(via JD) Interesting AP article on the use of Weblogs in the campaigns.

Web journals like Joshua Marshall’s have become indispensable this campaign season: They mobilize supporters, question traditional media coverage and feed the insatiable appetites of political junkies. A powerful new networking tool for the politically plugged-in and hangers-on, the constant online chatter broadens campaign discourse and accelerates the news cycle. Such journals, known as blogs, may not be doing much to sway undecided voters, but analysts say they strongly impact the media, campaign consultants and activists.

I’ve been reading Dean’s Blog for America from the early days, and as the race has evolved, I’be been looking at the Edwards and Kerry Weblogs which have really been picking up steam lately. There’s no doubt that they are changing the landscape, though after Dean’s misstep last weekend, the blog bubble has deflated a bit. I think it becomes really difficult for those of us who are immersed in this technology to find some perspecive. Reality is really skewed when you have over 100 Weblogs in your aggregator…
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In what is probably a major development in the RSS field, Yahoo has launched an RSS tool for it’s myYahoo pages. Pretty cool. It offers a couple of viewing options such as headline only or short summary, which Manila doesn’t seem to be able to offer. I know there has been some discussion lately about the pros and cons of full posts in and aggregator vs. just a short snippet, and I’m still not sure what side of that fence I’m on. I know that I rarely if ever visit someone’s site if I can read their full posts in the aggregator. In fact, about the only site that I do visit regularly, Josh Marshall, I do so because I don’t get his full feeds. Now there is really no reason for me to visit the site since the only thing that changes aside from the posts are the ads. (Maybe that’s why I only get the snippets…)

Anyway, at the very least this will give RSS a boost. The Yahoo FAQ on RSS is worth checking out too.
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