Today we launched our new campaign Web site. Here’s a look at the features and content. Most importantly, we’d like invite you to contribute to it in meaningful ways.

David on the issuesWe’ve heard from lots of voters that they’re ready to back a candidate that is not associated with politics as usual, but they want to hear more about what he’ll do as our next Senator. Here’s what David has to say about Financial Regulation, Health Care, and many more important issues of the day. If there is an issue that you believe should be addressed, write to us at info@hoffmanforillinois.com.

See David on videoDavid has been storming the state and appearing on television, talking about the issues and letting people know where he stands. If you want to get to know more about David, you can see him talking on Chicago’s West Side about how he has fought gun violence, talking to Champaign County Democrats about corruption in Illinois, and an interview with Carol Marin on Chicago Tonight.

Join the conversation with TwitterLots of campaigns tweet, with one-way posts that link to press releases. We see that Twitter can be an essential source for organized discussion on the Web. We highlight three types of tweets right on our homepage– from the campaign, what people are saying in the #hoffman4IL hashtag, and what people are asking using @hoffman4IL. This allows anyone on Twitter to publish directly to our the bottom of every page on our Web site, including the homepage. If you don’t have a Twitter account or have any idea what it is, they have a great video and other helpful information on their site. Please note that we welcome all voices here, but we won’t tolerate hateful, violent, spam, or otherwise off-topic tweets. Don’t worry– if we remove your right to publish to our site, you’ve still got the whole rest of the World Wide Web to work with. We’re interested in hearing about the issues that matter to you and other Illinoisans. Please join us!

Flickr feedWe think we’ve integrated our Flickr account pretty nicely. We plan more ways to show support for David and engage photographers from all over Illinois in the future. We’re a member of Illinois-oriented photo groups on Flickr like Enjoy Illinois.

FacebookOne of the challenges for a campaign like ours is getting the word out about David. The more people know about him, the more they like him. So if you visit our site and are signed in to Facebook, you may see people you know who support the campaign. Join them on Facebook now.

In real lifeWe know that the world doesn’t begin and end on the Internet. Our Web site is just one tool for us in winning the election in February. We need your help– here on the Web, door-to-door, person-to-person. Please volunteer to help out in any way you can.

Contact usIf you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me at any time– danx@hoffmanforillinois.com.

Daniel X. O’NeilNew Media DirectorHoffman for IllinoisAnd a pretty comprehensive blog post covering a major new feature:

Adventures In Campaign Twittering

by Josh Kalven on October 29, 2009 – 10:24am

As some may have noticed, our campaign coverage has taken a back-seat to some other issues in the past month.  Expect it to ramp back up at the beginning of next week.In the meantime, those interested in the intersection of social media and political campaigns should check out a feature on U.S. Senate David Hoffman’s newly-redesigned website.  First some background: From a technological standpoint, one of the notable aspects of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was the large user community that sprung up around its website, my.barackobama.com.  Millions of users regularly flocked there because the campaign allowed them to actually publish blog posts and interact with each other on the site.  Now, in the wake of his victory, lower-level campaigns are wondering how they can build similar engagement online.  Most don’t have the resources to moderate the type of community built by Obama’s new media team.  Moreover, there just isn’t the same degree of interest in congressional or statewide races as you see during a presidential campaign.So what other options are out there?Many campaigns are actively using Twitter to keep followers up-to-speed on the latest developments (see Alexi Giannoulias, Cheryle Jackson, and Dan Hynes as prime examples on the Democratic side).  Now, with his new website, Hoffman is trying to up the ante by encouraging and exposing the interaction that happens on Twitter.Towards the bottom of his homepage, his campaign has devoted an entire horizontal section to 1) tweets from the @hoffman4IL account, 2) tweets about Hoffman using the #hoffman hashtag, and 3) replies to his account for other users.What this means is that anyone with a Twitter account can write a message (assuming it is within the realm of civil discourse) that appears on the Hoffman homepage.  They just have to reply to his account or use the #hoffman hashtag.  Already one user has asked about Hoffman’s position on the “responsibility to encourage and fund the arts.”  And they received a response within an hour.It’s a creative idea and something to keep an eye on.

Here’s some more coverage:

David Hoffman On the Series of TubesIL-SEN Thu Oct 29 2009

The Illinois techie-political blogosphere is abuzz about former Chicago Inspector General and current US Senate candidate David Hoffman’s new website redesign, which includes the ability for users to post directly to the candidate’s website through Twitter hash tags–it also looks pretty damn good. Head over and check it out.

That sort of interactivity, which the Obama campaign allowed with its user pages (“demmynerd.barackobama.com”) is going to be both a major innovation and a major challenge for campaigns from here on out. How do you allow for the public to interact and take some ownership of the site without risking losing control, getting off message, or getting high jacked? Looks like the Hoffman campaign is interested in testing those waters. Good for them.

Leading With His Chin

by: Daniel X. O’Neil | 9/24/2009

The National GOP is champing at the bit to make the 2010 U.S. Senate election in Illinois all about former Governor Rod Blagojevich. This morning, the Alexi Giannoulias campaign is serving them up a free punch, trotting out an endorsement from the union leadership that was Blago’s biggest supporter and whose president was completely enmeshed in the controversy over Rod’s attempt to sell this Senate seat. (He even appears on the infamous Blagojevich wiretap!)

You can bet Giannoulias will sit silently on the dais and smile broadly as he receives the endorsement of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) leadership, just as he did when the Blagojevich controversy first surfaced. He doesn’t rock the boat, and he’s no doubt excited about stepping up to the same trough that netted Blagojevich more than a million dollars in campaign cash.

It’s not the janitors, health care workers, security personnel and other hard-working SEIU members who are the problem. It’s not even the idea that the SEIU endorses candidates and puts its political power to use. We support the rank-and-file and their agenda for social justice. We take issue with the SEIU leadership– the same leadership who once stood next to and endorsed Blagojevich as his strongest champions– the same leader who was allegedly captured on a Federal wiretap having behind-the-scenes discussions with the Governor about his cynical and outrageous attempt to leverage this very Senate seat (the one he called “[bleeping] golden”) for his own personal and political advantage.

This kind of merry-go-round involving the same cozy insiders doing the same political dance is what’s wrong with Illinois politics. This is why David Hoffman– a true independent corruption-fighter with no ties to the scandals of the past– is running to be our senator. We deserve better. The SEIU members deserve better. David stands with them.

The National Republicans who are looking to take the President’s Senate seat next year are going to have a good morning with this endorsement.  But come February 2, the people of Illinois will have a choice between more politics as usual and turning the page.  As the Democratic nominee for this Senate seat, David Hoffman will take the corruption issue and Rod Blagojevich’s dirty dealings off the table.  Then, the Republicans will have to run on the issues – and that’s a contest they can’t win.

Bullet Group Web 2.0 Weblog, originally uploaded by juggernautco.

Created this simple, content-rich site to explain Web 2.0 technologies and show why they’re important to business.

• Met with client to determine needs, interest, skills, hardware, and software and researched leading e-commerce packages
• Site is completely based on the Yahoo! Merchant Solutions e-commerce platform,  making it easy and inexpensive for client to learn and maintain the system
• Highly recommended if you want a non-technical person to maintain the store after launch
• Set up all product categories and populated the store database with products from client’s FileMaker Pro
• Created custom, easy-to-follow documentation and trained the client onsite until they were comfortable with the system
• Used the built-in weblog tools from Yahoo! Merchant Solutions to create an artist  weblog for search engine optimization, including info on Fantasy figurine artist Amy Brown

• Site hosted on an inexpensive hosted account with PHP and MySQL installed
• WordPress weblog system installed
• User fills out a simple form, including their story and some identifying data
• System sends email to the admin with "name, position, city" as the subject line and the story in the body of the email
• Email also includes a link invoking the built-in WordPress QuickPost feature that is slightly modified so that the subject line becomes the title of the post and the story goes in the body
• All incoming submissions are sorted to a designated folder in Miscrosoft Outlook. The admin  reviews the submissions, clicks the link in the body of the ones she wants to publish, and clicks the PUBLISH button

An easy-to-use publishing workflow from unauthenticated users to email to a publishing system to the web. Nice.