Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, like many people in his generation, has not made the technological leap to computers.

At 72 years old, Dellums doesn't do e-mail, surf the Internet or know much about the blogosphere, where average folks engage in some very spirited online discussions on just about any subject you can imagine.

The mayor is missing an opportunity to check the pulse of the public and gain insight into what Oakland residents from many political perspectives are saying about him and other public officials - the good, the bad and the ugly.

If I were on the Quiet Mayor's staff, I'd scan those sites like a cop with one ear always tuned to the police radio.

This is the kind of thing they'd see: A dramatic jump in traffic on one site - www.abetteroakland .com - the day after Dellums delivered his first State of the City speech last month.

"Based on the comments people left and the search engine terms they used the day after the address, 9 out of the 10 searches were some variations of 'recall Dellums,' " said Echa Schneider, who writes on the site under the screen name VSmoothe.

She started blogging during the mayoral election two years ago to provide a forum for the exchange of information about the campaigns of Dellums, City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and Councilwoman Nancy Nadel.

Her blog is now one of the most popular in Oakland, and it's no wonder - Schneider has flair, style and consistency, and that draws steady traffic to the site.

When I called her Wednesday, she reluctantly accepted a compliment as the city's No. 1 blog site, then complained about Oakland's lack of news coverage - and a smaller blogosphere than Great Falls, Mont., whose population of 56,000 compares with nearly 400,000 in Oakland.

But while there may not be as much traffic as she'd like, people are reading. Her Wednesday column drew a response from Martin G. Reynolds, managing editor of the Oakland Tribune, who described regional coverage demands that spread local news staffs thin.

Schneider didn't spare The Chronicle or the East Bay Express either, describing their coverage of Oakland as sparse.

She started her current site in May after sharing the now-defunct dellumswatch.org with a friend during the mayoral election. The watchdog site now operates under the new name, futureoakland.wordpress.com.

Since Schneider began, a dozen sites have been erected and gone dormant, including a site titled Common Sense. Still others, like dogtowncommons.com update irregularly. A new blog entry, www.eastbayconservative.com, started last month.

On Schneider's biggest day, she drew about 600 hits with a blog on an AC Transit story. And traffic on the site has doubled since December, jumping 30 percent the day after Dellums' speech in early January, she said.

Another perspective on Dellums comes from Zennie Abraham, a native of Oakland who worked for the city a decade ago, who endorsed Dellums' candidacy at his blogspot, zennie2005. blogspot.com.

It's one of more than 50 Web sites posted by Abraham at his business Web site. But when he started writing about Oakland's mayoral election in 2006, he saw a change in the Internet traffic pattern.

"When we added the blog about local politics during the mayoral election - traffic really went up - sky high," Abraham said, doubling in the last two years.

Since his initial endorsement of Dellums, Abraham's view of the mayor has cooled a bit. He hasn't done an about-face, but he's far from satisfied.

His chief complaints are the mayor's lack of focus on housing and downtown redevelopment, his unwillingness to engage in a more public life to promote the city and his decision to endorse Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary race.

"I think he's doing a terrible job. But do I think he can get better?" Abraham asked. "Yes, I do," he said.

"People around here are hungry for change ... there's that phrase again," Abraham quipped. "But it's true."

The other thing that Oakland residents hunger for is news from City Hall, and Dellums' tight-lipped approach to conducting city business fuels speculation, feeds the rumor mill and inspires disgruntled city staff and elected officials alike to regularly leak news for public consumption.

That is how the lion's share of news from Dellums' office gets out.

Schneider and Abraham, despite their political differences, agree that a city the size of Oakland should have more than a handful of sites about local politics - and scores of online readers at the ready to comment.

"I hope that more people start blogging for the upcoming council election (on June 3)," Schneider said. "We are not nearly as active as San Francisco, but I'm always excited to see a new blog come up and I hope people keep doing it."

Chip Johnson's column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays. E-mail him at chjohnson@sfchronicle.com.