A striking fact about the current political environment is that despite the ground-breaking Democratic victory on November 4th - whose seeds were planted by progressive online activists - the new administration is dealing with an oddly familiar political brew: the "liberal media" mantra is rekindled, conservative talk radio (i.e. anti-liberal radio) is resurgent, Rush Limbaugh is more relevant than ever, Ann Coulter is once again doing the network rounds, and if online commentary over the past month is any indication, many progressives still feel disconnected from the levers of power.

The assumption that the new presidency would transform the political process, usher in an era of unprecedented citizen empowerment and decimate the old conventional wisdom-making machinery, has been undermined by the reality of entrenched power structures, deep-seated rivalries, die-hard habits and Beltway business as usual.

Yesterday was challenging for the new Obama administration as two key individuals nominated for appointments removed their names from consideration. I was at the White House asking questions about the plans for the CTO and White House technology. Witnessing the heated afternoon press briefing, there was definitely some pressure being put on the administration to respond about whether they were perhaps moving too quickly on these cabinet and senior appointments.

I asked Nick Shapiro, White House spokesman on technology related topics, whether what we've been hearing about a possibly diminished role of the CTO was true. Essentially the answer is no.

As the tech community pored over the new whitehouse.gov site, one of the first subterranean changes noted was that of a file most people would never notice called robots.txt. This file serves as a notice to search robots informing them of what files they should or shouldn't survey. Upon seeing the new version of the file, some noticed that it only had two lines of code excluding robot searches vs. the former whitehouse.gov robots.txt that had nearly 2400 lines of exclude lines by the end of the Bush administration, sparking excitement and controversy over what the change means in terms of government transparency.

As the tech community poured over the new whitehouse.gov site, one of the first subterranean changes noted was that of a file most people would never notice called robots.txt. This file serves as a notice to search robots informing them of what files they should or shouldn't survey. Upon seeing the new version of the file, some noticed that it only had two lines of code excluding robot searches vs. the former whitehouse.gov robots.txt that had nearly 2400 lines of exclude lines by the end of the Bush administration, sparking excitement and controversy over what the change means in terms of government transparency.

Making stimulus bill first example of Obama transparency strategy can improve the bill, build support by GOP & voters who are skeptical after banks' behavior after first bailout, and begin comprehensive "democratizing data" effort to improve agency performance and involve public.

This morning, the Harvard Internet & Politics conference continues with two "deep dives" into the McCain and Obama campaigns. We continue to operate under Chatham House Rules, so the following liveblog will remain unattributed, but the speakers in these sessions played a role in the campaigns. This second morning session is about the Obama campaign.

The Cliff Notes Version:
(1) WhiteHouse.gov/TV; (2) Weekly Webcast; (3) GovTube; (4) Put Content on Non-Governmental sites; (5) Create New Media, Transparency, and Technology offices in every executive branch agency; (6) Monthly Department Secretaries webcasts; (7) Webcast the Inauguration; (8) Make the State of the Union an interactive multimedia event; (9) Make the President's Annual Budget a digital, multimedia document; (10) Enact all of this and more first by executive order, then through legislation, so future Administrations can't just hard reboot your digital legacy.

For the full version, read on...

As we transition from the presidential campaign to an Obama administration, the looming question is, "What will become of all those people networked via My.BarackObama.com (MyBO) and Obama's massive email list?" Is there a place in government for the swarming grassroots masses? And can we capitalize on its collective intelligence in order to make its contribution meaningful?

Obama asks for Gustav help via text message, the RNC gets started, Twitter at the DNC, Palin uses eBay, Alaska's blogging industry, and Palin's e-family drama

Check out Perspctv:An exploration of internet activity in reference to mainstream media. Gain a unique Perspctv on the US Presidential Elections.

This project presents different perspectives in our world, including that of Mainstream media and user-generated content on the Internet. Explore the similarities and the disparities, hear the many voices that have emerged and choose which view, if any, makes the most sense to you. What we think vs. what they say we think -- All the chatter on the Internet, all the traditional news media coverage, and all the pollsters -- Perspctv brings it all together in a simple and elegant manner -- and gives a unique "dashboard" picture of the elections at any one given moment in time, totally un-biased.