E-mail from candidates 

I'm on the lists to get e-mail from Hillary, Obama and Biden. I may get tired of hearing from the campaigns but it's interesting for now to see what they say and how they say it.

Lots of similarities among the three. All use HTML e-mail. All switch between addressing me "themselves" and having guest writers to serve as witnesses (in the evangelical sense).

This morning Biden's and Hillary's missives mentioned last night's debate. Biden's subject line was "Yes." Cool.

But Obama's message wasn't about the debate at all. Smart. His way of saying let's stick with the issues, maybe. It had the right effect on me. There's so much talk about the fundraising and the debates and the polls -- the mechanics of running for office -- which appeals to the politics junkie part of me, but has nothing to do with me as a citizen, or the state of the country and the world.

Can you imagine Lincoln talking much about his handbills, or even rehashing the marketing aspects of his famous debates with Douglas? Oration style was a big deal back then -- the papers and the barber shop crowd probably rehashed that part, post-debate, but I have to think the discussion must have focused more on their positions on the issues.

To be fair, all three also often include calls for action, like online petition signing, in their e-mails, so that's talking about issues. Funny how they all ape each other's techniques, though...

News about the application you're working in 

Neat how the news feed from Expression Engine's developer is included in the application's control panel.

Maybe this was the sort of thing Dave had in mind for the big frame in the MDI window of the OPML Editor.

Texting while driving 

Washington state will become the first state to ban reading or sending text messages while driving. The fine is $101.

The National Conference of State Legislatures keeps a database of state bills related to use of gadgets on the road.

Do you like the text font? 

I borrowed it from reference.com. I don't know which one you might be seeing, but the font-family is "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Sans", "Lucida Grande", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

Size is 13 on 18.