Free petition tools have long lineage on the Internet; they're one of the evolutionary forebears of comprehensive online communications platforms like Salsa.

So it was only fitting when Change.org went looking to bring the boring standalone online petition out of the Stone Age that it looked to Salsa for some tools beyond a stone wheel and a mastodon-bone club.

Behold: the just-launched Change.org petition, the most powerful online petition tool on the web.

In addition to a friendly interface that Change.org built, it's got a hook to the Salsa back end for add-ons like district-matched message targeting, so that petition signers' messages go straight to the people that need to hear them.

This, of course, comes standard with all the usual petition tools too, plus login access for the petition creator to manage the petition drive. Take it for a spin here.

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President Obama this morning signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, correcting a Supreme Court ruling that essentially stripped victims of pay discrimination of any access to redress.

This victory for working people is also a victory for Moms Rising, one of the most nimble and effective organizations in the Salsa user community (anyone at last June's user conference probably remembers their presentations).  MomsRising has worked this legislation hard over the past two years, including one of the coolest twists on write-your-rep that we've seen:  when Sen. John McCain opined that underpaid women needed more education, MomsRising answered with a "send McCain your resume" action that inundated him with thousands of C.V.s. (Followed up with another supporting e-action for the day the resumes were delivered in person.)

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The DIA Salsa users at the Center for Constitutional Rights recently gave a great illustration of the power of smart targeting and messaging to balloon an online list ... paired, of course, with one smooth-handling e-advocacy tool. I caught CCR's Owen Henkel on the way out the door to a well-deserved break to find out just how they cooked up the pitch-perfect Send Bush a Copy of the Constitution online action. How did you come up with it? Were you looking specifically for something with virality, or did that follow the brilliance of the idea?

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I had the opportunity to "sit down with" -- read: e-mail -- Jim Gilliam of Brave New Films about the Fox Attacks campaign to hit the "news" channel where its advertisers are. The campaign has taken blogistan by storm, which Brave New Films seems to have down to a science. So what's the magic behind the curtain? Read on ...

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There's nothing like receiving a verdict of life or death while doing something embarrassingly trivial to force one out of the mundane. It was sometime around the sixth inning of a lackluster dog-days game between two dog teams at seemingly vacant RFK Stadium that my old comrade had a text message reporting that a man won't be put to death tomorrow. Such a tiny little message, and so many mountains moved to get it.

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From my posting yesterday until today so much has been going on! I almost don't know where to begin. More people are around, so the hallways of the civic center, and the streets of downtown Atlanta are quite full. The plenary sessions that begin and end each day have more people, although that's more true for the 6:30 pm sessions than the 8:30 am sessions. Could it be that folks are tired after a long night of carousing? Kip has been connecting with his communities and friends – the radical queer community, Indyvoter folk, his old friends from the Southeast, and friends (like Dave at Radical Designs) from the Bay Area. I was able to attend a session on the Israel/Palestine issue, but missed another one that sounded really good. A lot of my time is spent distributing the newsletter with information about online organizing that the tech folks put out. One strategy is to stand facing the crowd and pass it out. Unfortunately, this is the technique pioneered by political parties of the communist variety, and many folks instinctively recoiled from me. Could it be my breath?

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The US Social Forum kicked off yesterday with DIA literally in the house. The locals here call it the 'Civic Center' and it’s where an estimated 10,000 activists, organizers and revolutionary tourists will be spending part of the next few days. Among them yours truly and Kip Williams, on a mission to spread the gospel of online organizing as a powerful agent of change. Kip spent the morning helping with registration, a process that could have been a disaster. But it wasn’t! Key members of the Information & Communication Technology team, including Ana Willem, made sure that all went well. Here and there he still had a chance to make beautiful music ... Most of my day was spent sitting at the DIA table and talking to folks about technology. I’ve been able to meet some great folks: a Hawai'i native scholar and activist, AFSC folks who work on Africa issues, and one of April's old teachers the Friends World College. (Kathleen says hello!)
Charles holding up the Technology for Another World, the publication of the tech committee at the USSF.

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Below are some handy suggestions I pulled from the presentation Age of YouTube: Using Video Online to Reach the Masses which was presented at NTEN’s Technology 2007 Conference. The Serial Approach - Consider offering a series of short videos (2-3 minutes) that explain your issue, instead of making an expensive project video (or in addition to). See how I Love Mountains features short videos about the destructive practice of mountaintop removal on their homepage.

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