Webware

Today we have a new president to lead a new American path through what will be a tumultuous time. But President Obama won't be able to do it alone. He and his administration need to work together, and communicate with one another and the country, to ensure everything is running well.

That's why I've compiled a "cheat sheet" for the Obama administration, listing five services it should use in the White House. Sadly, it probably won't. Record-keeping laws and security concerns will ensure that none of my suggestions take effect.

AIM for White House staff

Why shouldn't the White House staff be able to communicate with one another over AIM? I'm sure many of them use it in their daily lives and bringing it to the White House to communicate quickly is, in my estimation, a pretty good idea.

Instead of forcing his staff to walk back and forth between wings and offices, what if President Obama was able to instant message his staff from the Oval Office. I can see it now: PrezObama312: "Where's the dossier on the Russian spy we've been tracking?" WHStaffer35: "IDK. BRB." PrezObama312: "K. G2G. L8r."

Wouldn't that be great?

BitTorrent for distributing government documents

I know BitTorrent has been the target of the RIAA and MPAA over the past few years due to its huge supply of copyrighted material, but why shouldn't the government embrace the technology and use BitTorrent to distribute information to the public?

Sure, there's always that issue of "pirates" running the service, but I don't see what all the fuss is about. Who will they tell? President Obama should look to BitTorrent as an ideal way to get the word out. The distributed network reduces the cost of running data centers by allowing all the network's users to share the load.

It makes sense to me.

Present.ly for internal microblogging in groups based on level

Aside from AIM, I think the Obama administration should use enterprise microblogging service Present.ly to allow White House staff and the president to communicate.

The real beauty of Present.ly is its ability to allow users to create groups. A top-level aide can put the president, vice president, and cabinet in one group so they can discuss world affairs in a Twitter-like format, and the rest of the staff can have their own group to take care of their own work.

Sure, someone might be able to hack their way into the president's Present.ly group ("Michelle10" is an easy password to crack, Mr. President), but it still would help the staff communicate far more effectively than walking back and forth between desks.

Did you see 24 Monday night? That's all they do.

Stickam for White House room streams

I don't know about you, but I'm not always convinced that White House staff is really working. I'm not even sure President Obama would ever really know if his staff is working. How could he? He's busy.

That's why he needs to install cameras throughout the White House and use Stickam to monitor his employees. At any given time, he can log in to Stickam, find the White House channel, and start viewing all the different rooms in the house.

I'll bet that would get everyone working.

Ustream with moderated chat for country-wide town hall meetings

Ustream is a fine video-streaming service that makes connecting with others simple and fun. It's also ideal for a White House town hall meeting where President Obama would be on camera and citizens from across the U.S. would have the opportunity to ask him questions in a moderated chat room.

I don't see any reason why the president shouldn't exploit Ustream in this way. He has shown time and again that he has a real desire to use technology to connect with the populace and capitalizing on Ustream to give citizens a voice would be just another example of him doing just that.

I realize that allowing citizens from across the U.S. to comment on the president's policies could be troublesome, considering millions would probably want to join in, but if the room had a cap on the number of people who could join, or an effective team that could moderate comments, I doubt it would be a problem.

I'd certainly like to join in on that chat.

Check out Don's Digital Home podcast, Twitter feed, and FriendFeed.

Amber Ettinger, better known as "Obama Girl," has teamed up with Stickam for coverage of the presidential inauguration. Live coverage will be streamed live Monday at 8 p.m. EST from InauguralFest, and viewers will be able to see what she is doing all day at the inauguration starting at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday.

Integrated Media Measurement, an online research firm, found (PDF) that women between the ages of 15 and 48 tend to watch a television show and surf the Web an average of 17.5 minutes per day, while men do the same for just 15.7 minutes each day. Women between 30 and 39 average 23.3 minutes of simultaneous Web and TV usage each day. More importantly for marketers, women tend to multitask more as they get older, while men multitask less often. According to Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI, "women are more inclined to multitask than men" while using the Web.

Professional social network LinkedIn announced Monday that it has partnered with IBM to bring social-network functionality to Lotus Notes, an enterprise client that provides e-mail and instant-messaging services to users. The social-network plug-in will provide Lotus Notes users with contact and networking information about those they're contacting (as long as they are using LinkedIn) and browse LinkedIn's news feeds. The companies plan to unveil the new plug-in at Lotusphere later this year and hope to release it to Lotus Notes users by June.

Juniper Research released a report Monday saying event-based sales should increase the value and monetization of mobile dating and chat room sites. The report said that although subscription revenue will still contribute the most revenue to online dating sites over the next five years, charging customers to contact one another or providing virtual gifts will become increasingly important in their business models going forward. Juniper also found that free services that charge for contact are becoming more popular and could become the standard sometime during the next 10 years.

Navitell, a Belgium-based start-up that develops software that adds location-specific multimedia content to mobile phones, announced Monday that it has raised approximately $2.6 million in a round of funding that was led by FPIM. According to the company's executives, they plan to use the funding to expand their set of personalization services.

Stickam, a company that allows users to stream their lives online, announced Monday that it has launched an application programming interface that will let users incorporate the company's service into any Web site or app. According to the company, users can use its video-streaming function on their sites without worry of bandwidth, server infrastructure, or Flash development, since it will all be hosted through Stickam. The API is available now as a public beta for the first 100 registered developers at no cost. Once the beta period ends, Stickam will charge developers an undisclosed fee based on a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Human-powered search engine Mahalo announced on Monday the launch of Mahalo Answers, which allows users to submit questions to the community, which will then be answered by other Mahalo users. Mahalo Answers is quite similar to Yahoo Answers, but it does feature one twist: users can offer "tips" (in Mahalo dollars) to those who post the best answers. For its part, Mahalo will take 25 percent of the cash exchanged between users.

Hot or Not is an extremely popular site that allows users to rate a person's appearance based on a posted picture. Responding to its popularity, a new site called Twit or Fit has launched, which will provide Twitter profile pictures that will be graded based on the person's physical appearance. Visitors can decide to look at only men or women or view the top 10 highest-rated people. Twit or Fit also provides the option of announcing grades through the user's Twitter profile.

On Monday, Intel announced the results of its Internet study, which found that most U.S. adults would rather have Internet access than watch TV or engage in sexual activity. About 65 percent of respondents said they cannot live without Internet access, and 71 percent claim it is important or very important to have Internet-enabled devices. The vast majority of the respondents believe the Web has become an integral component in the U.S. economy and a central part of their lives.

We saw a lot of work and business tools for conferencing and collaboration come out of Under the Radar last week, but what about when you want to have fun? YouCams is a slick little embeddable video, voice, and text-chatting tool that's a mix of fun and business. The entire app runs in Flash, and users can jump in and join a discussion without the need for registration. The tool is aimed at social network users (mainly the MySpace crowd) as a way to communicate and interact with one another. Something that will likely get them blocked from the service, like what happened to competitor Stickam.

If you've used Stickam before, the Webcam functionality is a little similar. And by a little I'm being generous, because YouCams is much more full featured. There are two tiers of service, both free and paid. Basic registration is fairly generous, giving you voice, text, and video broadcasting privileges. Upgrading to the premium level turns YouCams into a full-on conferencing tool, allowing you to video chat with three other users at the same time, and own a personalized URL with the option to host your own conferencing room.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

An interesting addition to YouCams is integration with YouTube, and a large variety of widgets. These float around on the interface, and require no extra installation. It feels a little bit like YourMinis. The Space Invaders widget in particular nearly kept me from finishing this post. Likewise the YouTube integration is well done. Video links pop up in a conversation bubble, and won't start until you click on them. Like the widgets, they float around and can be resized on an ad-hoc basis.

There's also a social networking component integrated in the service. Users trade 'stars,' which act as credits to buy into various features. It's an interesting take on user involvement, although I'm not sure it'll catch on until users have a real reason to get involved. Maybe giving them access to premium content like music or movie downloads would be a good hook. In the meantime, casual chatters will likely get a kick out of YouCams for its slick interface and ease of use.

I've embedded a YouCams module after the jump. It might not run if you're using Firefox. We've been in contact with the YouCams team about this, and they're on it.