Councillor Tobin was recently featured in a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report looking back at the year 2005 as the year of digital citizens using vlogs and other personal technology to communicate and transcribe the news.

US video blogger, or vlogger, Steve Garfield is already showing how politicians themselves can harness these tools to engage with voters.

He "produces" his local Boston city councillor, John Tobin's, video blog, or vlog.

Regularly, Councillor Tobin reports and shows his voters the positive and negative about their community. He shows them the new mural or neighbourhood graffiti problems. He returns to areas for updates where action has been taken to make something better.

Councillor Tobin is convinced that by the 2008 presidential elections, most politicians in the US will vlog or die in the public eye.

"It's going to be mandatory. People are going to have to do it. Voters won't accept that they don't have it," he recently told the Boston Phoenix.