Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

My friend Jonathan Spalter, chairman of the Mobile Future Coalition and CEO of Public Insight, served as chief information officer at the United States Information Agency during the Clinton administration and has written an insightful op-ed piece for the San Jose Mercury News about Obama and that BlackBerry that may have to go to the tech bins at Goodwill.

“As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take power, sadly one of his first acts as president may be to power down his beloved BlackBerry smart-phone. Why must the leader of the country that created the Internet, e-mail and various other advancements, be forced to forgo modern technology?
The primary concern cited is the Presidential Records Act, which requires all presidential documents to be put in the official record. This is a worthy goal to be sure, and Obama, who was widely acknowledged as one of the most technologically savvy candidates during the campaign, has been an advocate for governmental accountability, transparency, accessibility and efficiency. Still, the strictures of this act should not deprive our president — or our nation — of the benefits of his BlackBerry, to which he has been joined at the hip.

While the president is required to furnish to the national archives logs of telephone calls, and copies of all correspondence and papers, electronic and otherwise, our nation’s archivists have no need for concern that smart-phones can circumvent these rules. BlackBerry One would be fully compliant, as all phone logs and text and e-mail messages can easily be saved on government servers.

Discretion required

The trickier issue has to do with the security of the president’s cell phone. Hackers have listened in on cell phone conversations and downloaded smart-phone data. For situations when the president needs to discuss sensitive or classified matters, mobile and wireless engineers and the U.S. intelligence agencies have designed and deployed ingenious encryption algorithms for use on dedicated mobile platforms for his use. When it comes to his everyday use of his personal smart-phone though, the president, like the rest of us, simply will need to exercise good judgment and discretion about what he says and what he sends.

Obama’s effective use of technology platforms like the smart-phone is important for other reasons. He plays a vital role as a champion of progress and innovation. What signal would it send to international technology markets, and our own citizens, that the U.S. president is “off the grid?” The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently established that Hispanics and African-Americans are driving data usage on mobile phones and using wireless handsets as portable personal computers. It is ironic that Obama would promote policies increasing access to mobile technologies, but personally would be restricted in their use.

YouTube president

This is not the first time that our nation’s presidents have had to contend with an often technophobic culture in the federal government. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes, despite strong misgivings from the White House telegraph office, installed the first telephone. The Clinton White House prevailed in a debate with the State Department allowing him to e-mail birthday greetings to the president of South Korea, rather than using snail mail.

President-elect Obama’s team has already initiated a march to technological progress — his weekly “radio” addresses to Americans have also broadcast on YouTube. Obama will also be the first president with a laptop on his Oval Office desk. By firmly embracing technologies like the smart-phone to engage people around the world, more efficiently manage his administration, and even occasionally check Chicago White Sox box scores, Obama will advocate a new era of transparency and innovation in American governance.”

When Barack Obama becomes president in about two months, he will be expected to give up his trusty BlackBerry, which has been securely fastened to his belt for years. There are a multitude of reasons why he will have to surrender his portable email device including security concerns, the Presidential Records Act (all correspondence is fair game for public viewing) and the looming threat of subpoenas.

To balance out the depravation of some technologies, Obama plans to be the first U.S. president to have a laptop on his Oval Office desk.

Though some have argued that Obama might be able to break the rules and retain email access, Diana Owen disagrees. “They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” she said. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

While gaining many privileges, Obama will have function without a few of life’s little conveniences in return.

It’s not often I come across a major musical artists’ web site and find that I can say to myself – “these guys got it right.” Today I visited John Mayers site and although I’m not a fan of his music the site is a great example of how to get the message across simply and elegantly while giving his fans the ability to interact on many levels. The tie-in with Blackberry is genius too. The Blackberry micro-site just spreads the Meyer messaging and interactivity far and wide by offering exclusive Meyer content – audio, video, pictures and more.

John says “hi.”

John Meyer has a blog and he seems to use it, at least I hope it’s him because the most egregious offense is having someone else blog for you. I’m going to keep checking back on this one. In fact there are multiple blog links on the home page. This one is written by “Scotty” who may be in the band or may be the T-shirt vendor, it’s hard to tell. The blog focuses on the new T-shirts – “A collaboration with Loomstate – a completely organic, sustainable tee. Very limited… We only made 587 of the shirts, each hangtag is hand-numbered.”

And there’s even a place to send in your encore requests for the shows you’ll attend. Customer happy time I reckon. And client happy too, Blackberry made a wise choice sponsoring this musician.

Credit: Mayer web link found on the Mediapost blogs.