Governmental Dinosaur
January 22, 2009 • 12:28 pm • POSTED BY Adam Flanagan
Some of you may know that ocassionaly the creative department likes to complain about the PCs at the office, like the fact that there still isn’t a Mac that’s hooked up to the conference room screen. Just imagine how Obama’s team felt on Wednesday. When Obama was campaigning they used Macs, Blackberrys, Facebook, Gmail, Instant Messaging, everything that your typical modern day consumer brand would use to communicate internally and externally. They even managed to overhaul the White House web site, they put a little bit of Obama flavor into it, and added a blog.
We learned awhile back about how attached Obama is to his blackberry, and never before has a President been allowed to have email (WTF?) or even a cell phone (WTF?), personally I’m okay with a President been able to keep in touch with his staff and family while on the move. However, now they’re not campaigning and they’re back to having government jobs, which isn’t Mac-friendly, and not exactly open to the idea of it’s employees logging onto Facebook, AIM, or even having external email accounts. There’s a great little story over at the Washington Post about the shock Obama’s staff got regarding the lack of current technology at the White House. They’re using Windows versions that date back 6 years.
It’ll be interesting to see how and if the Obama presidency can change the culture at the White House to become more contemporary in the means they use to stay in touch with each other, and with us.
so I just read on the NYT site that the Secret Service, etc has agreed to let Obama keep his Blackberry. Score one for modernization!
You and that New York Times. What’s next, The Guardian?
I see a huge service opportunity here for Apple — donate computers to the White House. It would be the nice thing to do. Plus, there would be a load of free advertising. I can already see the photos of Obama and Biden carrying their MacBook Pros onto Air Force One.
jmiller – Your idea is appealing. But, I think that there are probably rules about a government vendor (e.g. Apple) providing gifts to a government agency.
I think this is a huge opportunity for Blackberry. Market a certifiably secure Blackberry. Hardware-embedded encryption and authentication.
The average cell phone is the world’s best tracker. Any competent cracker could activate the microphone and even capture camera images, without any audible or visible sign. The phone maintains GPS coordinates.