Flying without a Flight Plan

United Airlines has become well known for its failures coping with criticism from social computing venues, as the airline immortalized in the YouTube viral hit "United Breaks Guitars" that has received over ten million views that could only provide the most anemic response to the torrents of online hatred it has experienced since the video's debut. The corporation's new media arm, which includes the UnitedItsTimeToFly YouTube channel has been panned by experts for its lack of content and responsiveness. (The fact that United was scooped on getting the United YouTube channel by someone posting blurry video of friends and family probably says a lot.) The company's blathering Twitter stream has also caused critics to opine "Dear United Airlines, You Don't Get Twitter. At All."


Now the hashtag #unitedfail has become associated with another high-profile fiasco for its Internet image, a story bearing the New York Times headline "United Flights Resume After Five-Hour Computer Failure," which describes how travelers were stranded all over the country last Friday as they struggled to reach weekend destinations. Apparently mobile boarding pass technologies utterly failed, and passengers planning to check in using their smart phones found themselves forced to substitute hand-written boarding passes like this one.

The company's Facebook page shows an interesting story about digital rhetoric unfolding, one in which commentators frequently pile on those with complaints against United. For example, people trapped in the terminal with crying children were told to be more effective disciplinarians as parents and not to be crybabies themselves by calling everything an "emergency."

Of course, comments like these inevitably got "likes" from other disgruntled customers:

Nice pictures, United. Those check-in kiosk photos clearly show how many people are lining up to fly you. And nice work with the computer meltdown, World's Leading Airline.

Flight from LAS to IAD was cancelled. Gate agent provided an 'apology voucher'. Followed the instructions on the voucher and used the www.united.com/appreciation web site, and I got nothing. United sent an email and has said a customer representative will contact me within 10 days, but I got nothing. Can someone tell me how to go about? Thanks.

So it seems united decided to "invest" in executive bonuses instead of IT systems that work. They get rich we get s.....d

Nice pictures, United. Those check-in kiosk photos clearly show how many people are lining up to fly you. And nice work with the computer meltdown, World's Leading Airline.

Nonetheless, United fans were busy working the Facebook page with reminders about the failures of other airlines and other technology services and sermons about the value of patience. However, not all of these people seemed to be genuinely neutral parties: it wasn't hard to find a United employee and a person with only one other Facebook friend who also was also an upbeat commentator on the Deepwater Horizon page.

Mobility Shifts

There are only a few more days before the call for Mobility Shifts: An International Future of Learning Summit closes. Like the previous conference organized by Trebor Scholz on digital labor, The Internet as Playground and Factory, pre-conference discussion is already an important part of the critical discourse around the event, and the mailing list for the Institute for Distributed Creativity is already abuzz with introductions from keynoters like Cathy Davidson of HASTAC.

Matt Gold and I are co-chairing the "Digital Fluencies" track at the conference, and we're interested in expanding the meaning of what digital learning means on a very fundamental level to get away from the charity-case after-school computer lab paradigm and the romance with the digital native and to look seriously at forms of learning that involve mobile devices, political engagement, and much more ambiguous narratives.

What are new pedagogic approaches for learning with mobile platforms? What are the limitations of the “digital literacies” paradigm and its first world/third world assumptions?

How do we promulgate digital fluency as an understanding of the particular features of global information flows in which data, attention, capital, and reputation might move both to and from individual actors and communities?

How can mobile media platforms be used for more than the one-way delivery of content? What are new pedagogical approaches for real-time mobile learning that make full use of the potential of mobile phones, iPods, laptops, PDAs, smart phones, Tablet PCs, and netbooks in formal and informal contexts? How can global participants use mobile media to create rich social contexts around important learning tasks? How can such platforms be leveraged to teach digital rights and the value of collaboration across cultures?

How can we dispel the myth of the digital native?

How can mobile networks reshape our experiences of space and place through interactive architecture, locative art, geo-caching games, and real-time object recognition? What opportunities for networked teaching and learning might we find in such media-rich, responsive environments?

Check out the call for participation here. The deadline is July 1.

(Sixth College is one of the partners of the project and plans to sponsor faculty and TAs from the Culture, Art, and Technology program to attend the event.)

Weigh Station

I've never been a person of religious sentiments, so it has been difficult for me to have much faith in dieting. Much like systems of spiritual belief, confidence in different ideologies of weight loss have always struck me as suspect.

However, thanks to the advent of online video, it is hard to deny that there really should be less of me. For example, the difference in size between a performance in 2008 at the Annenberg Center and one in 2010 is particularly marked.

So I find myself polling people at the university, from an administrator who swears by consuming only brussels sprouts for a month to a faculty member in the Math department, who has posted his conversion story online.

I'm tempted to solve this problem of daily life with my iPhone, as I do most everyday needs. So I downloaded a pedometer app and soon went out to walk, jog, and run to burn calories and participate in a new culture of self-monitoring where people track stats from the most intimate aspects of their lives. Each day of personal surveillance I can peruse charts where my vital signs have been tracked from second-to-second much like an intensive care monitor.

After testing out this application, I soon discovered a number of technical flaws. First, like many apps, the pedometer seems to turn off when the phone rings or a text message arrives. As someone who often checks e-mail while waiting for a crosswalk to be greenlighted, this is a significant design flaw. I'm not sure that one can listen to the mp3 player on the phone while exercising and still keep track of one's steps. Second, it measures distance much more accurately if stored in a pants pocket rather than the pocket of a sweater or jacket. This led me to a frustrating search for exercise pants with pockets, which were strangely unavailable at a number of retail outlets. I actually found a number of pairs with fake pockets merely for decoration!

If only I could download an iPhone app like the music recognition app Shazam where I could point my phone at a plate of food and be told the calories it contains.

The Social Contract

In today's White House press conference, President Obama credited technology for mobilizing dissenters in Tunis and Egypt to topple authoritarian regimes.

You can’t maintain power through coercion. At some level, in any society, there has to be consent. And that’s particularly true in this new era where people can communicate not just through some centralized government or a state-run TV, but they can get on a smart phone or a Twitter account and mobilize hundreds of thousands of people.

There are three things that immediately strike me about this response to a reporter's question: 1) It follows a discussion of "young people" and a "young, vibrant generation," which suggests a belief in a "digital generation" as central civic actors, 2) Twitter must be thrilled with being credited in so many news organizations with the overthrow of governments, particularly at a time when its own user base in the United States may be moving on to new technologies at the same time that the young seem not to have chosen to adopt this particular microblogging platform in the first place, and 3) Obama's use of the language of the social contract has its ironies, given that the actual user agreements of most mobile technologies and social media platforms require consent unconditionally.

This last point is important for understanding how the issue of "Internet freedom" has been championed this week by the Obama administration. In a speech given today by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she compared the divergent outcomes of digital activism in Egypt and Iran to argue for "the power of connection technologies" as both an "accelerant of political, social, and economic change, and on the other hand as a means to stifle or extinguish that change."

Clinton presented a much more sophisticated argument than many cyberutopians, one that focused on how technology can service both liberation and repression. Unlike the President, she also seemed to mock associating particular Web 2.0 brand names with civic participation and political change.

Egypt isn’t inspiring people because they communicated using Twitter. It is inspiring because people came together and persisted in demanding a better future. Iran isn’t awful because the authorities used Facebook to shadow and capture members of the opposition. Iran is awful because it is a government that routinely violates the rights of its people.

She then launched into a familiar Habermassian reading of cyberspace before defending the concept of a cosmopolitan, multinational structure of governance.

The internet has become the public space of the 21st century – the world’s town square, classroom, marketplace, coffeehouse, and nightclub. We all shape and are shaped by what happens there, all 2 billion of us and counting. And that presents a challenge. To maintain an internet that delivers the greatest possible benefits to the world, we need to have a serious conversation about the principles that will guide us, what rules exist and should not exist and why, what behaviors should be encouraged or discouraged and how.

The goal is not to tell people how to use the internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square, whether it’s Tahrir Square or Times Square. The value of these spaces derives from the variety of activities people can pursue in them, from holding a rally to selling their vegetables, to having a private conversation. These spaces provide an open platform, and so does the internet. It does not serve any particular agenda, and it never should. But if people around the world are going come together every day online and have a safe and productive experience, we need a shared vision to guide us.

One year ago, I offered a starting point for that vision by calling for a global commitment to internet freedom, to protect human rights online as we do offline. The rights of individuals to express their views freely, petition their leaders, worship according to their beliefs – these rights are universal, whether they are exercised in a public square or on an individual blog. The freedoms to assemble and associate also apply in cyberspace. In our time, people are as likely to come together to pursue common interests online as in a church or a labor hall.

Together, the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association online comprise what I’ve called the freedom to connect. The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere, and we have called on other nations to do the same. Because we want people to have the chance to exercise this freedom. We also support expanding the number of people who have access to the internet. And because the internet must work evenly and reliably for it to have value, we support the multi-stakeholder system that governs the internet today, which has consistently kept it up and running through all manner of interruptions across networks, borders, and regions.

When thinking about what "Internet freedom" might mean, however, Clinton draws limits on "access" and "transparency" to defend the "private" as well as the "public." What I find interesting is that much like the recording industry and how it defends intellectual property, Clinton focuses on the rhetorical figure of "theft."

Now, I know that government confidentiality has been a topic of debate during the past few months because of WikiLeaks, but it’s been a false debate in many ways. Fundamentally, the WikiLeaks incident began with an act of theft. Government documents were stolen, just the same as if they had been smuggled out in a briefcase. Some have suggested that this theft was justified because governments have a responsibility to conduct all of our work out in the open in the full view of our citizens. I respectfully disagree. The United States could neither provide for our citizens’ security nor promote the cause of human rights and democracy around the world if we had to make public every step of our efforts. Confidential communication gives our government the opportunity to do work that could not be done otherwise.

Dear User

The "dear user" letter on corporate websites is developing its own rhetorical conventions for situations in which high-tech companies must acknowledge limitations or flaws in their advertised products. Check out "Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4" for what might prove to be a classic in the genre, which was issued in response to forum postings, blog posts, and videos about the so-called "death grip" that seemed to cause signal strength to drop when the phone was held in a certain way. (It's also interesting to see outraged forum posts aimed at Dan Slocum, who publicized the flaw among fans of Apple's newest gadget.)

Unlike corporate headquarters that issue other kinds of official apologies, companies that launch computational media lines must be careful to avoid the tone of the mea culpa that has been cultivated by makers of traditional goods. Unlike the "dear valued customer" approach adopted most recently by Toyota and mocked here, "users" seem to have a different status. Apple also seems to have hurt feelings about the way that its competition has tried to exploit the apparent defect in advertising campaigns.

To demonstrate my point I'll provide the full text and then some explication of its rhetorical strategies.

Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.

Thank you for your patience and support.

Apple

First, off the half-hearted apology doesn't come until the very end, and when it does arrive, it takes the form of apologizing for the neurotic user who lacks the expected "patience and support" and can only respond with "anxiety" because they are not part of the "vast majority" who "have not been troubled.

Second, note the frontloading of expressions of "surprise," a term that occurs twice in this missive. The company isn't "shocked" or even "dismayed." Rather Apple registers its initial detachment from the kerfuffle, until it explains that it is "stunned" once it has figured out the actual cause and can share its learned discourse with the user.

Third, observe also that the company reminds the user twice that the appropriate response to the new iPhone is "love," thus also emphasizing a corporate branding strategy built around holding the status of a so-called "lovemark."

Fourth, notice that when it names its rivals in the smart phone business by name, it starts with Droid, which had launched the offending snarky anti-iPhone campaign.

Finally, in choosing to bash its software rather than its hardware, note Apple's use of adverbial hyperbole: "totally," "mistakenly," and "erroneously" emphasize its abasement and its lack of competence as a software company. Apple must go to AT&T (among consumers, known as the hated monopolistic sole carrier of the phone) to come to its rescue with a better algorithm.

Skinterfaces

Thanks to Jacki Morie for the link

Baby Love

More information about this condom campaign, which focuses on depicting an obnoxious iPhone app, can be found here. Note that the application appears not to be available from the iPhone store, although one can purchase the "Spice Dice" application from Durex.

Mashup from the Stands

On YouTube there are a number of much-watched videos of people being tased by police -- including a particularly famous one of a UCLA student being tased in a library -- and a number of videos of fans running out onto playing fields during games. (Many of the fan-on-the-field videos feature exuberant displays of nudity.) Now video of a seventeen-year-old fan being tasered at a Phillies game is creating controversy about the use of this restraint technique by law enforcement. Numerous versions of the event shot by witnesses with video cameras are now posted on YouTube, although the television network cut away during the event.

What I find interesting from a rhetorical standpoint is the way that the event is perceived from the stands. Some versions seem to celebrate the event with spectatorial glee, while others emphasize the boos at an appalling abuse of police power. Compare these two hundred-thousand plus viewed examples to see.

Texty Cop

In City of Ontario, California, et al., Petitioners v. Jeff Quon, et al the Supreme Court is taking up the tricky questions of privacy involved in employers who snoop on the personal electronic communications of their employees. The appeal of a SWAT officer, his wife, his girlfriend, and his friend complains of privacy violations, because prolifically produced and sometimes sexually explicit text messages to and from Officer Jeff Quon were examined and found inappropriate by his bosses. The Ninth Circuit is known for its free speech liberalism when it comes to computer-mediated communication, and their decision that both upholds and reverses the disciplinary action of Quon's employers will give the high court more than it may know what to do with, given Chief Justice Roberts apparent befuddlement with high-tech electronic devices. For more information about the case, you can check out coverage on Scotus Blog and The Volokh Conspiracy.

Because Quon is a public employee, any precedent set by the case may be limited, but a recent study on Teens and Mobile Phones by Amanda Lenhart indicates that more texters will soon be entering the workforce.

Talking Turkey

I mentioned last week how lame this year's April Fools Day pranks from Google were. However, not all of their efforts worldwide were as painfully unfunny. Check out the Google Translate for Animals, which is supposedly available for the Android phone, to see videos for the fictional app.

Run Time

Watching today's Los Angeles Marathon as it reached its conclusion a few blocks away from my home in Santa Monica, I was struck by the fact that far fewer people were running with iPods than I might have expected, even though the Marathon website was promoting its iMixes specifically for the race. But I also saw far more people were talking on cell phones than I would have expected for a run that leaves most breathless. As I cheered on the runners reaching the home stretch I was particularly struck by the determination of the large number of children running in the race, especially those from Students Run LA, who were easily recognizable in their bright green tops.

In order to stagger start times for the 26,000 participants and yet still provide accurate final finish line times for each of the 23,000 plus individuals who actually made it to the end, which could be posted on the Internet as a badge of pride and an aid to logistics, the marathon's organizers used RFID technology embedded in the runner's numbered bibs and listed times for each 5K unit of the race.

The Ministry of Distraction

Watching ads on television, at first I thought that I must have somehow misheard the pitch for the government website Distraction.gov. Although the Obama administration has been associated with a plethora of new domain names not related to government agencies, they have mostly had positive connotations that support the image of the authority of the state like AStrongMiddleClass.gov or MakingHomeAffordable.gov.

Now Distraction.gov offers official warnings against vehicular multitasking with ubiquitous communication technologies complete with a PSA against talking and texting while driving.

Update: Ironically, the New York Times points out in this article that government employees like paramedics or police officers are some of the worst offenders when it comes to using high-tech gadgets as they drive.

Phone Blue

In an article about how "Apple Bans Some Apps for Sex-Tinged Content," there is an interesting portrait of the entrepreneurs who depend on micropayments and an implied commentary about how Google's Android smartphone has taken a much less censoring stand. It is also worth noting that the article doesn't cover cruising phone applications that take advantage of the phone's geolocation to find willing sexual partners.

Dance with Coltan

Throughout the DML conference, there were interludes staged by my UCI colleague, dance professor and performance artist Sheron Wray. Wray's project Texterritory uses audience responses keyed in by text messages on mobile telephones and smart phone apps that replicate musical instruments to widen the circle of performance to include those who would otherwise be bystanders. In her latest work, an anxious character "Grace," comes to Los Angeles seeking an odyssey of star-studded wonder and instead is redirected by her friend to pursue didactic dance classes and surreal gang tours. Her latest piece turns out to have a strong didactic component that is intended to get spectators more aware of how Coltan and other materials from Africa that go into mobile phones have costs to the political life, economic sustainability, and human rights landscape of mining countries. The last question viewers are left with is the number of phones that they have owned during an era of disposable consumer electronics in which devices are tied to plans, status, upgrades, and planned obsolescence.

Black to the Future

S. Craig Watkins was the opening keynote speaker at the first Digital Media and Learning Conference sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation this evening, where he presented research about working class black and Latino youth and their use of media and technology that might have seemed counterintuitive just a few years ago, when a prominent study in 1998 was showing them on the disadvantaged side of a growing "digital divide."

In a talk titled "Living on the Digital Margins: How Black and Latino Youth are Remaking the Participation Gap," Watkins argued that these youth populations have become not only "early adopters" of computational media but also "resilient adopters" who must adapt to situations in which equipment is broken, access is blocked, and public spaces are surveiled.

Watkins was introduced by conference organizer Henry Jenkins who argued that the tone of the conference should be one appropriate for "new opportunities to struggle" rather than one of techno-utopian celebration in a conference that was to be characterized by "provocations" that opened with Jenkins calling up the spirit of John Fiske, who had shown how the same Rodney King tape that exposed police brutality could also be used to protect the abusers in court. He also argued that it was important to understand digital access in something other than binary terms, because young people didn't exist solely "in" or "out" of the digital. For those who had not heard him speak in recent years, he also reiterated his assertion that "participatory culture" should be distinguished from the business model "Web 2.0." Citing the work of Paula Petrick, he looked back to "Web -10" during the 1850s and 1860s, when young people created amateur presses contributed much to American civic life, along with the phrase "L.O.L." He also noted, as Cass Sunstein has argued, that digital architectures create "enclaves" that may exclude others.

In other words, the tenor of the conference was to reflect the attitude of many recently published academic titles about digital participation. In a Chronicle review of some of them by Siva Vaidhyanathan, he praised "a number of smart recent books that gently and eruditely warn us of the rising costs and risks of mindlessly diving into new digital environments—without, however, raising apocalyptic fears of the entire project."

They constitute an important "third wave" of work about the digital environment. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, we saw books like Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital (Knopf, 1995) and Howard Rhein-gold's The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier (Addison-Wesley, 1993) and Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution (Perseus, 2002), which idealistically described the transformative powers of digital networks. Then we saw shallow blowback, exemplified by Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason (Pantheon, 2008).

In Watkins' work on "the young and the digital," he extends his analysis of hip hop culture to look at the "flexible, open, and imaginative" use of mobile phones for games, music, and communication in which the Twitter feeds of members of these communities may reflect the activities of a "new town square" that invites "commentary and critique," as well as DIY activities, personal expression, peer-based learning, and taking pleasure in the spaces of leisure. To flesh out his own observations of informal interactions involving cellular devices, which were illustrated with beautiful phones and personalized display screens, he pointed to the Kaiser multi-year study of young people's screen time throughout the day in 1999, 2004, and 2009, which culminated in the report on Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, which showed people of color as heavier media consumers and more active users of social networks than their white counterparts, which only accelerated after their mass migration from MySpace to Facebook.

Watkins highlighted a number of specific points in his talk:

1) The role of cultural capital in the life of black youth cannot be underestimated, given the importance of "taste cultures" and attention to "one's self-presentation" in which one is expected to be devoted to "keepin' it real in the digital age" as minority populations work through their online "fantasies and identities."

2) Abilities to master valued "soft skills" and handle "code-switching" also matters to employers and admissions officers who may not be making judgments based on "hard skills" like traditional literacy or numeracy.

3) The politics of race and space still matters, and young people's engagement in creating and critiquing with digital media deserves attention. (He cited how victims of Hurricane Katrina used social network sites to reconnect and maintain relationships after the disaster.)

4) Public memorials and grieving may also be part of how digital engagement is measured. (He illustrated this point with the story of the death of Justin Mendez and his subsequent memorialization.)

However, Watkins also argued that is was important to pay attention to "digital gating and sorting." For example, even as Facebook becomes more diverse, according to the company's own metrics, it is still associated with the aspirations of white college students and the metaphors of respective virtual spaces may still be racially coded as young people leave "trashy" or "crowded" MySpace. As he explained the "mobile paradox" in which young people of color are online but not via desktop or laptop, he worried about the absence of intergenerational participation and adult supervision in many young people's Internet experiences and the effects of a rise of "sexting" in the population he was studying. Although he understood this as a logical response to the restrictions on use posed by libraries and community centers and a way to "remake geometries of power" in "home, school, and public spaces," he was concerned that they might be "hanging out" and "messing around" but not be "geeking out," in the words of a recent MacArthur report on "Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media" and not always successfully navigating between "friendship genres" and "interest genres" to be guided to civic participation.

Divine Guidance (and GPS)

According to "Obama Receives Religious Devotionals by Blackberry," the President of the United States uses ubiquitous computing technologies to receive snippets from Christian scriptures suggested by one of his spiritual advisors.

President Obama doesn't need to step foot in a church to find spiritual inspiration -- it comes directly to his BlackBerry.

Every day, the president receives "devotionals," or passages meant to bring one closer to God, from Joshua DuBois, the head of his Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

"Whether it's a passage of scripture or a piece out of a book that I think he might be interested in or a prayer, it's something to start his day off on the right note," DuBois told Fox News.

When he took office, Obama fought vehemently with his security staff to keep that BlackBerry, a highly-secure version of the standard store-bought phone and messaging device that has now become something of a spiritual lifeline.

The conservative Fox news service actually used this story largely to remind its audience that Obama has yet to choose a physical church for face-to-face religious observance and that this hesitance to join a congregation may be traced to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright scandal.

Political Apportunity

Yesterday, the White House announced that it was releasing an iPhone app for "iPhone users on the go" who will "tune in through their phones." The use of radio metaphors may be telling, since the administration seems to be thinking about the device in terms of one-to-many traditional broadcast models.

Soon critics were asking if it was really a more efficient method of delivery for the citizen-on the go, or if it was simply a "propaganda tool."

But that's where this app, despite its benefits as a window onto White House goings-on (soon to be augmented with a mobile.WhiteHouse.gov Web site that'll work on other smartphones), is ever so slightly questionable. Because under the guise of providing access, it smacks of a propagandizing mechanism--simply because though it provides information, it doesn't seem to allow for "customer feedback" or even debate in the form of blog comments.

My own gripe with the iPhone app, which I have downloaded onto my own device, is really twofold:

1) It doesn't do much with the ubiquity offered by a mobile device and simply repackages existing web content for the smaller screen. Geolocation, sound input, uploading of information captured from the iPhone camera . . . none of these technologies are actually used. We don't even know what regions of the country are using the app at any given time or what kind of content is generating buzz. This tends to be a problem with a lot of political apps, which are often little more than press release vehicles.

2) This is another case of the White House using a proprietary platform uncritically, one that has an exclusive contract with a single cellular provider, AT&T and therefore limits consumer choice of carriers and one that says what products developers can and can not publish on their device. Here is another opportunity to educate the public about how hardware and software decisions have political implications squandered in the name of hype and PR. Although the White House promises "we’ll also launch mobile.WhiteHouse.gov, a mobile-ready version of WhiteHouse.gov that is optimized for any internet-enabled mobile device, including many other phones," the choice to launch with iPhone first may be telling.

Update: Apparently I am not alone. The The Oh My Gov! blog is calling it a "big disappointment."

Conspicuously absent from the application is the President's 2010 budget, details of upcoming proposals, including the a summary of the Health Care Bill, a tool to track Obama's campaign promises, information about the makeup of the President's cabinet, and the White House's plan for economic recovery and elimination of the ever expanding $12.3 trillion federal debt.

Given these absences, the utility of the application is limited to members of the press who want to keep up with the President's every move and those still infatuated with Obama. Others who wish to engage in the political discussion on a deeper level, hold the Oval Office accountable for its promises to say, eliminate wasteful spending from the federal budget line by line, and obtain a detailed understanding of just how fast a few trillions dollars are spent should continue digging for the information online or just read from the New York Times application.

Also disappointing from this app, which is little more than a mobile version of the communications sections of the White House website, is a method of dialogue with constituents the Obama administration has become known for. It's a bit disappointing the makers of the app didn't build in a way for users to send their best ideas on improving things to the administration, pose and have questions answered, or vote on the ideas of others, including the ideas of the White House. Many of my best ideas occur when I am out and about, and things I see often jog my brain into action. And as we've all witnessed from the Red Cross' Haiti fundraising efforts, mobile phones can be a powerful platform for soliciting a quick response.

Thanks to Jeff Brazil for the link!

You Better Not Pout

This Christmas, like many consumers running around, I used my mobile phone to locate gifts in what has been called "the Internet of things" in databases of competing inventories to find cheaper, closer, and more easily accessible presents. Bar-code scanners on devices like the iPhone were likely annoying to store clerks this holiday season, but as this story, "Mobile Phones Become Essential Tool to Shopping," indicates, it is likely that the mobile phones under the tree this year will help choose the packages for next year.

Give the People What They Want

The Obama administration has been talking a lot about potential mash-ups made possible by their commitment to transparency and how iPhone customers can see where economic stimulus money is being spent or how airport flight times are being calculated. But they fail to mention that the most popular application that takes government data and combines it with locational mobile phone technology is the application for locating sex offenders in a given neighborhood. See this ABC News story for more.

Happy Contrails to You

Yesterday morning I was up at 3:30 AM to be a guest at the WISE launch by NASA. An impressive Delta II rocket, shown in video below, sent the unmanned satellite carrying an infrared-sensitive telescope that will image the entire sky into orbit. In the days leading up to the event, the launch had been scrubbed several times, so I frequently found myself checking the NASA launch app for the iPhone to see when the next launch window was scheduled. As an application for the iPhone, it actually doesn't do much with the iPhone's capability, and the content on the app is largely pulled from the web. An app that might tell astronomy enthusiasts when objects might be hurtling in the sky overhead and perhaps viewable might have much more functionality.