As you might have heard, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account was violated and its contents -- including family photos and contact information -- splayed across message boards, gossip blogs, and elsewhere across the web; The Commission on Presidential Debates and MySpace have gotten together to spawn MyDebates.org; The House Committee on Financial Services recently considered the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, a bill opposed by commercial banks, local chambers of commerce, and others in the financial industry. So it just might be interesting to know how much money those interests where kicking into the coffers of the members of Congress vetting the bill, right? That's precisely what you can do with Maplight's remarkable new congressional committee tool; and much more.

• Washington is going crazy over snappy domain names. First there was Change.gov, and now this...
• Remember that Silicon Alley Insider post a few weeks back that reported President-elect Barack Obama was looking to appoint a first federal CTO who was a Silicon Valley-rooted doctorate-holding scientist? Hmm, not so much...
• Silicon Valley congressman Mike Honda (D) was eager to use the Internet to "follow the exciting trail blazed by our next President." So he challenged his constituents to a Facebook contest...
• And more.

• Not to be cowed by Organizing for America's 13-million-member or so mailing list, John McCain stepped into the fray yesterday with an email to his list on the stimulus package before Congress...
• We may never know what role, if any, the Tom Daschle YouTube video that burned up the Intertubes yesterday had in his withdrawal as HHS nominee. But woowee, it couldn't have helped...
• With Daschle out of the running, there's a been a renewed push in what is perhaps best called the progressive blogosphere to install former DNC chair Howard Dean at the helm of Health and Human Services...
• Recovery.gov, the much-anticipated oversight site tracking the payouts from the $900 billion stimulus package currently before Congress, has been dropped from the Senate version of the bill, Is it time to start worrying?...
• And even more.

It looks like President Obama's email list still has a lot of punch to it. Yesterday, he sent out a mass email asking people to watch a four-and-a-half minute video addressing the Organizing for America house parties, and so far that video has garnered more than 460,000 views, nearly as many as his first video announcing OFA's launch. Beyond these metrics, it's pretty interesting to listen to how Obama's talks to his base. He doesn't use the word "crowdsourcing," but tell me if you don't hear it in how he describes how he plans to use the web to make sure his recovery plan works.

Check out this report from Clint Hendler of CJR.org, who is tracking President Obama's comments at today's town-hall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana. He quotes Obama describing Recovery.gov in the following way:

“We’re actually going to set up something called Recovery.gov—this is going to be a special website we set up, that gives you a report on where the money is going in your community, how it’s being spent, how many jobs it’s being created so that all of you can be the eyes and ears. And if you see that a project is not working the way it’s supposed to, you’ll be able to get on that website and say, ‘You know, I thought this was supposed to be going to school construction but I haven’t noticed any changes being made.’ And that will help us track how this money is being spent....The key is that we’re going to have strong oversight and strong transparency to make sure this money isn’t being wasted.”

This could be pretty disruptive, the more you think about it...

In his press conference this morning, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the creation of a new website to track the evolution of the new "Financial Stability Plan." Geithner:

Our work begins with a new framework of oversight and governance of all aspects of our Financial Stability Plan.

The American people will be able to see where their tax dollars are going and the return on their government’s investment, they will be able to see whether the conditions placed on banks and institutions are being met and enforced, they will be able to see whether boards of directors are being responsible with taxpayer dollars and how they’re compensating their executives, and they will be able to see how these actions are impacting the overall flow of lending and the cost of borrowing.

These new requirements, which will be available on a new website FinancialStability.gov, will give the American people the transparency they deserve.

These steps build on what we’ve done already. We’ve acted to ensure the integrity of the process that provides access to government support, so that it is independent of influence from lobbyists and politics. We’ve committed to provide the American people with information on how their money is spent and under what conditions by posting contracts on the Internet. And, importantly, we have outlined strong conditions on executive compensation.

There's not much yet happening on the just-announced site -- though with some press resources and video clips, it's farther along than Recovery.gov.

Drupal developers are abuzz with the realization that the White House's new Recovery.gov site was built using the free and open-source content management platform Drupal. Pre-Recovery.gov, the perhaps highest-profile use of Drupal had been the Onion website. But that's not the only reason that Drupal fans are excited. I asked two CMS expert friends to help me understand the situation, and here are a few of the reasons they gave for why the White House's embrace of Drupal is momentous...

Recovery.gov just launched. And that, of course, calls for an insta-reaction to what's on the as-released federal stimulus oversight site and what's not there, yet.

What's There:

Graceful Timeline of the "Recovery" Process. It's an elegant, scrollable look at the so-far brief history of the stimulus, and simple way to make a massive overhaul of American society appear eminently ordered. Milestones to lookout for are already marked, like March 3 -- the date that federal agencies are required to start reporting how they're spending stimulus dollars. (Nuts and bolts for the geeks: the timeline is, it seems, using the MIT Simile Web Widgets timeline API.)

Cute Bubble Charts. In pleasing pastels, the chart displays where, in very broad categories, the $800 billion or so is going -- though it's going to take more than Easter Eggs colors to calm some on the left after they see how Obama's using the despised phrase "tax relief." Bonus: a job impact map.

Share Your Story Feature. Revealing that Recovery.gov isn't all about numbers, the site bakes in what's quickly becoming a hallmark of Obama online: a narrative-collecting feature.

Exit Notices. Which I only mention because, really, could there be anything more archaically inane than "You are exiting..." pop-ups when you move from one federal website to another federal website to another federal website? I mean, reading the text of the stimulus bill requires okaying one exit notice on the hop from Recovery.gov, and another on the jump from WhiteHouse.gov to the Government Printing Office site. Sheesh.

What's Missing:

A Responsible Party. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board which will oversee Recovery.gov, hasn't been formed yet. So, email away! But know that there isn't really yet anyone on the receiving end.

Data. Data. Data. Of course, with the act three hours old, there just isn't much yet. That said, whether Recovery.gov will give open-government advocates the raw data that they're hungering for is still an open question. The site is, thus far, populated by the shiny consumer-end charts. A that's good start, but no replacement, advocates say, for raw XML data then can then use for mash-ups and number crunching.

There are signs that the Administration gets what advocates want. The site promises to "[p]rovide data that will allow citizens to evaluate the Act’s progress and provide feedback," and a question on XML in the FAQs acknowledges the absence of data, but says "as new systems are developed to capture the allocations and expenditures under the Act, we plan to make that data available in exportable form."

Transparency advocates have been concerned that the public will get access to only 10,000-feet-up federal agency accounting -- not drilled-down data on, say, state-level projects. Recovery.gov implies that agencies will be handing over that granular data as a matter of course:

Very soon, the different agencies...will decide who will receive award grants and contracts. Sometimes the money will go to a state government; other times, the funds will go directly to a school, hospital, contractor, or other organization. Agencies will then deliver that information to the Recovery.gov team. We will subsequently make the information available on Recovery.gov, and you will be able to track where the money is going.

Drupal developers are abuzz with the realization that the White House's new Recovery.gov site was built using the free and open-source content management platform Drupal. Pre-Recovery.gov, the perhaps highest-profile use of Drupal had been the Onion website. But that's not the only reason that Drupal fans are excited. I asked two CMS expert friends to help me understand the situation, and here are a few of the reasons they gave for why the White House's embrace of Drupal is momentous...

You might have noticed that Recovery.gov is sporting a new logo. The top half of the circular design is given over to eight flag-evoking stars against a slate blue field and, notably, the "recovery.gov" website tag. The bottom left quadrant sports what looks to be a pea sprout against a kelly green background, and the bottom right has a pair of mechanical gears against a deep red backdrop. (Though the gears are interlocking on the logo circulating on the web, they don't look to be on the one Obama debuted. Read into that what you will.)

Mode Project, the Chicago firm that did the consistent design work that branded the Obama campaign as a well-oiled machine, crafted the logo. If the goal is to brand the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as a unified national project as the billions in funds spider out through federal agencies, there are signs it's working -- HUD.gov is already kicking the new design. The Wall Street Journal's Phil Izzo is cautious about the depression-era connotations and the Tampa Bay Tribune quotes one New York artist's bashing the design as "ridiculous, quite frankly." But Obama seems to like it:

We’re also making it easier for Americans to see what projects are being funded with their money as part of our recovery. So in the weeks to come, the signs denoting these projects are going to bear the new emblem of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," Obama said. "These emblems are symbols of our commitment to you, the American people -- a commitment to investing your tax dollars wisely, to put Americans to work doing the work that needs to be done. So when you see them on projects that your tax dollars made possible, let it be a reminder that our government -- your government -- is doing its part to put the economy back on the road of recovery.

Mode Project also whipped up a emblem for the U.S. Department of Transportation's TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) team. At least the recovery seems to creating a few jobs -- for graphic designers.

(Photo credit: White House photographer Pete Souza)