For those of you looking for another way to reach your target online (albeit in a more clandestine way), consider this: Democratic presidential candidate and incumbent Vice President Al Gore has a special message on his Web site, http://www.gore2000.com. Just to make things more fun, he's embedded his greeting into the source code of his home page.
Source code - in this case, Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML - is the programming used to make every Web page and it's where you'll find this note from Gore:
"Thanks for checking out our source code! I plan to use this space to post special messages to those who are helping to improve our web site - by making our source code the best it can be. The fact that you are peeking behind the scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet effort. I'm grateful for your help and support in this campaign. Now let's keep working to build the 21st Century of our dreams!" - Al Gore
The message doesn't show up on the home page of the Gore 2000 site because it's written inside a special "non-printing" HTML tag that allows programmers to make notes that can be seen only when viewing the source code itself.
There's more to the message than Gore's "welcome" speech. The Gore 2000 campaign also is asking for technical input from anyone who wants to contribute ideas ranging from correcting HTML coding errors to overall design plans. Apparently the plea is getting results. Gore's Webmaster reports that more than 100 changes to the Web site have been made based on input from visitors.
Why this interest in the "geeky" realm of HTML and source code? "We want to get more people involved [in a political campaign] than ever before," claims Gore 2000 spokesperson Roger Salazar. "It's for low-tech to high-tech users," says Salazar, who also admits the messages "hidden" in the source code are more likely to be seen by Web technophiles than casual surfers.
Of course, the embedded message isn't really a surprise, considering that Gore fancies himself as a Web geek. "We consider him to be a very Web-savvy person," Salazar explains. Tim Berners-Lee, the de facto "inventor" of the Web, may have a slightly different opinion, at least when it comes to the Vice President's knowledge of "online" history. Gore recently took credit as the Web's inventor (a statement he has since recanted).
Does this mark the beginning of a new form of political campaign message? Is source code the new medium, like TV in the 1950s? Perhaps not. The Web site of Gore's Democratic presidential rival, former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, is devoid of source-code "subliminals."
A quick check of the HTML script on the home page of Republican frontrunner George W. Bush's Web site (http://www.georgewbush.com) shows no hidden message from the governor. The same goes for other GOP presidential candidates such as John McCain (http://www.mccain2000.com), Dan Quayle (http://www.quayle.com) and Elizabeth Dole (http://www.edole2000.org). Alas, an AltaVista search turned up no presidential campaign Web site for New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith (but his senatorial home page - http://www.1750elm.com/rsmith.htm - was sans source-code greetings) and, GOP candidate Steve Forbes's site was offline as this article was being written, so it could not be checked.
While the mere mention of anything as technically ominous as Hyper Text Markup Language usually sends the faint of heart running for cover, anyone can view Web-page source code with either of the two major browsers - Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.
By going to the "View" menu, then clicking on "Source" or "Page Source," a pop-up window opens that displays the underlying source code for the page being viewed in the main browser window.