Karl Dean has landed!

Mayoral candidate Karl Dean has launched a Web site for his campaign. I've mentioned more than once that Dean was the lone major candidate lacking a presence on the Internet, and that is no longer the case.

I've taken a short glance, and in my opinion this is a useful and aesthetically sound site. It appears to have been reasonably well-organized and contains timely, relevant information, including brief information about Dean's platform, a short bio, a snazzy photo gallery, recent mayoral news from outside sources (a nice touch) and a YouTube video embedded on the front page of Dean's campaign announcement from December.

Dean included links for Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and LinkedIn (though the latter two are inactive as of this morning), so my take is that he or someone on his staff "gets it" when it comes to including the Web in his campaign approach. As Kleinheider and others have recently noted, the Internet won't win this campaign, but it can't help but raise visibility.

Well done so far, Karl. I'm especially pleased to see a lack of "under construction" verbiage on any pages, and I hope your staff will follow this initial entry into cyberspace with frequent updates.