barackobama.com

change.gov

The first truly vis­i­ble change brought about by the Obama Administration is the exchange of Gotham for a more tra­di­tional, serif type­face. Compare the campaign’s web­site to that of the tran­si­tion team, and note that, while almost all col­ors and struc­tural ele­ments remain the same, the typog­ra­phy is very dif­fer­ent. Gotham, sadly, is nowhere to be found. Was all this talk of change for naught? Will the age of pro­gres­sive typog­ra­phy that we envi­sioned together be aban­doned for just four more years of the same Times New Roman, 12-point, single-spaced, default-font style gov­ern­ment to which we’ve become accustomed?

Disturbing facts from today’s Times arti­cle “Lose the BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe”:

• No US President has ever used email while in office.
• No US President has ever used a lap­top com­puter while in the oval office.
• For the first time ever, the weekly Democratic radio address was deliv­ered in a new, so-called “mov­ing pic­ture” for­mat. (Obama’s speech was video­taped and posted on YouTube, see above.)

It will be inter­est­ing to see how this new admin­is­tra­tion uses mod­ern tech­nol­ogy to com­mu­ni­cate, inform, and influ­ence the pub­lic. (Will Obama still TXT me? Can I sub­scribe to an exec­u­tive orders feed? Will Malia and Sasha write guest posts on a White House blog?)

On another note, update your book­marks from barackobama.com to change.gov, the tem­po­rary web­site of the Obama-Biden tran­si­tion team. Note, too, the URL’s brand exten­sion of their cam­paign. Clever.

A New York Times inter­ac­tive fea­ture run­ning today cap­tures the moods of its vis­i­tors. It’s sim­ple and typo­graph­i­cally beau­ti­ful, and reminds me of Simon’s emotion-related projects. You can even fil­ter by McCain and Obama sup­port­ers, to com­pare their states of being. (I’m the “exhausted” one at lower right.)

Last week, the New York Times reported that New York City has sub­poe­naed the cre­ator of TxtMob, a web- and SMS-based ser­vice that helped facil­i­tate pro­tes­tor com­mu­ni­ca­tions dur­ing the 2004 Republican National Convention. From the story:

The sub­poena, which was issued Feb. 4, instructed Mr. Hirsch, who is com­plet­ing his dis­ser­ta­tion at M.I.T., to pro­duce a wide range of mate­r­ial, includ­ing all text mes­sages sent via TXTmob dur­ing the con­ven­tion, the date and time of the mes­sages, infor­ma­tion about peo­ple who sent and received mes­sages, and lists of peo­ple who used the service.

The good news is that Tad Hirsch, TxtMob’s cre­ator, is refus­ing to turn over any records, at least for now. The bad news is that this sub­poena hap­pened at all, adding SMS logs to the list of elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tions that gov­ern­ments want to get their hands on, next to emails, web brows­ing his­to­ries and tele­phone calls.

Another unre­lated yet awe­some thing that Hirsch has done is to make the source code open and free. Maybe I could use this to power a future project…

Source: City Subpoenas Creator of Text Messaging Code

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that yesterday’s 5-years-in-Iraq protest was well-orchestrated, in part thanks to fre­quent updates deliv­ered to par­tic­i­pants via text mes­sages. C.W. Nevius reports:

I was told to sim­ply text mes­sage the “DASW [Direct Action to Stop the War] text mob” to get up-to-the-minute mes­sages describ­ing the lat­est action sent to my cell phone. At 3:08:29 p.m., for exam­ple, I received a mes­sage that said, “DASW cur­rent esti­mate - 150 arrests - thanks for tak­ing to the streets and join­ing in.”

This is the first time I’ve heard of a small, local activist group (Bay Area DASW) employ­ing SMS to help keep their par­tic­i­pants in the loop. It’s a great idea, and could shift the dynamic of other direct actions in the future. Protests can be intense and a lit­tle scary when you see hordes of activists run­ning up against walls of police -- “What’s going on down there?” “Is every­one okay?” Panic breaks out when indi­vid­u­als can’t see over the crowd to get the big­ger pic­ture. “Are we safe here?” “Should we keep march­ing, or turn back?” A cen­tral­ized orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, armed with binoc­u­lars and mobiles, can now mon­i­tor the protest sta­tus among them­selves, send­ing only per­ti­nent infor­ma­tion about the big pic­ture to par­tic­i­pants, such as num­ber of arrests, or “look out, tear gas deployed, head SW on Market.”