Happy reading & Happy 4th of July weekend!

A Look at the GOP's Digital Future

Via TechRepublican, we have  video of RNC new media director Todd
Herman's presentation at PdF '09 earlier this week. Herman's talk
certainly caught attention, but what was also fascinating was to take
in the reactions to it amongst the conference crowd. Our Andrew Rasiej
described the audience as falling about 80% on the left side of the
political spectrum and 20% on the right, but the more interesting split
might have been between the political and the technological. While
generalizing is generally a dumb thing to do, one impression take from 
the contemporaneous Twitter stream was that some more tech-minded folks
applauded Herman's words about making transparency a "purple issue"
while the more political amongst the crowd tended towards skepticism of
the idea of a more open Republican Party.

A Growing Acceptance of Social Networking in the Workplace

A June survey released by Facetime, makers of a gateway appliance for
managing Web 2.0 applications, revealed the growing popularity of
social networking applications in the workplace. Out of 1199 survey
respondents, all IT professionals, there were more who felt that social
networks played an important role in the business world than those who
didn't. What's more, it appears that the IT folks are now seemingly
okay with providing access to these networks behind the firewall - even
for those who don't approve of their use!

Make History: Tweet the @WhiteHouse About Health Care and use the Hashtag #Handsoff

As you may know, President Barack Obama has been doing some
extraordinary things online to better communicate his message. And,
yes, I say that as a proud Republican.
Along with 126 Members of Congress and U.S. Senators, President Obama
has started Tweeting (@WhiteHouse). In fact, with a mere 247 updates,
the account has already grown rapidly to 550,253 Followers.

One of the issues the @WhiteHouse is Tweeting about is health care
reform so we thought we'd have a little bit of fun with it and propose
an experiment in online activism for an upcoming release of the next
Twitter @101Guide