Jo Lee is a partner at Green Machine PR, a Rhode Island-based boutique PR firm that focuses on high-tech and green-tech. She's also a serial developer of online sites for grassroots activists and the politically inclined including CitizenSpeak and RingTones08.com.

Hello Rhodies! I’m coming to you from Princeton NJ where I have been temporarily living for the past year. A proud and diehard Providence Geek, I can’t wait to return this summer!

For the past year I’ve been working on RingTones08.com – a free site for uploading and sharing ringtones about the 2008 election. Why RingTones08.com? With a record increase in youth voters, ringtones have the potential to become the bumper stickers of the ‘08 election. We’ve done the political t-shirts, blogs, and buttons. Now it’s time to Ring.

I became obsessed with ringtones in 2005 after hearing an NPR story about a now famous ringtone campaign in the Philippines. An embargoed recording of the Philippine President admitting to vote-rigging was leaked to an activist. On a lark, the activist turned the recording into a ringtone. It became one of the most popular ringtones ever.

The Philippine President at her most humiliating moment filled the airwaves at bus stops, coffee shops, malls - everywhere cell phones rang. For the first time millions of people via their teeny little cell phones circumnavigated a state-controlled media and exposed corruption of the highest order in a country known to be one of the most dangerous places for journalists to work.

Back in America, it had become clear that WMD was a figment of the Neocons’ imagination, the war was a quagmire, and the media had been tragically cowed by a war president. I longed to hear my cell phone ring “Last throes of insurgency,” or “They’ll greet us with open arms” to remind us of the high price of hubris.

For two years I begged people to start a peer-to-peer ringtone site. Then I discovered Myxer.com which offers a free platform for downloading and sharing ringtones. Using Myxer on the back-end, I could finally realize my ringtone dream. Providence-based Big Ring Design built the first version of RingTones08.com – practically over night. The rest is history.

RingTones08.com now boasts a slew of great ringtones. Here’s just a tiny sample:

• The most downloaded, pro-Obama Yes We Can
• The sardonic McCain’s 10,000 Years
• The tragic Brownie You’re Doing a Heck of Job
• The more topical Spitzer’s #9
• The upbeat and pumping Ron Paul Revolution. (I know he’s gone but it’s still a great ringtone.)

There aren’t any really strong pro-Clinton or McCain ringtones because like Internet videos, ringtones are made by a young demographic which leans toward Obama. Plus, many of the ringtones at RingTones08 are re-purposed YouTube videos, once again, the best of which are pro-Obama.

Having said this, if you have a good idea for a Clinton or McCain ringtone, please, please, please post it at RingTones08.com

Ringtones won’t save the world but they offer a people-powered broadcasting network to help people get their voices heard. Be a true patriot this election year. Flip a burger, eat a freedom fry, and roll your own ringtone at RingTones08.com. Civic duty has never been more fun.