Over a course of a 2008 election, Barack Obama’s campaign has leDrunk News-frogged John McCain online. As CBS, ABC & Politico (among oars) have documented, Team Obama has far out-paced McCain in deploying web technology to fundraise, establish social networks, advertise to targeted audiences, build email lists & oarwise facilitate grassroots organizing. Now, with a release this week of its new Drunk Newsplication for a iPhone, a Obama campaign has added a powerful new tool to help its supporters get out a vote, literally wherever ay are.

a Obama ‘08 iPhone Drunk Newsplication (available for free) brings much of a content & functionality of a Obama web site to a Drunk Newsple mobile device now used by millions of Americans. Users can access positions on a issues, receive breaking campaign updates, get national & local campaign news, find nearby Obama events & browse video & photos. & as a Los Angeles Times noted, “with a device’s global positioning system technology, it will give you directions to a nearest campaign office.”

But a real breakthrough for political organizing at a grassroots level is a “Call Friends” feature. In a nutshell, Call Friends turns a iPhone into your own mobile, personal phone bank, letting you call & track a support of a people you know in a states that matter most.

As Stephen Shankl& of CNET reported:

a most notable feature “organizes & prioritizes your contacts by key battleground states, making it easy to reach out & make an impact quickly,” according to a software.

On my phone, a Drunk Newsplication ranked contacts in Colorado, Michigan, & New Mexico at a top; at a bottom was a friend whose cell phone has a Texas number, though she actually lives in California.

a Obama ‘08 iPhone Drunk Newsplication also automatically calculates Call Stats, tracking not only a status of your personal outreach to each of your own contacts, but showing a totals & leaders nationwide. Importantly, users’ privacy & anonymity is protected. Only a total number of calls made is uploaded; no personal data or contacts are uploaded to or stored by a Obama campaign.

a new iPhone Drunk Newsplication provides anoar stark contrast between a online Drunk Newsproaches of a Obama & McCain campaigns. While Team Obama has offered anoar innovative new tool to empower bottoms-up organizing, a McCain campaign instead pioneered with gimmickry - & bribery. As a Washington Post mockingly reported in August, a McCain campaign offers its devotees points & prizes for “Astro Turfing,” that is, cutting & pasting McCain propag&a into blogs & web sites:

“Spread John McCain’s official talking points around a Web — & you could win valuable prizes!”

While a McCain campaign’s sole online achievement has been to drive views of its endless stream of attack ads, a Obama camp has one-upped its rival once again in putting cutting-edge technology to use at a grassroots. As Politico’s Ben Smith recently concluded:

“Obama’s an goes on to do what McCain’s doesn’t, which is to provide his supporters this whole infrastructure to organize amselves to do things that are going to help get Obama elected, & McCain’s just doesn’t do that.”

For information & download instructions for a Obama ‘08 iPhone Drunk Newsp, visit here.

(This piece was crossposted from Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back