Tag: WHITEHOUSE

The Obama administration just keeps flexing its new media muscle and redefining what it means to speak to the people in a way that we haven't seen since the days of FDR's "fireside chats." The White House blog, its slick interactive website, weekly YouTube addresses and Twitter account are powerful, but they still feel like the tools of politics. A new White House video blog though, called 'West ...

First Lady Michelle Obama knows how to do a lot of things. She's a product of Princeton and Harvard, a mother of two, and an outspoken advocate for organic produce. To many, she's the very embodiment of the Super-Mom ideal. It turns out, though, that when it comes to smartphones, MObama's something of a... n00b. As CNN's Ed Henry writes, "I handed the first lady my iPhone, but it quickly became ...

When Google launched Buzz, the service immediately became a lightning rod for criticism from privacy advocates. Many people ended up having their list of most frequent Gmail contacts exposed to the entire Web. One of those people included Andrew McLaughlin, the Deputy White House CTO. This would, of course, be of little concern to anyone, except that McLaughlin's list of most frequently ...

As part of President Obama's ongoing efforts to enhance political transparency, the White House yesterday relaxed archaic restrictions governing federal communication with citizens, effectively allowing -- and encouraging -- federal agencies to use social media more freely. In a document titled "Social Media, Web-Based Interactive Technologies, and the Paperwork Reduction Act," the White House ...

When Barack Obama speaks, he gets the attention of every media outlet known to man. When Joe Biden speaks, he gets Justin.tv. Biden, who's currently touring the Middle East, is scheduled to give a speech later in the week at Tel Aviv University in Israel. Because he's not with Obama, though, the official White House camera crew didn't make the trip with him. Without the crew, live-streaming ...

Details of the plan are still top secret, but we the American public have gotten our first glimpse of the federal government's cyber-security initiative. A five-page overview of the goals and components of the Comprehensive National Cyber-Security Initiative (CNCI) has been posted on WhiteHouse.gov. The initiative's measures include consolidating government networks and access points, ...

The fact that the government and most of its agencies are still stuck in the technological dark ages is no longer news. Officials in the Obama administration have been shouting it from the hilltops since they rolled into D.C. on their social networking-powered bus. But, while Obama has been pushing the government into the 21st century (though those accomplishments are often overshadowed by ...

Balancing two wars, steep unemployment rates, and an expansive healthcare overhaul doesn't leave Barack Obama a whole lot of time for anything -- including, apparently, Twitter. This may explain why the President is reportedly looking to hire an official White House twitterer, according to the Wall Street Journal. Mia Cambronero currently holds the vaunted position of social networks manager for ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/02/11/white-house-launches-report-card-on-government-openness/'; Yesterday, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra unveiled what they call the Open Government Dashboard, a sort of report card for government agencies and their abilities to meet objectives set forth in the Open Government Directive. The ...

In spite of its other perceived failures, the Obama administration has actually succeeded quite admirably at one of its promises: technologically ushering the White House into the 21st century. It has embraced blogging, streaming video, Twitter, crowd-sourcing, and has even created new positions within the government and armed forces that specifically deal with the challenges of running and ...

Political blog The Hill may have called the recent announcement by Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, that the government is saddled with "outdated technology" a "startling admission," but it sounds to us like old news. As of January 2008, the Bureau of Indian Affairs still lacked Internet access, and during the transition from campaign to presidency Obama spokesman Bill Burton ...

After being rudely interrupted during a press conference earlier this year, we can't blame President Barack Obama for taking a harsh stance on cell phones. After all, there's an economy to fix and a war to win. So when it's time for a cabinet meeting, he's told his staff to leave those BlackBerrys at the door. But what has us chuckling is the method in place to ensure Secretary of State ...

Barack Obama is no stranger to spurious claims about his heritage, citizenship, and religious beliefs, but most of these claims have been met with little more than stolid dismissal by our secretly Muslim, terrorist-fist-bumping, Kenyan-born president. Start attacking the man's policies with deceptive chain e-mails and viral videos, though, and you might just find yourself on the losing side of a ...

Two months after delivering a speech that outlined sweeping cybersecurity plans, President Barack Obama and his staff are still struggling with just how to protect the country from electronic terrorists and spies. With the resignation of the woman many people thought could take the reigns, things won't get any easier, either. Melissa Hathaway, who led a cybersecurity review in April, resigned ...

Apparently, most bloggers have never had corporate jobs. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' offhand remark last week that Twitter is blocked on White House computers prompted the legion of tech-blogs to go into full-on shaming mode in regards to the White House's IT policies. During an interview on CSPAN, Gibbs quickly answers a question about Twitter by explaining that the micro-blogging service is ...