(Written while sitting at a desk)

A new poll finds that after considerable public debate, countless PSAs, stern warnings about danger and numerous state laws banning the practice, pretty much everybody with a cellphone still talks on them while driving a motor vehicle.

Not only that, but a quarter of those surveyed also still send text messages while driving. (In Southern California, texting while driving is much safer than many other places because so much time is spent not moving.)

The good news from the poll is that the percentage of people who believe that talking on a cellphone while driving is dangerous has climbed from 82% three years ago to 88% last month. The bad news is they don't really care.

So much for legislating chatter.

The new nationwide online Harris poll of 2,681 adult Americans did not address people who drive while eating Double Whoppers, sipping way-too-hot coffee or dealing with squabbling, sticky siblings in a backseat full of party balloons and a barking dog while inserting a different CD to drown out a crabby spouse insistent on directing traffic.

But the survey results may show the effectiveness of legislating such human behaviors. Prohibition laws caused the entire nation to stop drinking alcoholic beverages so successfully some decades back.

The survey found that pretty much everybody believes that talking and driving are to varying degrees unsafe.

It also found that after the last three years of public warnings, concerned conversations and legislation written by elected government officials who often have drivers so they can talk legally with their hands, the percentage of people using cellphones while driving plunged from 73% to 72%.

In states like California that have formally banned cellphone use without hands-free equipment, fully half the people who drive and own cellphones still do both at the same time. Harris reports that 71% believe that hands-free cellphone equipment makes ...

Throngs of people packed around the Capitol this morning, many saying they wanted to be there to experience the inauguration with others.

But for some, the togetherness of being crammed into the Mall like sardines wasn’t enough. They shared the experience on Twitter with countless others outside Washington. This year’s inauguration is surely the most interactive yet; thousands snapped photos for instant uploads, and one-line commentaries formed a patchwork play-by-play of the day’s proceedings.

For every minute of Inauguration Day, there were hundreds of new “tweets” on Twitter, from praise for Michelle Obama’s glittering yellow ensemble to tips on the best inaugural live streams for your iPhone. Once Barack Obama was sworn in, tweets turned celebratory, expressing admiration and excitement.

The real winner on Nov. 4 wasn't Barack Obama. It was the cellphone industry.

Text messaging spiked on election night, service providers say, with AT&T reporting a 44% surge in traffic. That's the largest increase in text messaging in the company's history, according to Alana Semuels, who writes for The Times' Technology blog.

Semuels says Sprint saw a 30% increase in text messages in L.A. County between 7 and 9 p.m. on election night.

So, who was doing all that texting?

Earlier on election day, Obama's campaign (which is known for its technological savvy) sent out waves of text messages to supporters, urging voters to the polls.

But the evening spike was probably just people celebrating -- or commiserating -- as the returns rolled in.

-- Kate Linthicum

Spking of text msgs: Get alerts sent 2 ur cell 4 each new TKT item on the pres winner, new admin, new Congress and all things political. Go here to register.

Photo credit: Barack Obama holds his BlackBerry before a conference call with supporters (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will give her first major policy speech today, an address on special needs and calling for better funding of it. In Pittsburgh, Palin, as part of her belated but expanding activities with the media, also granted one of her first newspaper interviews, to the Chicago Tribune's Jill Zuckman.

We have excerpts of that report below. Meanwhile, here's a pertinent video from MSNBC, of all places, that explains Palin's special interest in special needs, and it's not just because her infant son Trig has Down syndrome.

In an exclusive interview with Zuckman, Palin's husband Todd at her side holding Trig, Palin insisted she did not accept $150,000 worth of designer clothes from the Republican National Committee, as widely reported, and "that is not who we are."

"That whole thing is just bad!" she said. "Oh, if people only knew how frugal we are. It's kind of painful to be criticized for something when all the facts are not out there and are not reported," said Palin, saying the clothes are not worth $150,000 and will be given back, auctioned off or sent to charity.

Suddenly, thrust into the national spotlight as John McCain's running mate in late....

The Democratic National Convention is more than just hand-shaking, sign-waving and unity-making.

It's also fertile ground for companies looking to hawk their latest products and services. And this year in Denver, it's all about the phone. (That's quite fitting, of course, considering the mobile method Barack Obama's campaign employed in announcing the running mate choice of Joe Biden last week).

As Alana Semuels points out on the LATimes.com Technology blog, hordes of advertisers are pushing phone-related products at the convention. There's the service that allows you to text questions and get answers from real people (ChaCha) and the ones that allow you to watch TV shows (FLO TV platform) and listen to the radio (Foneshow) on your phone.

Why would telecommunications companies direct their marketing push toward Democratic delegates?

"Political conventions are the hotbed of people with passionate opinions," Erik Schwartz, chief executive of Foneshow, told Semuels. In other words: people with passionate opinions like to be well-connected to other people with passionate opinions.

And there's more reasoning behind the advertising: It works.

"We've had a huge uptick in the number of people calling and texting about the convention," Susan Marshall, ChaCha's vice president of marketing, told Semuels. She said that during Hillary Clinton's speech on Tuesday, the site received three times as many questions as usual, including one asking how many pairs of pants Clinton owns.

We at Top of the Ticket, ever susceptible to marketing, decided to ask ChaCha a question of our own. We texted this query to the service:

Q: "Dear ChaCha, who do you think would be a better president -- John McCain or Barack Obama?"

Less than a minute later, our phone buzzed with this response:

A: "I'd like to see Barack Obama as President -- I think the US could use a black President. Thanks for texting ChaCha!"

Sure, the answer you get from a service like ChaCha depends on the employee who is fielding it. A different employee might have said John McCain. But we can't help but this that responses like this might be one reason why ChaCha's traffic has spiked during the convention.

-- Kate Linthicum

Photo: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Along with the thousands of Democrats pouring into Denver in preparation for the Democratic National Convention, there will also be a few cows. No, Elsie isn't on the Democratic ticket (yet). These cows are much more technological -- they're cell sites on wheels, also known as COWs.

Wireless providers have spent months ensuring their networks can handle the sudden flood of calls and text messages that'll be made during the Democratic convention, which began today in Denver, and the Republican National Convention, which begins next Monday in St. Paul, Minn. That includes bringing in COWs and COLTs (cell sites on light trucks), which cost around $20,000 each to deploy.

"We're looking at the largest amount of data and traffic to cross our wireless network of any event to date," said Jace Barbin, general manager of AT&T for the Rocky Mountain region. Our co-blogger Alana Semuels over at the Technology blog has much more details on this behind-the-scenes development.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Photo of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: Baltimore Sun

And just a reminder that you can join the growing throngs preparing for the rest of this political season and beyond by having every Ticket item -- plus special offline Tweets from The Ticket's writers starting with the party conventions -- sent directly to your cellphone.

To register for instant Twitter updates from The Ticket go here and sign up.

According to the latest campaign trail gossip, we'll know Barack Obama's vice presidential pick by sunrise.

There have been whispers that Obama will reveal his choice to everyone who's signed up for text or e-mail alerts around 4 a.m. EST Friday.

Of course, VP announcement rumors have been wrong before.

Our friends over at the LATimes.com Technology blog aren't wasting their time speculating about when the announcement will be made or what its message will be.

Instead, Jim Puzzanghera has an interesting analysis of what the text message/e-mail strategy says about Obama's campaign.

Puzzanghera points out that that the tactic will make supporters feel like they're an integral part of the campaign -- and, perhaps more importantly, create a database of mobile users for future campaign communications. (In other words, if you've signed up for the VP notification service, don't be surprised to receive a text from the Obama campaign on Nov. 4 reminding you to vote. And no doubt several money appeals in the meantime.)

We've said before that Obama is technology savvy. And as Puzzanghera also points out, new data from Nielsen released today confirms that the Illinois senator has been generating more online buzz than his opponent, John McCain.

According to the date, there were 3.3 million unique visitors to BarackObama.com in July, compared with 1.6 million unique to JohnMcCain.com. But McCain picked up some ground there, gaining 353,000 unique visitors in the month, compared with 239,000 by the Obama site.

The place where McCain gained ground was website video streams. Total streams viewed on JohnMcCain.com more than doubled in July to 1.01 million.

Hmm, could those numbers have anything to do with McCain's controversial ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears?

-- Kate Linthicum

Photos: Barack Obama holds his BlackBerry in St. Louis last month, before a conference call with supporters. Credit: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press

Enjoy it. Talk up a storm on the road. You've got only a few days left to use cellphones in your hand while driving.

Then, ring-a-ding, the new California law takes effect requiring that you shut the heck up or use a hands-free phone thingy. The cops don't need any other excuse to stop you, no cocaine blowing out the back window, nothing but holding that hand suspiciously up by your ear. (So no ear-picking -- too risky.)

And there are no warnings for first-time offenders. Just tickets.

Politicians in Sacramento, who live by the cellphone themselves, realized they could get a lot of publicity by championing this restriction, claiming that thousands, probably millions, maybe even billions of drivers were driving on California's crumbling highways distracted by conversations on cellphones and causing a gazillion accidents.

Who hasn't seen an accident or near-accident with (always) a woman talking on her cellphone?

So no doubt, starting July 2 the number of traffic accidents in California will plummet to near-zero and our collision insurance premiums will too.

Or not.

That's because these same underemployed lawmakers did not ban such things as cup holders, Big Macs on your thigh, dripping mustard, too many radio commercials on one station, nagging spouses, CD players, children squabbling in the backseat or dogs sitting in drivers' laps to enjoy the breezes.

That's still all A-OK. So The Times' famed videographer Jeff Amlotte and Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive writer Dan Neil creatively collaborated on this hilarious video to instruct California drivers on exactly what is still legal for them to do while driving after June 30.

Be sure to watch this video while driving. That's still legal too. Oh, and e-mail this link to everyone on your contact list, one by one. That's legal too.

Just don't phone them about it.

--Andrew Malcolm

On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.

Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.

Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.

In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.

His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.

His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.

Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."

Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.

The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.

Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...

Actor Alec Baldwin, who announced he was going to leave the United States if George W. Bush was elected president and then quietly changed his mind, is now talking about entering American politics himself.

The 49-year-old actor isn't really an archconservative television executive. But he does play one on TV, on the NBC show "30 Rock."

Here's another surprise for a Hollywood person: Baldwin actually has supported liberal causes in real life.

"There's other things I want to do [besides acting]," Baldwin tells Morley Safer in an interview Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes."

"I mean, in a matter of weeks, I'm going to be 50. There's no age limit on running for office, to a degree. Something I might do one day."

Two years ago, the Long Island native told the New York Times Magazine he thought he would like to be governor of New York. Asked if he was qualified to run for the office, he compared....