Longtime PdF readers may remember that for a while we had a page on the site that showed which Members of Congress were most being talked about in the blogosphere, a ranking system that was built for us by Aaron Swartz, using incoming links to their official congressional web sites as one metric, and using blog posts referencing their names as a second metric. We called it "HotPols," but ultimately we took it down because we weren't happy with either metric: too many posts were being counted that referred to people with the same name as a Member (take Adam Smith as once obvious example) and not enough bloggers were bothering to link to the Members' web pages for that metric to show anything meaningful. Well, I'm pleased to say that now we've got a much better window into who in Congress is driving attention online, thanks to the great folks at OpenCongress.

We just received this letter from Benjamin Katz, founder of CompleteCampaigns.com, responding to our posting of a lengthy letter from Aristotle about our Consumer Guide to Software-as-a-Service. (We will reporting the results of our updated survey shortly.)

Dear Mr. Phillips,

We recently received an email from the general counsel of Aristotle, one of the software-as-a-service companies featured in our online guide, complaining about our efforts, that arrived just as we sent out an email to our subscribers asking them to help update the survey data in the guide. We are reprinting his letter below, followed by our response. Feel free to join in the conversation in the comments thread.

Earlier this year, we examined eighteen important companies that focus on providing software-as-a-service packages to political clients, and launched our premium section, the Consumer Guide to Software-as-a-Service Providers. A few months later, after some major changes in the software-as-a-service landscape -- especially the merging of Convio and GetActive -- we're updating our reviews and ratings.

Karen Matheson and Eve Fox of M&R Strategic Services ask, "Are you one of the many email fundraisers, organizers, advocates or marketers who view their online statistics with a sigh? Do you fantasize about sky-high open, click-through, and response rates... a list with zero unsubscribes?"

If you fit the bill and need to figure out how to get your open rates up and your op-outs down, you should check out Matheson and Fox's new report titled "Do Email Silences Matter?" The crux of the report is that "on-again, off-again conversations" -- inconsistent email campaigns with long gaps in communication -- cause supporters to lose interest in campaigns.

Yes, it's true, the site does look a bit different! (Hey, all you RSS subscribers, come take a look!)

A big thanks to everyone who worked on the site redesign: Josh Levy, our associate editor, who has sweated every tweak; Katherine Dillon and Kate Thompson of the design firm DillonThompson, who gave us our template; and Adam Mordecai, Aaron Welch, Neil Drumm and the other good folks at Advomatic who got under the hood and made it work.

Our goal with this design was to make the most dynamic part of the site, the PDF blog, more visible, and to add a new section of premium content focused on company reviews. While we were at it, we cleaned up the top navigation bar, which was getting a bit busy, and added a right rail series of "bits" that will allow us to highlight various standing features of the site, including the premium section, books we like, and the PDF Newswire, which features feeds from a bunch of other great political technology blogs. You'll also be seeing more about the 2007 PDF conference, starting with a big announcement next week.

Two Goliaths in the software-as-a-service industry have announced they'll become one Goliath: Convio is buying GetActive.

Convio, which is more focused on fundraising, has acquired GetActive, which is more geared toward online advocacy. While this obviously means they'll be able to combine strengths and should be able to reach out to even more clients, we'll have to wait until the dust settles to see what this means for the industry at large. So far, a few players have weighed in with their comments.

Over at EchoDitto, Michael Silberman noted two outcomes of the deal:

1. Twenty-five percent of the fully integrated eCRM/CMS market just disappeared, reducing options to three very different providers: Convio, Blue State Digital, and Kintera (not counting open-source solutions and a myriad of other tools of course)

2. This is likely to have a pretty dramatic impact on the nonprofit and social change technology space. Will this encourage more healthy competition from the other vendors and providers? (I hope so.) Or will Convio innovate less due to their massive new market share and potential perceived lack of competition? (I hope not.)

If what Silberman says is true, the political technology industry is looking a lot like other industries; it's consolidated into only three or four large companies and a smattering of smaller companies. That's usually not good for choice, and it may not bode well for data integration either.

Jerome Armstrong started a pretty interesting thread over on MyDD by asking "What emerging technology or web-based practice do you think will have the biggest impact in 2008?" Among the answers coming in from participants (many of whom are at the beating heart of the netroots phenomenon):

-OpenID (coming soon at netroots.com, Jerome notes)

-Video blogging where commentary can be added into news clips (I think Viddler may be a useful tool in that regard, by making it possible to tag specific times on a video)

-BlogTalkRadio

-local blogs (helped by platforms like Soapblox).

-cellphones

-Skype

-free municipal Wifi

-widgets

Matt Stoller responds by arguing that technology by itself doesn't matter; what does is the "interaction of technology and politics." He adds, "The innovation comes from the unification of the revolutionary technology with a revolutionary idea about how citizens should relate to politics. TV wasn't just a revolutionary model for communications, it was a statement that communication should be exceptionally powerful and top-down in nature."

A few weeks ago we wrote about the Integration Proclamation, an effort by leaders in the progressive political tech industry to pinpoint technology integration and interoperability as a key issue in 2007; the site is now officially live.

Ninety-five progressive techies have signed the proclamation, which urges

progressive funders, vendors and technologists to support a collaborative effort dedicated to ensuring that our tools integrate effectively, so that we can move forward with innovative, powerful platforms that will help us win.

We've recently published a couple of pieces, one by Aristotle COO Peter Kelly and one by Media Mezcla President Ben Schaffer, that illustrate the need for interoperability and open standards among technology vendors; clients need the ability to own their data and take it with them if they use multiple vendors. While the Integration Proclamation is geared toward the same goal, what's notable is its political bent. Both of the above pieces take a distinctly non-partisan approach to the issue, hoping to positively affect an industry that serves all parts of the political spectrum.