Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face • Hacker News Board

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#31

Post by seehafer » Tue, Jan 20, 2009, 9:07 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #23

showerst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any idea, but Blue State Digital did his campaign site and a bunch of other dem 08 work, so perhaps it was them.

Blue State Digital built CHANGE.GOV, and this is pretty clearly a continuation, although the impression I get is that they've brought a lot of it in-house.

Macon Phillips, who is listed on LinkedIn as a "Director of Strategy and Communications for Blue State Digital" is now the Director of New Media for the Executive Office of the President: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse...

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#32

Post by smhinsey » Tue, Jan 20, 2009, 9:30 PM UTC

showerst wrote: post #9

josefresco wrote: post #2

I want to know who did the new design/site work?

I don't have any idea, but Blue State Digital did his campaign site and a bunch of other dem 08 work, so perhaps it was them.

I thought BSD was a shoe-in for this as well, but if you view source you'll see the hallmarks of ASP.NET (viewstate and control naming), which throws me.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#33

Post by pstinnett » Tue, Jan 20, 2009, 11:40 PM UTC

smhinsey wrote: post #32

showerst wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any idea, but Blue State Digital did his campaign site and a bunch of other dem 08 work, so perhaps it was them.

I thought BSD was a shoe-in for this as well, but if you view source you'll see the hallmarks of ASP.NET (viewstate and control naming), which throws me.

Yeah. BSD used their own CMS and ExpressionEngine I think. Kind of surprised that this is in ASP.NET. Wouldn't be surprised if it changes later on.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#34

Post by brandonkm » Tue, Jan 20, 2009, 11:47 PM UTC

nirmal wrote: post #5

Who's going to add the Whitehouse blog to their feedreader?

I'm sure a ton of people will. In fact, I would bet that the whitehouse blog may introduce lots of people to RSS for the first time ever. The concept of a more transparent government where citizens are informed about the happenings inside the white house will be heavily at play here.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#35

Post by sh1mmer » Tue, Jan 20, 2009, 11:52 PM UTC

blogimus wrote: post #6

Whitehouse.gov also has a new robots.txt file ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt ) If you search google for 'whitehouse' and 'robots' then you can still see the cache of the robots.txt file of the Bush Administration ( http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:tCfemw3M-aUJ:www.whiteho... )

Cache seems to have been updated now. Anyone have the contents to repost or another cache?

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#36

Post by sh1mmer » Tue, Jan 20, 2009, 11:53 PM UTC

sh1mmer wrote: post #35

blogimus wrote: post #6

Whitehouse.gov also has a new robots.txt file ( http://www.whitehouse.gov/robots.txt ) If you search google for 'whitehouse' and 'robots' then you can still see the cache of the robots.txt file of the Bush Administration ( http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:tCfemw3M-aUJ:www.whiteho... )

Cache seems to have been updated now. Anyone have the contents to repost or another cache?

Yahoo has a cache :)

http://66.218.69.11/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=site%3Awhite...

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#37

Post by sh1mmer » Wed, Jan 21, 2009, 12:00 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #29

keyes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the URLs in the former robots.txt seem to end in "/text". It's likely that they just didn't want the text versions of the articles to be indexed.

You are correct. The text versions were present for screen readers.

Instead of just using good markup in the first place?

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#38

Post by danielrhodes » Wed, Jan 21, 2009, 1:19 AM UTC

callahad wrote: post #30

Check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/ "Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License."

This doesn't mean much. I believe all works produced by the federal government are in the public domain and you don't need permission to reproduce them.

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#39

Post by froo » Wed, Jan 21, 2009, 1:41 AM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #20

The President of the United States now has a blog. Unbelievable only a year ago, really.

Yes, but one must wonder if he uses "The Google"

Re: Whitehouse.gov Has A New Face

#40

Post by callahad » Wed, Jan 21, 2009, 2:08 AM UTC

danielrhodes wrote: post #38

callahad wrote: post #30

Check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/ "Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License."

This doesn't mean much. I believe all works produced by the federal government are in the public domain and you don't need permission to reproduce them.

True, and covered in the first of the three paragraphs at that link:

"Pursuant to federal law, government-produced materials appearing on this site are not copyright protected. The United States Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise."

The news is that they're defaulting to Creative Commons for all "third-party content" on the site, including user submissions. That's the part that got me. Even if they're not producing it, they're trying to keep information open (as opposed to just requiring copyright assignment, for instance)