• "Retooling" Change.gov: The New York Times' Michael Falone makes note of a happening that Michael Whitney highlighted on techPresident earlier this week: Change.gov, the Obama-Biden transition site, quietly dropped an "Agenda" section that appeared largely cribbed from campaign materials, replacing it with an oblique 100 words on what's considered important by the incoming Obama-Biden administration. Falone follows up with a quote from transition team spokesperson Nick Shapiro, who said that they were simply "retooling" the quickly-launched site.

• Obama's Online Operation(s): ABC News' Rick Klein has a good overview piece on some of the legal and logistical questions facing the digital arm of Team Obama as it moves into the presidency. The money quote comes from our own Micah Sifry: "With the bully pulpit, the president has always been able to go above lawmakers' heads. Now he can go between their legs."

• Microtargeting to the End: If one of the 10 million emails the Obama campaign collected happens to belong to you, you likely recently got a request for cash donations to help the Democratic National Committee "recover the resources it took to win." In return, you get a rather garish royal blue Obama-Biden "Victory t-shirt." How much that commemerative shirt will set you back depends, though. As Craig Stoltz of Web2.0...Really? is reporting, the price of the shirt seems to run from $30 to at least a hundred bucks, depending on how much you chipped in to the campaign in the past.

• It's Your Party: The Republican National Committee is taking what it learned from GOPPlatform2008.com, its experiment in collaborative platform writing, to launch Republican for a Reason. As rank-and-file Republicans lick their wounds and wonder what's next, the RNC wants desperately to be in the center of any discussions about the GOP's future. The site is an initiative of Chairman Mike Duncan, but Duncan might not be chair long enough to see it through.

• Writing the CTO's Agenda: ObamaCTO.org is a new site that aims to set the priorities for the incoming Chief Technical Officer. (Thanks, Jon Pincus.) The site is powered by UserVoice software, which seems to be powering every other interactive site popping up on the web these days. The top-ranked priority right now: unleashing more civic engagement by providing open and standardized government data. Not bad, not bad at all. Micah has a look at both ObamaCTO.org and a new report out from 21st Century Right to Know Project on both tech policy and the role of the national CTO. Relatedly, the Sunlight Foundation's Ellen Miller has a suggestion for exactly where the Obama Administration can start providing good and open data, by "mak[ing] reporting on the bailout a model of the transparent government that they have so strongly advocated."

• Mapping the Prop 8 Landscape: The Los Angeles Times is doing some great work in new journalism by making use of local data from last Tuesday's vote on Proposition 8, which rolled back the California's same-sex marriage statutes. A snappy database of donors reveals who, including Brad Pitt and Nancy Pelosi, chipped in cash to rally for and against the measure. And some well-crafted maps display where the money and votes came from up and down the Golden State. (via Chris Cadelago) Also on Prop 8, this video from the "Yes on 8" side delves into how the pro-8ers used the web to organize, and their methods sound a lot like a certain successful recent presidential campaign.

• Twitter Jumps the Snark: Some bad news for all you Twitter-addicted politicos: you're now officially uncool. I know, I know, tough blow. But that's what happens when you been made fun of by Doonesbury. (Though, note to Garry Trudeau: the verb form is actually "tweet.") (Thanks Allison Fine)

In Case You Missed It...

New techPresident contributing writer Matthew Burton dips into the politics of government email in the wake of a federal judge's ruling on the White House email case that sets a new standard of transparency for the Obama Administration.

And fellow new techPres contributing writer Gene Koo of Harvard's Berkman Center says that I/Nancy Scola wasn't nearly mean enough in my post about New York Governor David Paterson's budget calculator and its play at participation. "[S]he ignores the glaring fact that the tool is painfully meaningless to any normal taxpayer," writes Gene. Well, I didn't want to make anyone cry...

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