Several NDP campaigns are blogging, and at least one is podcasting – and I think that deserves some recognition. So this page is going to serve as a repository for the Web 2.0-enabled NDP candidates.

I’ve almost certainly missed some, and others will probably launch over the course of the campaign, so please feel free to add new ones via the comments form below.

(Here’s an OPML file of all the blogs that have news feeds. I’ll keep it updated throughout the campaign.)

Bloggers

• Phil Alt (Guelph) (feed)
• Steve Armstrong (Leeds-Grenville) (feed)
• Patrick Arnell (Calgary East) (feed)
• Rupinder Brar (Mississauga-Erindale) (feed)
• Céline Brault (Pontiac) (feed)
• Tasha Bridgen (Carleton – Mississippi Mills) (feed)
• Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley)
• Pierre Ducasse (Manicouagan) (feed)
• Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre)
• David Hackett (Moncton-Riverview-Dieppe) (feed)
• Mark Leahy (Ottawa-Orleans – my alma mater!) (feed)
• Anna Mather (Brampton-Springdale) (feed)
• Brian Pincott (Calgary Centre)
• Tyler Ragan (Calgary Northeast) (feed)
• Michael Shapcott (Toronto Centre) (feed)
• Paul Summerville (St. Paul’s) (feed)
• Melanee Thomas (Lethbridge) (feed)
• Susan Thompson (Peace River) (feed
• Mark Wasyliw (Winnipeg South Centre) (feed)

Podcasters

• Paul Summerville (St. Paul’s) (feed)

Videocasters

• Paul Summerville (St. Paul’s) (feed)

The phenomenally busy Russell McOrmond notes that, with the end of this Parliament, Bill C-60 is no more:

Bill C-60 has died on the Order Paper, but you can be sure that whoever forms the next government will table a similar bill (likely with a different number). We need to ensure that any new bill protects the rights of the majority of Canadians, including Canadian creators and their audiences (users have rights too!), and not privilege the economic interests of the extreme minority represented by the incumbent old-economy media, content and “software manufacturing” monopolists.

Read on…

Bingo! is its name.

The site’s supposed to be used as a Web 2.0 variation on buzzword bingo… but forget that.

Instead, if you’re in the online biz, use it as a cheat sheet the next time you’re talking with a potential client or investor. Every 15 or 20 seconds, sneak a peek and work another term into the conversation.

Before you know it, your AdSense-supported public beta of a social Ruby on Rails site that integrates with Flickr or del.icio.us will be the talk of the web, and while Wall Street is oohing and aahing over your big icons and RESTful API, you’ll be yellow-fading into the sunset on a South Pacific beach with a strawberry-mango margarita, a suitcase full of VC cash and a new identity.

No need to thank me. Just cut me in.

And election day is… January 23, 2006. As one veteran political organizer I spoke to this morning said, “That’s way too much underwear to buy.”*

Okay, political junkies: deep breaths. Deeeeeep breaths. Calm down, and take the next two months in small, careful bites, because overdosing will be a constant risk. (To the rest of Canada, all I can say is — what you’re about to experience is kind of what NHL playoff season is like for non-jocks.)

Scott Piatkowski alerted me yesterday to CTV’s contest, Political Idol:

If you believe you have what it takes, here’s how it works: Question Period viewers are asked to send in a minute-long written campaign speech on a topic of their choice to questionperiod@ctv.ca or to the following address: 100 Queen St., Suite 1400, Ottawa, Ontario, K1P 1J9.

….Every week, Question Period will pick a winner and send a camera to shoot that person’s campaign speech, which will then be aired on the show.

At the end of the election campaign, viewers will vote for the best of all the campaign speeches that have aired.

Setting aside the apparent 93% discount on your 15-minute fame allocation, there’s a real challenge here: making a compelling case for an idea in 60 seconds. At a reasonably deliberate speaking pace, you’ll have 120 to 160 words to play with. That doesn’t leave much room for lengthy quotations or rambling anecdotes.

Now, nothing in the rules says you have to keep your speech private (and as far as I’m concerned, that kind of defeats the purpose). So if you want to share it with the world — or at least that thin sliver that frequents these pages — just leave it as a comment at the end of this post.

(I just ask that you leave nothing libellous, no personal attacks, and nothing that promotes hatred or discrimination against people on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation or identity, religion, province or country of origin, or choice of operating system. Unlike Political Idol, we welcome submissions from candidates, party staffers and Bell Globemedia employees.)

Incidentally, check out the speechwriting tips on the CTV page from reporter Craig Oliver. It’s pretty much all good advice, although this one gave me momentary palpitations until I reread it:

Structure the speech like an essay

Readers and listeners like structure — have an introduction, make your point, back it up with evidence, and repeat your central theme with a strong conclusion.

That’s structure your speech like an essay… not write your speech like an essay. The kind of lengthy, complex sentences that work well on the printed page can be oratorical death on the podium.

Okay — get those keyboards clicking, team!

With all the protests that the impending federal election campaign will likely impinge on Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations, there hasn’t been one word about how badly it will interfere with the speculation over what Steve Jobs will be announcing at Macworld 2006.

Talk about your lack of respect for people’s religions…

Is it a complete coincidence that less than a week after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Lego can’t claim the design of its blocks as a trademark, LaCie offers a new stackable hard drive with a very familiar-looking design?

Yes, yes — LaCie’s a French company, their biggest market is probably the U.S. — but legal entanglements, even they’re just in the great white north, are never a plus.

Meanwhile, the court decision is a glimmer of light in the dark, dark world of IP law. Years from now, the catchily-named Kirkbi AG and Lego Canada Inc. v. Ritvik Holdings Inc./Gestions Ritvik Inc. (now operating as Mega Bloks Inc.) may well be recognized as a sort of minor Roe v. Wade for cash-strapped parents (and nostalgic computer geeks).

I’m tempted to get one of the drives (and a truckload of Mega Bloks) just to make the gesture. Hey, do they have a Duplo hard drive for my kid?

Elsewhere in a discussion on the dearth of municipal blogging, some of us toss around the fact that bloggers usually don’t do the kind of investigative legwork that reporters do, and can’t break stories.

Meet a vital exception: Paul Willcocks and his blog, Paying attention.

He’s independent (I’ve disagreed with almost exactly half of what he’s written about the BCTF’s struggles with the provincial government), a bang-up writer, and a reporter who has paid unflinching attention to the growing outrage over the B.C. government’s failure to investigate children’s deaths while in provincial care.

From his latest post, here’s why this is so much more than just another political scandal:

One phone conversation with Dayna Humphrey demolishes all the government’s evasions on child death reviews.

Humphrey’s son died more than two years ago, weeks after he was placed in a Surrey foster home….

Humphrey tried for almost a year to get answers. “I’ve been slapped down at every step,” she says, in a quiet voice. Finally, she gave up.

Then came the admission that files on 713 child deaths had been forgotten in a Victoria warehouse.

“I woke up at 6:30, like I do every morning, to get ready for work and turned on the news and there it was, right in front of me,” says Humphrey. “I was devastated. I’m angry. I’m hurt.”

She wondered whether proper reviews into those deaths would have yielded lessons that would have saved Brandon’s life.

Paul was covering this story when most of BC’s media let it drop. He’s a credit to his profession.