Bertie may have surprised the Opposition when he called to the Áras early last Sunday morning to ask for the dissolution of the Dáil, but he also laid down the gauntlet for Ireland's political bloggers, writes John Collins.

Even for the digerati, blogs were still a relatively obscure media format when the country last went to the polls in 2002.

This time around though, several thousand online self-publishers are lining up to make a difference to the democratic process.

If an interview for a post-graduate student's thesis could scupper Brian Lehinan's presidential campaign in 1990, who knows what an army of citizen journalists may be able to dig up during the next three weeks.

If you want a single source of what's being blogged about in the run-up to the selection of the 30th Dáil, then you should bookmark IrishElection.com.

This group blog is the brainchild of a final-year politics and philosophy student at UCD and has a host of high-profile contributors, including Ireland Offline chairman Damien Mulley, law lecturer Eoin O'Dell and Sunday Times columnist Sarah Carey.

It also has a host of lesser- known bloggers who provide a refreshingly forthright and alternative view on Irish politics.

The site has even managed to get contributions from politicians such as Waterford Labour councillor Séamus Ryan.

With its analysis of likely outcomes in constituencies, links to the latest YouTube spoofs of politicians or just thoughts on mainstream coverage of the election, this blog attempts to cover it all.

The website also has useful tools for those planning to write about the election itself - its RSS aggregator pulls the latest news directly from all the parties' websites.

Potentially the most interesting feature of IrishElection.com is its "doorstep challenge", whereby people are encouraged to video local candidates to see if their promises at home are the same as those they make in the Dáil.

Blog of the week:www.irishelection.com