The other day I was whining about how all the attention was being paid to political candidates use of new Web mediums, but little is discussed about how those governing use the tech. I thought the White House site was in such need of repair that I was going to do a separate post on it.
No need now. It just got a nice makeover that is very nicely, well: White. And, clean. And, with the requisite upgraded video, RSS, and Podcasts. See...
Just as important, the White House reached out to bloggers to tell them about the update.
Just for fun, let's look back at a quick history of White House Web sites....
Here's the White House site near the end of 2005 and in (pretty much) its last iteration...
Earlier in the Bush White House, the site looked like this (circa Jan. 2002)...
Just a year and a half earlier (May 2000), the Clinton/Gore White House site highlighted important developments like "Older Americans Month"... But, I shouldn't be too harsh. The flags wave... (come to think of it, this would be a pretty awesome MySpace page)....
Kids, avert your eyes. You older folks can come with me on a trip down memory lane to a place called January 1998. The "White House Virtual Library" was a simple place...
And, the first sign of a whitehouse.gov on the Internet Archive was December 1996. It looked like this.
Good post.
Question, is the December '96 WH website before or after Al Gore invented the Internet?
Cheers,
da
Posted by: David | February 28, 2007 at 07:17 PM