Jason Clarke

Eager to capitalize on recent negative press surrounding her opponent Tom Allen’s association with far-left activist group MoveOn.org, Senator Susan Collins’ re-election team launched an early version of the campaign’s official website this week.

SusanCollins.com features videos, photo galleries, and blog. On Collins’ site, the freshly launched blog features a post written by the Senator herself regarding her questioning of Army General David Petraeus.

Senator Collins’ campaign site bears some striking differences from that of her opponent, Congressman Tom Allen. While Allen occasionally blogs at DailyKos and Maine-based blog TurnMaineBlue, his site does not have any kind of blog of its own. Another notable difference is that while Allen’s site focuses heavily on his opposition to the war in Iraq (he even devotes a top-level navigation item to the issue, despite having a separate section on his positions) with three front page items on the war, Collins site instead more heavily focuses on her connection to Maine, via a series of rotating images and news items, while just a corner of the front page is devoted to a video detailing her position on Iraq.

Beyond the clam bakes and parade walks over the next year, the online space will be a critically important battleground in this race. This week, the Collins campaign got off to a great start.

I thought I was a bit off when I launched a redesign of my TV blog, Network Landscape, with not 3 but 4! columns. Today though, I stumbled across the Hartford Courant’s website, courant.com, which features 5 columns above the fold! I’m still not sure how I feel about that, at least not until everyone on earth has a 24″ monitor like the one my brother just got. Then, I’m in favor of 6, or possibly even 7 columns.

Reminds me a bit of the legendary battle brewing among men’s razor makers, who are releasing more and more blades (3 blades! 4 blades!) in a seemingly never-ending effort to outdo each other.

Via Glenn, we learn that Tennessee Governor Phil Bresden is now blogging at his state’s official website, Tennessee.gov/governor. (Too bad they didn’t call it tennesse.gov/ernor, right?).

A couple of thoughts on this:

* Did Bill Hobbs get Gov. Bresden blogging? Or was it his state’s larger (and surprisingly larger) blogging community that got him started?

* Dang, the Gov (and the state) has a really, really nice site design/layout going on! World’s better than most other official Governor’s web sites, Bresden’s appears to be easy to use as well as attractive, modern, and friendly. It doesn’t validate- got to add “alt” tags to your images, team! - but it’s got email updates, some nice accessability features (in-context font sizing, multiple links to the same pages, intelligent navigation, etc.), and I like it.

Now, they need to update the rest of the Tennessee.gov site to match.

Stopdesign- one of the two original inspirations for my argous transition into standards-compliant design practices- has scrapped their world-famous design in favor of a clear, leaner, whiter look.

Bowman’s new look is shocking, especially for him. While it may seem confusing for one of the early inventers of the rich, stylized capabilities of CSS to be “backtracking” towards a simplified design, he offers up some interesting behind-the-scenes that led to his decision.