The St. Petersburg Times is up to something pretty cool with Obameter. As they explain, "PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken." It's got an RSS feed and everything so you can keep score at home.
I think this is great. He ran on change and now he's being held accountable (so far he's doing pretty well). Let's hope he can live up to his promises.
Tags: obama, politics
Wow, this is pretty crazy, The Guardian points out that Google, Flickr and Last.fm saw significant drops in their traffic during the inauguration speech. As The Official Google Blog explains, "the overall query volume of Google searches dropped in the U.S. from the time President Obama took the oath of office until the end of his inaugural speech, demonstrating that all eyes were on today's festivities."
Update (1/21/09): Looks like everyone was just over at CNN.com: "Internet traffic in the United States hit a record peak at the start of President Obama's speech as people watched, read about and commented on the inauguration, according to Bill Woodcock, the research director at the Packet Clearing House, a nonprofit organization that analyzes online traffic. The figures surpassed even the high figures on the day President Obama was elected."
Tags: internet, obama
On Friday the Obama-Biden transition team announced a new feature of their Change.gov website: Your Seat at the Table. The idea is simply to make all the documents from meetings the team takes with outside groups available for review (and comment) from the general public. As they explained in the announcement, "Talking face-to-face with advocates and experts is a vital part of the Transition. But in past transitions, meetings like these took place behind closed doors and lacked the public input and transparency we're working hard to provide."
Tags: obama, politics, transparency
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