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| Saturday, July 19, 2003 |
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No, I'M blogging this 
| | From a video chat session this morning with Britt Blazer and Zephyr Teachout: |
| | Not speaking of which, a thought came out of the linkage mess I made yesterday when I posted something about the insane Berman-Conyers bill. |
| | The Internet Candidate for President needs to stand for making the world of Federal ends native to the Commons means. |
| | In less clever language, somebody needs to stand for making everything on every Federal site... |
| | Open source, so that when one "Views Source" under the "View" menu in all browsers, what they see is readable HTML, XML, OPML or some other kind of text that has been formatted using the public standards of the Net.As permanent as possible, which means that what goes on any congressperson's site, for example, has a unique URL in a permanent archive.Expressed as Open Data. That means no .pdf and no .doc formats, as long as the same document can be expressed just as well in HTML or some other format with NEA qualities.
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| | ... or so it seems to me while a 6-year-old boy claws at my elbow begging me to go play with him in the pool. It's SATurday, he says. |
Frontiers of value subtraction
| | Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it. |
| | The White House says the new e-mail system, at www.whitehouse.gov/webmail, is an effort to be more responsive to the public and offer the administration "real time" access to citizen comments. |
| | Completing a message to the president also requires choosing a subject from the provided list, then entering a full name, organization, address and e-mail address. Once the message is sent, the writer must wait for an automated response to the e-mail address listed, asking whether the addressee intended to send the message. The message is delivered to the White House only after the person using that e-mail address confirms it. |
| | Jimmy Orr, a White House spokesman, described the system as an "enhancement" intended to improve communications. He called it a "work in progress," and advised members of the public who had sensitive or personal matters to bring up with President Bush to use traditional methods of communications, like a letter on paper, a fax or a phone call. |
| | It is still possible to send a traditional e-mail message, he said, but the sender will receive the automated reply, and there is no guarantee it will be read or responded to. |
| | I'm wondering if you'd ever consider writing a weblog, or adding a "blog" to the White House site. |
| | Doc Searls
Santa Barbara, CA |
| | Now I'll try to do something similar through the "enhanced" service. |
| | Thank you for your interest in contacting President George W. Bush by Web Mail. President Bush welcomes your views, suggestions, and concerns. |
| | White House Web Mail is designed to provide an additional means by which individuals can communicate with the White House and receive automated, timely, and substantive responses on a wide variety of issues. This system provides U.S. citizens and residents with the opportunity to submit a written message and allows the President and his staff real-time access to their comments. However, due to the large volume of e-mail submissions, we cannot assure that each message will be personally reviewed. |
| | When I hit the Continue button I get this: |
| | I'm thinking that the White House site itself would probably fall under "Science/Technology," but the only item in that category is Energy. So I click on that and get this: |
| | That gets me back to the last page. Another click on the Continue button gets me to a page where I fill out my name and address. Feels creepy, but I do it. |
| | So then I get this mail form already partly filled out. I complete it: |
| | (Disclaimer: I used a graphics tool to cut out a huge hunk of white space there.) |
| | Next I'm told "Thank you for your submission. A confirmation message will be sent to your e-mail address. You must reply to this message within 72 hours for your request to be processed." |
| | Whatever it is, the whole thing is, indeed, pretty damn lame. |
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