Gary Hart, the former senator from Colorado who is considering running for President, has a weblog, and appears to be doing the posting himself. He also is using MeetUp, which is a pretty nifty web service that makes it easy for people to organize meetings for their candidates.
Here's how MeetUp works: first you sign up for MeetUp and provide your location and other basic information like your E-mail address so you can be contacted. Then when visit a site like Gary Hart's, which has a MeetUp button, you can click on the button and it brings you to a page where you can see when the next gathering of Hart supporters is in your area.
Howard Dean, governor of Vermont and Democratic presidential candidate is using them too. Two things that I like about Hart's weblog is that he links to a bunch of political commentary weblogs, such as Instapundit, and the fact that he has comments enabled.
Tools like MeetUp and weblogs are going to be used increasingly by national political candidates. They are a cheap and very effective way to stimulate grass-roots support, but the most effective use is going to be from candidates who can post their own material. Al Gore had a background in journalism. I wonder how he could have made use of weblogs in his presidential bid. Especially since it was such a close race.
Tom Mighell of Inter Alia points to the Law.com article on the benefits of using technology in the courtroom. Of course, I think that, properly used, technology can expedite the trial process, and enrich the experiences of the jurors (the article suggests that jurors expect its use at trial). Improperly used, it can be a disaster. Nevertheless, I suspect that more courts will start to allow, or even encourage, the use of technology at trial.
7:17:15 PM
