There is something oddly captivating about the White House Flickr feed. For all its staged quality, getting a daily peek at the inner-workings of the big white building offers a compelling glimpse of want goes on inside the highest-levels of government. Some of the most compelling shots are the most prosaic, like the image of a White House staffer with a radio stuffed down the back of her dress. Then there's the occasional look at the principles -- President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama -- doing the things that all humans do, but that are striking when the humans involved are the American President and his coterie. Here a strangely wiry and casually clad Obama prepares to receive an H1NI vaccination from a White House nurse. Is that cashmere?

So, who else pictures Air America's Ana Marie Cox and the Huffington Post's Jason Linkins knocking back whiskey shots as they annotate the White House Flickr feed? In this latest installment, White House photographer Pete Souza -- and his penchant for composing every shot where some natural obstacle is framing the images' principles -- comes in for special mocking. The pair also don't make much of the idea bandied about that somehow having someone paid to photograph the president creates a new level of transparency. You do get to see the fancy gowns and dapper suits people wear to parties, though. (Not really safe for work, unless you work somewhere swearing is encouraged.)

Here's Cox and Linkins' commentary on the shot above, taken on the White House's South Lawn:

Ana Marie: People tell you there's a photograph out there of Michelle hula-hooping, and you think, no, that's not possible.
Jason: But there is.
Ana Marie: That is the age in which we live.

More here.

Question: Why is what appears to be the only photo on the White House Flickr feed of Obama interacting with guests at the India state dinner this one?

Marc Ross, Christine Stineman, and Chris Lisi of 2ndSix, Tribe Effect and Chris Lisi Communications have just published a very interesting report looking at how 102 big Washington-based trade associations and advocacy groups are--or aren't--making use of an array of 14 core social media tools and platforms. The results shouldn't surprise anyone; it's still pretty obvious that a year after Barack Obama's electoral victory, most inside-the-Beltway still have a very cautious and traditional attitude towards social media.

But the individual breakdown by organization and the thoroughness of the research (which covers a ten week span ending October 2, 2009) ought to serve as a wake-up call for many groups. Because the results are pathetic: "75 of the organizations reviewed [are using] four or fewer online new media tools. The average score of the organizations reviewed was 24%, meaning 76% of the most commonly used social media tools are not being utilized to communicate with members, voters and other constituencies."

The General Services Administration, though little known to most Americans, is sort of the glue that binds together the government of the United States on the federal level. Now GSA is making a play at convincing us that we all, truly, make up "One America." Front and center on USA.gov are some of the photo submissions from the GSA's Flickr experiment that asked Americans to send in snapshots from their July 4th celebrations. The one above comes from Michele Markel Connors. There are some really great "Day in the Life" galleries and books that could come out of this approach of the sort that National Geographic once did with professional photographers -- "A Day in the Life of America's Farmers," for example.

Oh, are you unfamiliar with USA.gov and what it does? No worries. This video should catch you up...

With considerable new movement on the ground in Iran -- rallies, protests, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speech, the shifting political playing field -- and news cycles that are now measured in hours, if not minutes, are we seeing a slight ebb in the obsession over the idea that what's happening in Iran is best understand as some sort of "Twitter Revolution?" Maybe. Or perhaps that's wishful thinking. Either way, there's still enough to fill a roundup of what's happening in and around Iran when it comes to technology, social media, and the Internet in full. (Here's yesterday's roundup, the previous day's, and one from earlier in the week.) Let's dig in...

Andrew Sullivan picks up on a story where some Israelis are taking offense at a photograph showing Obama with his feet perched up on the historic Resolute desk while talking to their prime minister. Of course, Obama's talking on a old-fashioned telephone, not video conferencing via Skype or using some sort of awesome Jetson-type communication device. So how can we be sure who he's chatting up? He's outed by Flickr. "President Barack Obama talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," reads the photo caption, "during a phone call from the Oval Office." Relations between Obama and Netanyahu have been somewhat tense, and some are seeing the showing of the soles of his feet as a sign of disrespect -- even if he's actually only showing the undersides of his laceups to White House photographer Pete Souza, not Bibi Netanyahu himself. Hey, a window into the White House is a window into the White House, and a Flickr'd presidency is bound to reveal an awkward detail or two on occasion. Sullivan, for one, isn't impressed by the Israelis' pique: "This relationship needs some boundaries."

While we get the blog up and running this morning, occupy yourself with this nice find from the White House's Flickr photo stream, via the DNC blog. Not a bad piece of iconography for the Obama White House, and it's been viewed more than 21,000 times on Flickr thus far.

This is a bit funny. Politico's Ben Smith answers the "what could go wrong?" question on the near universally-praised White House move of posting hundreds of photographs to Flickr. Smith finds a picture where a foreign policy advisor is shown with a clutch of papers under his arm. Zoom in a bit, and you see the notation "CIA." And then, "Secret." Oopsie. The White House made the case that what was shown in the photo was nothing more than a super-secret fax cover sheet. They pulled the photo down anyway. (Click over to Ben's post to see the now clandestine shot.)

And in another find that pretty much justifies his salary for the next year, Smith digs up a photo of President Obama perusing a print copy of Politico. Hey, the New Republic got a ton of mileage out of that "in-flight magazine of Air Force One" thing.

(In case you're curious, what the photo reveals about other reading material supplied by the White House: Financial Times, Washington Times, USA Today, Fortune, the New Yorker, the Economist, Rolling Stone, National Georgraphic, Business Week, and, umm, People -- with Michelle Obama on the cover.)

The White House is celebrating hitting the 100 day mark by posting a few hundred photos to its Flickr stream, and they offer a peek into what's happening in the Obama White House on a day-to-day basis. It's probably fair to say that, like him or not, there's something humanizing about seeing the president -- and all the president's men and women -- going about the work of the nation and catching the occasional football game in 3D. That, of course, is likely the White House's intention, and it's one of the prime benefits of social media for government actors: we're more reluctant to see people as proper targets of ire and derision when we regularly see them cavorting with puppies, or otherwise acting in ways that are identifiably human.

White House photographer Pete Souza mixes straightforward fare with some rather artistic captures:

This is probably as good a time as any to note that the General Services Administration -- the mechanics of the executive branch, if you will -- has been busy negotiating government-wide terms-of-service arrangements with web services so that every agency and department can post their very own Flickr photosets, YouTube videos, and the like. Having pre-approved services streamlines things when executive branch entities get ready to get 2.0. Get ready for videos of Tom Vilsack hoeing a row or shots of Stephen Chu working out energy-saving algorithms in his DOE office late at night. GSA's latest round of negotiations covers Facebook, MySpace, Blist, AddThis, Vimeo, and Slideshare.