Smitherman unveils new campaign website

The mayoral race frontrunner, who boast a well-resourced team of communications specialists, has taken some flak for having, four months into the campaign, a temporary website with almost no information and a single video that made Adam Giambrone's "You talking to me?" effort look like Citizen Kane.

On Wednesday night, georgesmitherman.ca 2.0 sprang to life. It's certainly an improvement.

The website features his signature campaign colour -- purple -- and, more importantly, some actual content with policies, news, videos, photos, ways to donate, contact, events and information about the candidate.

There are also buttons for his Facebook page, Twitter feed, RSS feeds, YouTube channel and, um, the weather. Bit of a CP24 touch, that.

There were, an hour or so after it launched, a few bugs. There are three videos -- candidate and campaign team stuff -- but clicking two of them took you to the same monthly "campaign family dinner" where Smitherman introduced Bruce Davis as his new campaign manager.

There are rumours of a full Smitherman social media assault, including an iPhone app (which now seems a bit old-school, given Rocco Rossi's launch of an iPad app on Wednesday night. Pantalone is going to have to hit back with an app for that next-gen iPhone dissected by gizmodo.com) and other cyber-tools aimed at wooing the digital generation.

Now if only we can get some more Smitherman policy to wrap all the ones and zeroes around.