Digital Media

For those of you who can't seem to digest enough political news, Tom Merritt offers up an "Insider Secrets" video that you'll want to gobble up with a fork and knife. (Check it out below.) Whether you're curious about how the candidates are polling or how much money they've raised, Merritt has dug deep to provide a handful of off-the-beaten-path election Web sites to round out your political diet.

I have yet to dig deeply into any of these sites, but now I know what my weekend homework is looking like. Sunday afternoon, I'll be boarding a plane to Denver for the week-long Democratic National Convention. As a newbie to the national political scene, it'd be a complete understatement to say I'm excited. But as someone who has attended plenty of big-scale conferences and media events, a small knot begins to form in my gut as I picture the crowds, chaos, and logistical juggling that will define the next week.

My primary role at the DNC (and also at the RNC the following week in St. Paul, Minn.) is to help launch Katie Couric's live Webcast airing on CBSNews.com immediately following her traditional TV broadcast from 10 to 11 p.m. EDT. This step to increase her online presence is so necessary for her and the rest of the CBS News team to be taking, and I'm excited to witness the kind of dialogue that can happen when the show is not limited to "TV time" or commercial breaks. Part of the Webcast will also include addressing viewer comments and questions about the convention itself, the candidates and the issues, so please submit your queries!

Besides helping out on the production end for CBSNews.com, I plan on blogging the entire experience for CNET News and borrowing a CBS cameraman when I can to capture some of the experience on video. There's no shortage of great technology stories to be mined at the conventions, and I look forward to bringing them to light. Haven't you always been curious who makes up Sen. Barack Obama's tech team and how they decide on exactly what he should be twittering? Or what about the increasingly large presence from major tech companies like Google and YouTube?

On second thought, the crowds, chaos, and logistical juggling is starting to sound more and more exciting.