a living (I didn’t know how little some journalists made at that time) and in political science so I would know what I was talking about. I was even a member of College Republicans for about one semester– soon after that I renounced any affiliation with a political party and led the school newspaper staff in poking holes in the student power structure.

I would say that I have dual political highlights so far in my life. In 1999 at a college I worked for hosted President Bill Clinton, three or four cabinet members and the CEO of FedEx and USA Truck and the COO of UPS for a Transportation Education summit. I was allowed to set-up the video, sound and computer systems needed for the event, design the presentation our college president used, videotape and provide support during the event. I had a great time working with the White House staff and the Secret Service.

My second highlight came during the 2000 elections in November 2000 as I worked for the web site of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. I was the producer working the overnight shift for election night and my job was to come in at 5 p.m. and leave when the winners were announced and the losers conceded. The next morning at 5 a.m., I was still working when my relief came in. When many other sights had given the election to Gore or Bush that night I held fast and never posted a winner. About a month later I was working breaking news during the day when I got to post Bush as the eventual President-elect.

While a lot of my internet-politics post will focus on the 2008 presidential race, I found Arkansas Representative, Steve Harrelson’s blogger blog Under the Dome last night. He serves as the Arkansas House of Representatives Majority Leader and posts to his blog multiple times throughout the day from on the floor of the house. His posts primarily consist of summary of bills that the legislature is considering, his opinion on those bills with some quotes from some other members of the legislature thrown in for good measure and every once in a while some live-blogging from the house committees that he serves on.

I’m really proud that a member of Arkansas’ legislature is doing this. I wonder how many other state legislatures (or even Congressmen) have blogs they post to from the floor when their body is in session? I’m thinking that it can’t be too many. This blog is a great example of what open government should be.

The Internet is playing an increasingly important role in help citizens shape their political reviews. The Pew Internet and the American Life 2006 Elections Online (pdf) released last month presents a revealing look at how Americans use the Internet with relations to politics. The findings in this report include

• 15 percent of Americans used the Internet as their primary source of information for political news (up from 7 percent in 2004).
• 31 percent of Americans used the Internet to get some form of political news.
• 23% of Internet Election news users became campaign activists posting their own political commentary, forwarding someone else’s commentary, creating political audio or videos or forwarding political audio or videos.
• Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to look for political information online. Democrats cite newspapers and broadcast news operations like CBS, NBC and CNN as their news sources and Republicans favor Fox News and talk radio.

Throughout the 2008 election cycle I plan on analyzing election sites by looking at the technology used, design standards and search engine optimization. Hopefully, we can some interesting information and maybe where and why certain politicians succeed online and others fail.

Arkansas’s former governor, Mike Huckabee, announced yesterday morning on Meet the Press that he was running for the Republican nomination for president for the 2008 election. As I was watching him duck and weave Tim Russert’s question on my DVR late Sunday morning (about 10:45 a.m.), I started looking for his website announcing his intentions. Of course, he would have one up already, I thought, Hilary and Barak announced their candidacy on their website. So, I google Mike Huckabee thinking this should be easy (remembering that his campaign can’t control Google results).

• First link, Arkansas Governor’s website featuring Arkansas’ new democratic governor Mike Beebe.
• Second link, Wikipedia’s Mike Huckabee entry.
• Third link, a blog promoting Mike Huckabee’s candidacy telling everyone that he was right two years ago that Huckabee was going to run.
• Fourth link, MikeHuckabee.com: website trashing Huckabee and pointing all of the negative rumors that float about him.
• Fifth link, finally, Huckabee’s PAC Hope For America that has nothing on it. Unfortunately, It’s just a blank blue page. Apparently, taken down for the announcement. When I checked the list again on Monday morning this site is now his exploratory committee’s site and is also pointed at by his exploratory committee’s url ExploreHuckabee.com

If you’ve read this and you’re working for Huckabee, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email (lbyrd@mediabyrd.com) for some free private pointers. I just can’t have a presidential candidate from my home state looking out of touch, online.