For news organizations, Presidential elections are about as big as it gets, so it's no wonder that many of them unveiled shiny tech tools to impress news consumers. But did widgets and effects make the news more interesting and understandable, or were they just gimmicks? Here's my quick review -- I hope you'll add yours.

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The other week, when John McCain got all dismissive about women's health during the presidential debate and kept waving his fingers around making sarcastic air quotes - or, as Jon Stewart correctly referred to them last night on The Daily Show, "dick fingers" - I thought that my head was going blow off. "Women" use "health" as an excuse to get abortions? This is something that the "extreme pro-abortion movement" uses as a ploy to promote abortion? "HEALTH"?

Relative to examinations of African American and Latino voters, Asian Americans have been overlooked. However, given that both Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have ties to Asian communities and the increasing influence of the Asian American vote, more attention is being paid. Christopher Beam in Slate examines the history of invisibility, some of the new investigations and points to the likely increased influence of Asian American voters in the future:

By November 4, it's estimated that nearly one-third of the American electorate will have cast their votes, between mail-in absentee balloting and states that allow early voting in person, according to the Pew Center on the States. However, early reports cast doubt

In a conference call with bloggers this evening, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was "taken aback" by Sen. John McCain's endorsement of her proposal to create a government agency to buy up and refinance mortgages in foreclosure during last night's presidential debate with Sen. Barack Obama.

Okay, I have to be honest. I went in depth to research John McCain's environmental policy and was quickly thwarted by his website, which played a commercial over and over again until I wanted to throw my computer against a wall. I was swayed only by the fact that I need to keep the computer intact in order to get a tax credit.

Race continues to be a factor in the presidential campaign this year and in recent weeks has been raised as an issue in ways that have led observers to analyze the issue through historical lenses. Nicholas Kristof, in an Op-Ed in the New York Times noted that there was a "push to 'otherize' Obama." Kristof describes some of the forms this otherization is taking:

In every presidential election year, some swing states stay the same, but new ones seem to crop up, depending on how the whole electoral map plays out. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are always reliably in the mix. This year there are others, including New Mexico, Nevada and very possibly Virginia.

I love CNN's Campbell Brown. I think she is smart, agressive, not afraid to ask probing questions and I have followed her career for years. But I became even more enthralled with her when last night she basically tore a new one in the American public butt about racism.

Of all the differences between the two major party tickets for the US presidency, one of the most profound may be their disagreement on the limits on the authority that the Constitution grants to the Vice President. That difference emerged in bold relief during last week's vice-presidential debate when Gov. Sarah Palin said:

 On a Listserv that I subscribe to a member discussed the lack of musical artists who were publicly discussing the upcoming election. A debate ensued about whether people were actually interested in what their favorite artist had to say. After all, does their opinion really matter?