There's been plenty of snow, but this storm is electronic: a blizzard of e-mails, text messages, instant messages, videos, talking heads, audio clips, social networks and urgent demands for your money, your help, your attendance and support, all on your phone, in your computer, on your TV screen.

Presidential candidates are generating this binary whiteout, determined to use 21st-century technology to gain an edge, particularly with young voters, in the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Is it working?

Irl, idk. :/ Sry.

(Translation for those over 30: In real life, I don't know. Uneasy face. Sorry.)

"I think it'll have some effect," said Democratic candidate Sen. Joseph Biden, who's listed on his MySpace page as "Male. 65 years old. Wilmington, Delaware."

"But," Biden adds, "the answer is, I don't know."

"We're in uncharted territory," said Jen Psaki, who helps coordinate alternative media for the Barack Obama campaign. "We won't probably know until this is all said and done."

That uncertainty hasn't stopped the Obama campaign, or all the others, from at least trying every new technology available. Web sites, with video, are a given. In addition, campaigns have pages on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook; they send blast e-mails directly to cell phones and other devices; and they use various Web addresses to set up house parties, meet-ups and mash-ups, and most of all, to raise money.

The young voters who are the target of all this say thx, but plz, ur working 2 hard.

"I talk about the campaign with my friends, but it's mostly just when we get together, talking face-to-face," said John Yost, a 21-year old student at Iowa State University who likes Republican candidate Mike Huckabee. "It's not so much texting or things like that."