I just love the way Whitehouse.gov looks now, on just about every level. And they have a blog, too, though as some people have noted, one without comments. Not that there's anything terribly unusual about a commentless blog, mind you. Besides, can you imagine how much spam and troll filtering they'd have to do?
I also love this picture. The Olmos Pharmacy in San Antonio is walking distance from the Trinity campus, and they make the best milkshakes - the old-fashioned, ice cream kind - in town. Seeing that photo makes me wish that's how I watched the inauguration, while downing a massive chocolate shake. Mmmm...
In reality, I watched the inauguration and Obama's speech from our company cafeteria, where the TVs there that are usually tuned to some idiotic daytime program were put to good use for a change. How and where did you watch?
Posted by Charles Kuffner on January 20, 2009 to The making of the PresidentI just checked it out Charles. I almost forgot about it with all the things going on. It is much, much better and the depth of information is great. For the first time in presidential history there is a BLOG.
Regarding the Olmos Bharmacy (not a misspelling) I kept getting Facebook updates from my friends who were there and are in the photo. Thanks for the photo link.
Posted by: RBearSAT on January 20, 2009 7:32 PMI watched from a 2nd grade classroom in one of the schools where I teach, in Katy ISD. We have a vBrick in the district, so CNN can stream to all PCs on the network, which made it pretty easy to watch. The students were very engaged and asked tons of questions!
It's great to see the evolution of the whitehouse.gov site--just for fun I refreshed my memory and ran it through the "Wayback Machine" at archive.org. Lovely to see the primitive waving-flag animated gif's from January of 1999. Quite an evolution for ten years' time!
Posted by: Joe Virant on January 20, 2009 9:10 PMThe three airmen I have working for me right now and I sat down together and watched CNN streaming live to one of their desktops. Unfortunately, everyone else at the organization had the same idea, so the CNN feed choked about halfway through his speech, and we had to scramble to get the Fox feed (news feeds are a little more complicated than necessary where I work). I had forgotten that it was Fox until they started grousing afterwards about how the Clinton departure from Andrews AFB had been a rally longer than Bush's inauguration... I couldn't figure out why they were talking about Clinton, and suddenly I remembered: oh yeah, it's Fox, Clinton is a dirty word. They have to smear the new guy somehow, 'cause he's not THEIR guy. *sigh*
Posted by: Cindy on January 20, 2009 10:31 PMFirst, to answer the question you asked, I watched on the Web in my office.
Second, I remember back in 2001 that I did the whole "check the websites" thing with the White House website on inauguration day. If I recall correctly, shortly after the inauguration the Clinton page became generic and then a few hours after that, it had a more "Bush" presence.
It is amazing that is such a story today for the media. I don't remember many people paying much attention to it back in 2001.
Posted by: Vince Leibowitz on January 20, 2009 10:52 PMI would argue strongly (!) that "Another Time," in Rosenberg, TX, has the best milkshakes! :)
I watched it streaming, sortof, on my work computer. I was hoping they'd have something set up to view but they didn't. So when I got out of my meeting about 5 minutes before the Inauguration, I panicked, and the first thing I could think of was hulu.com. They had a link to a live stream from Fox news. Which was more like a series of still shots that refreshed every 1 to 60 seconds. So I kindof watched, with no sound, because my PC doesn't have a sound card, and I had to keep going to another window to pretend to work when the bosses would stand and chat near my desk. But I was on IM with my sweetie, who was listening on his clock radio he had brought to work and had no video. On the way home, I got to hear the whole speech on NPR.
Posted by: Kat on January 21, 2009 11:17 AMI am thrilled about the Obama administration. I have taken the President's call to service very seriously, but because I have very special circumstances and cannot seem to find a person to contact by email to explain them & perhaps find a way to help, I am really stuck. The White House operator has been of no help, unfortunately. He has just transferred me to a recorded message which is not what I am looking for. If anyone knows who I might contact & email and would either send it to me or call me at 918.298.2042 I would be very grateful. Thank you so much. Victoria Spiegel
Posted by: Victoria Spiegel on January 21, 2009 1:27 PM