If you love voice over the Internet and activist tools than you are going to LOVE CauseCaller.com - a free and easy way to empower supporters to call representatives on behalf of a cause.

Like CitizenSpeak, CauseCaller users create an account, and a campaign that generates a URL specific to their cause. At this page, supporters are asked to enter their own numbers where upon the application immediately calls them and then places the call through to the targeted representative.

Supporters are able to speak to reps with a script right in front of them. Pretty darn ingenious.

The only downfall is that as far as I can tell, users aren’t able to capture names and phone numbers of supporters to build their lists. Maybe that will be available in a subsequent version.

In any event, CauseCaller makes for a great supplemental tool to CitizenSpeak. Now your supporters can choose to call or email targeted reps. What could be better?

Democracy is on the move!

Hi Everyone - for those of you who don’t know, I also run RingTones08.com - a free site for posting and sharing ringtones about the 2008 election. Given the huge youth voter turnout, ringtones are poised to be the bumper stickers of 2008.

Today we announced the new RingTones08 site. Please check her out. She’s a beauty at RingTone08.com

To learn more about the site, the logic behind it, and it’s origin story, please go to RINexus.com

Check out what NBC’s political director said on last Sunday’s Meet the Press regarding superdelegates (the potential - missing chads of 08):

“(T)here’s going to be a weird role the Internet will play here. (People) will get their hands on … the superdelegate list. And you watch, there will be people in the DNC that have never gotten e-mail campaigns before against them, and they will get deluged… (Y)ou will start seeing crazy campaigns being organized by supporters of both Clinton and Obama that will just bombard these DNC members. And I think they’re going to get overwhelmed, and a lot of them are going to be, like Donna Brazile, “Stop. I don’t want to be a part of this.”

If you’re feeling a little crazy about making your vote count, feel free to use CitizenSpeak to let superdelegates know how you feel.

Happy Voting!

We’re proud to announce RingTones08.com - the first site where people can create and share ringtones about the 2008 election. Ringtones can reflect any political persuasion and be about candidates, issues, “get out the vote”… Anything you desire as long as it in some remote way references the big 08. So, have some fun this summer. Flip a burger, down a beer and roll your own ringtone at RingTones08.com.

BTW: RingTones08.com is a joint Green Machine PR and Mobile Active production. So how is RingTones08 related to CitizenSpeak? Through me. In addition to being your humble CitizenSpeak servant, I’m also a partner at Green Machine PR. We specialize in growing clean-tech and hi-tech companies and on occasion launch new websites simply for the hell of it.

Hey Everyone: Check out the new CitizenSpeak case study. It’s about a CitizenSpeak campaign waged by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles against the now infamous anti-immigration legislation HR4437. Some young staffers posted a link to the CitizenSpeak campaign on their MySpace pages and created a new wave of young supporters for the organizaiton. The case study is posted above under case studies (where else?)

If you’ve ever thought about going to a technology conference for nonprofits, this is the conference that you shouldn’t miss. It’s called the National Technology Conference and it’s organized by NTEN.org (don’t know what the acronym stands.) I totally recommend going if you can muster up the airfare. NTEN has always been a great membership organization for IT professionals in the nonprofit sector. Now it’s run by Katrin Verclas who gets better than anyone I know how to help nonprofits talk to and learn from one another’s IT experiences. I’ll be speaking at a panel on social networking and e-advocacy on April 4. I’ll also be accepting the $10K Pizzigati award for George Hotelling for his CitizenSpeak open source development work. If you’re around, please look me up. It would be great to meet you and hear about your campaigns.

Thanks, Jo

Thanks to Erica Sargrans for her great article, “The new armies of the ‘net - Can pop technology ramp up public interest in politics?” It’s an extremely well researched article that provides a great overview of the past, present and future of net politics. We’re thrilled that CitizenSpeak is part of it. To read this article, please visit http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=32823&page=1

And thanks to Frank Mullin for taking a great picture of me, quite a coup since I am not what you’d call photogenic.

Check out this great blog post by Micah Sifry, co-founder of Personal Democracy Forum, to find out how to inform local political bloggers about your causes: http://www.personaldemocracy.com/node/1140
Enjoy!

This week’s WSJ onlne column, “Recommended Reading” inludes a selection of resources, Web sites, books and online tools for leveraging technology for social change. CitizenSpeak is the second item on the list. Whoo hoo!!!! Who knew that the Wall Street Journal cared about social change?

The Providence Business News also ran an article on CitizenSpeak in this week’s edition. Thanks Natalie Myers for writing such a great article!

To see the entire WSJ article and other recommended tools, please go to http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB116370734687625444-lMyQjAxMDE2NjIzNzcyMDc3Wj.html

Mobile Active, a global network of organizations and individuals using mobile phones for activism and civic engagement, announced today the release of the MobileActive Strategy Guide - the first in a series investigating the use of mobiles in civil society. The guide is designed to equip organizations around the world with the know-how to deploy effective mobile campaigns for a variety of types of activism and advocacy. Other guides in the series will focus on issue advocacy, fundraising, humanitarian and disaster relief, and mobile organizing. You can download this strategy and pass it on to a friend at www.mobileactive.org.