The White House is Open for Questions

Beyond being the first black president, Obama has done so many "firsts" in his short stint as president, it's getting hard to keep track of it. First BlackBerry, first real use of YouTube, first time a sitting president has been a guest on a late night talk show and now we're going to add another to Obama's list of firsts: The White House is open for questions.



The Obama White House has created a website called Open For Questions on whitehouse.gov that will allow anyone to ask questions of the President, who will then answer the most popular ones in video streamed on whitehouse.gov. In the site's introductory video Obama says he hopes this site will "get a snapshot of what Americans really care about."

Not only will people be able to put up questions that really matter to them, and vote for or against the questions on the site, but we'd like to think it will make the President more accountable to the people. He should know what they care about, and everyone that gets on the site can make sure he does. We applaud Obama's efforts to connect with as many people as possible and think his use of technology is changing the face of democracy.

We assume lot of the users will be the younger, college-age crowd. Already one of the most popular/voted upon questions is "... what is the government doing to make higher education more affordable for lower and middle class families." So far it's received more than 2,000 votes. But we have to wonder will this digital Q&A "internet town hall" really give the president an idea about what really matters to every demographic in the country? It's possible that concerns about social security and retirement will not be brought to light because the larger majority of younger internet users might overwhelm the question voting with issues that concern them.

We're curious to see how the questions will end up affecting this agenda and we can only hope that the questions that move up to the top in popularity will continue to be real and sincere. The President plans to address some of the more popular questions on Thursday in a video streamed from the whitehouse.gov site. Already there have been more than 19,000 questions submitted, we just hope people will get on and vote. It's a chance for everyone in the country to make a difference.

You can also make a difference on our site, we can't answer questions about cutting taxes or how to make life more affordable, but you can find all the answers you need on all things electronic, software and web related. So check out our new Ask & Answer site to both ask and answer questions (for the record, ours was up before the President's).

For more on the latest tech news, outside of the White House, check out these other blog posts:

"Steamy" New Anti-Piracy Measures Coming to Games for Windows

Samsung Enters eBook Reader Market with Papyrus

File Sharing On the Decline? Look Again

Play Xbox Games on Your Cell Phone?