transitions

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 … Read more

WASHINGTON--Cell phone traffic near Capitol Hill was three to five times its normal levels late Tuesday morning, just as Barack Obama was set to be sworn in as president.

Even with high traffic, most calls continued to go through, wireless carriers said--a good thing for the many spectators on the National Mall who were depending on cell phone service to get through the day, despite carriers' warnings of dropped calls.

Gridlocked crowds of people swarmed the perimeter of the Mall early Tuesday morning in an attempt to watch Barack Obama's presidential inauguration. Some inauguration-goers near the west end of … Read more

If you thought that social-media sites were foaming at the mouth on Election Day in an attempt to get the most eye-catching, mashed-up, user-generated gimmicks in place, you might not be too surprised to find out that the social Web has gone just as nutty over the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.

Here's a roll call of a few notables: There's an official user-sourced inauguration blog that uses collaborative platform Tumblr to post everything from recommended links to funny photos of people posing next to cardboard cut-outs of Obama. Social network … Read more

Beefed-up cell phone networks in Washington, D.C., got their first real test over the holiday weekend--with reports of scattered outages affecting people who attended the pre-inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday.

According to a story in The Washington Post, Sunday's concert-goers "sent 10 times the volume of wireless calls, text messages, pictures and videos as on the busiest hour of a typical day." Some estimates put the crowd at 400,000.

"The vast majority of calls went through on the first try," Verizon Wireless spokesman John Johnson told the Post. "We'… Read more

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 … Read more

By Declan McCullagh and Stephanie Condon

news analysis Months after being sworn in as president, George W. Bush sat down with reporters and his wife, Laura, for a technology-themed event: a relaunch of the Whitehouse.gov Web site, which previously had been rather dilapidated.

Bush and his aides proudly demonstrated the new features, including photo essays, better access for the disabled, and a kids' area with details about the First Pets. The president said the Web site would let Washington become "more accessible" and let Americans "participate in the process."

Less than two weeks later, the … Read more

President-elect Barack Obama is sure to face his share of hurdles over the course of his presidency. But when it comes to one of them--the possibility that he might have to give up his beloved BlackBerry--he is waxing optimistic that he will overcome.

In an interview with CNN on Friday, Obama expressed confidence that he would be able to keep his smartphone, despite well-publicized concerns over the possibility of eavesdropping by hackers and other digital snoops. While Research In Motion offers encryption, the U.S. government has stricter requirements for communications security.

As my colleague Declan McCullagh reported, some handheld devices, such as General Dynamics' Sectera Edge, have been officially blessed as secure enough to handle even classified documents, e-mail, and Web browsing.

But Obama seems determined to hang on to his device of choice. … Read more

Just as President-elect Barack Obama has been busy assembling his Cabinet, the Presidential Inaugural Committee has been busy selecting providers of tech services for this week's inaugural festivities.

The PIC has already made arrangements with YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr. The latest appointee? Microsoft's Silverlight Media Player, which has been tapped to enable live and on-demand video streaming of Tuesday's ceremony on the PIC Web site.

The PIC will also stream video of a Baltimore event on the Whistle Stop Tour that will take the President-elect and Vice President-elect Joe Biden to Washington, D.C., from Philadelphia.

This … Read more

Amateur photographers are being offered a chance to get their work published in an official presidential inaugural photography book.

Publisher Epicenter Communications announced Friday that for the first time it will allow anyone to submit photos to be considered for the large-format book it produces for each new president. The photos will appear alongside those from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and professional photographers of past presidents.

Photos can be submitted to the Web site of The Official Barack Obama Inaugural Book, hosted by Photobucket, or directly on the Photobucket site. Photos can be uploaded from a computer or cell phone. The … Read more