On both sides of the political spectrum, early analysis is flying fast about the impact of images and video on next year's presidential campaign. I thought BAGnews' comments on the premier issue of the redesigned Time magazine story on the fall of conservatism -- and the position of John McCain in that decline -- offered some interesting insight into how imagery will inform news consumption in the years ahead. Time's redesign means "the magazine is cutting back the words; morphing more into a web adjunct; and delivering a larger part of the story in a form we're more regularly familiar with around here," meaning presumably, letting images do the heavy lifting. This spread doesn't make me think McCain's Straight Talk Express is going somewhere fun.

More stunning images came this week in the form of a masterful take on the Apple Macintosh 1984 ad urging Americans to "Vote Different" and, essentially casting Senator Clinton as Microsoft/Big Brother (sister?) and Senator Obama as the young, cool, groundbreaking upstart Apple. (Mac nerds like myself know that the original ad aired one time only, during the Super Bowl, and heralded the birth of the Macintosh computer.) Obama's campaign hasn't taken credit for the ad, which hasn't appeared on television but rather only on the internet. You can see the ad and read some commentary here.