Posts for January 23rd, 2009

Sorry, but after posting my video - friends pointed out lots of articles on how “antiquated” the White House tech was when moving in.

• Washington Post - Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
• Gawker - Technology’s White House of Horrors
• ZDNet - Obama staff: White House in tech ‘dark ages’
• MacWorld - Obama administration frustrated by old White House PCs
• LA Times - Obama staff has low-tech move-in day at White House

Sorry folks - but if you think the Obama Administration had no clue about the tech/software issues before they walked in - you must not be one of those “tech-savvy” people Owen Thomas talks about who live within “the Manhattan media bubble and Silicon Valley’s startup cube farms”.

Whenever I walk into an office - one of the first things I notice are the computers and the software that is on the screens. It is very easy to notice if someone is on a Mac or a PC - and you can see whether or not the bullpen is running LCDs versus CRTs.

Sorry - but the tempest is not worthy of the sniggering - the truth is, the Obama Admin is going to renovate the technology and the solutions within. Third day started today - it takes corporates (and startups) a little time to allocate budget and get systems/solutions installed.

Give the White House a break. If I walked into a company with tools designed for the 20th Century and was trying to connect to people within the 21st networked Century, I might need a little time to rearchitect the solutions.

[EDITOR NOTE: I have both PCs (IBM and Dell) and Macs (Powerbook G4 and a new MacBook Pro) and bang on in Linux (Red Hat and Ubuntu)]

Image via Futurenow/Robert Gorell