The state of the union

President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to the joint houses of Congress tonight. I've been compiling a few other famous speeches for the Datablog, so we can compare keywords, that sort of thing.

I've found the most amazing resource - the American Presidency Project based at the University of California. As well as every state of the union address ever made by a president, it houses over 80,000 digitised documents relating to US presidents, all in a searchable database. Love it!

Stoopid Americans

So Middle America socked it to the president on Saturday, marching on Washington, banners in hand. Am I the only one who sees the ridiculousness of anti-immigrant rightwingers equating Obama with the Nazis? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Obama, comic book stylee

I really don't know what to say about this, words can't describe it! He's a hero for a new generation so I guess it makes sense that the President is being immortalised in comic book form; he's meant to be a fan (he made at least one reference to Superman during his campaign for election), so he's probably secretly chuffed; but seriously, how Blaxploitation can you get?! And I'm sure Sarah Palin is just thrilled...

The Beast in a jam

The news focus this week is the G20 summit, and the protests surrounding it. Obviously it's a serious subject worthy of proper, intellectual discussion, but let's leave all that to the exprts and instead, enjoy this video of Obama's mammoth car failing to park at Downing Street.

If you insist on flying over something akin to the Batmobile (it allegedly carries machine guns and pints of Obama's blood, for use in an emergency) you really should consider the scale of British cul-de-sacs first.

Clinton blogs!

Hillary Clinton has thrown herself into the new administration's aim of accessibility by blogging her trip to Asia.

US economic recovery stats

Continuing with their pledge of open government, and their impressive grasp of web 2.0, Obama's administration yesterday launched the Recovery.gov website. Once funds start flowing through the ARRA (the economic package just signed into law), anyone with internet access should be able to track exactly where the money is going. And see some pretty graphics too!

Should help to avoid the disaster that accompanied the Iraq reconstruction project a few years ago, which resulted in billions of dollars going missing. Long may this openness continue!

Not about death!

Nice to see Michelle Obama getting into her role as first lady by reading an excellent Eric Carle book to some schoolchildren.

My favourite animals are the rather surreal purple cat and blue horse, no doubt thrown in to confuse parents with no imagination.

Open government (for now)

Following the trend of mentioning Obama in every blog this month, it's nice to see the White House plans to be more open than the previous administration; for the moment they've opened up the vast majority of the whitehouse.gov site to search engines (Bush's blocking software ran to 2,377 lines, Obama's runs to 2 so far).

Wonder how long that'll last?

Library blog of the month

Free Range Librarian is written by Karen G Schneider, a prolific writer who deals with the technical side of librarianship and has long been involved with the American Library Association.

She's currently blogging her sister's inauguration day experiences (I will get away from Obama at some point this month, I promise!) but she's also written on the need for caution when jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, and how to run a good tech-based discussion panel.

Obama hearts librarians

My colleague Holly just sent me a link to a speech Obama gave to the ALA a few years ago, extolling librarians as the "guardians of truth and knowledge". Laura Bush may have gone back to the ranch (and she wasn't always popular with our creed anyway) but it seems librarians still have a champion in the White House.

Word clouds

Today's souvenir issue of the Guardian is interesting for more than the obvious reason (11 pages of Obama ephemera, what more could you want?): it's the first time I'm aware of that word clouds have been used in the paper.

Word clouds are increasingly common on the web; basically, they count the number of times each word is used in a given text, then map out the data into a nice little graphic - the bigger and darker the word, the more times it appears.

The Guardian have applied this to Obama's inaugural address, and to those of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt and George Bush. The results are interesting - Obama's most used words are nation, new, must, every, people, less, today and America. It's not hard to recognise that Obama's message is one of renewal, of starting over (change, the major drive of his campaign, doesn't feature, perhaps reflecting the reality he faces now he's in office). Peace and liberty come much further down the list.

Comparisons with former presidents are also interesting - Lincoln's key words were war, God and Union (it was delivered before the end of the civil war in 1865), whereas Roosevelt, speaking at the peak of the New Deal era, focused on government, democracy, people and progress. Perhaps surprisingly, Bush is the one who spoke of freedom and liberty (one flaw of word clouds is that there's no context - in this case, Bush used American freedom to stand for waging war abroad).

So far, so good, but the Guardian's graphic has one major drawback. Word clouds really come into their own when they are interactive, when each word is clickable so you can access the full body of data behind the image. This isn't possible on the printed page, so the full functionality of the graphic is lost.

You can read about word clouds at Wikipedia, watch an instructional video on YouTube or make your own courtesy of Wordle (the one above is a cloud of this blog).

This is the last one, I promise!

Courtesy of Spith, thank you!

Obama in our office

I will talk about something completely different tomorrow, promise!

make you own Obama poster

And if you're getting a bit carried away (like me!) you can create yourself in the man's image (or if, also like me, your Mac doesn't support the software, you can peruse the gallery instead).

Obamamania

Crowds gather on the Mall in Washington this morning.




My American optimism is still holding so here are a few more Obama links.

I know I posted will.i.am's Yes We Can video a few days ago but I just watched it and it made the hair on the back of my neck metaphorically stand up, it's such a powerful message so I'm unashamedly repeating myself.

The BBC have interviewed Maya Angelou, author of one of my favourite books, as part of their Notes to Obama series: click here to read or watch her explain why America needs Obama. Other Notes... include Wynton Marsalis and John Waters.

Check out part one of Diane Sawyer's interview with Obama from September last year (there's a link to part two on the page, worth watching if only for the Saturday Night Fever photo halfway through!).

The Huffington Post coverage is as excellent as ever - everything from straight reports of the day's events to Michelle's inauguration day outfits and Legoland's recreation of the inauguration.

More Obama memorabilia from the Inaugural store - I like the Obama colouring book best of all!

Wonder if Obama will be updating Twitter from the podium? Let's hope so!

Watch the inauguration live on the Inaugural Committee website.

And for a nostalgic trip back to election night (the donuts! the beer! the appalling Time Square party!) you can't beat a bit of Vidal versus Dimbleby.

Starter for ten

Not among the elite invited to Obama's inaugural luncheon on Tuesday but want to join in the fun? Got a taste for traditional American cuisine? The JCCIC, who are hosting the luncheon, have provided a handy recipe pack so you don't have to miss out.

Take 6 Maine lobsters, 20 sea scallops, 36 large shrimp (and that's just the starter...).

Katy hearts Obama

I've been doing tonnes of work on the presidential inauguration events starting this Sunday - how much do I wish I lived in Washington, D.C. right now? Or even in the US, so I could organise a Neighbourhood Inaugural Ball and hook up with the main Obama one by text message.

As it is, I'm going to have to content myself with buying the official inauguration CD/DVD box set, Change Is Now: Renewing America's Promise, available from the Presidential Inauguration Committee online store.

It includes tracks from Wilco, will.i.am, Ozomatli (who blew me away at Glastonbury a few years ago), Stevie Wonder and India.Arie, while the DVD contains eight of Obama's most rousing speeches, including this one from Philadelphia last March. It's $30 but shipping is only an extra $8.50, which is a small price to pay for a little bit of history in the making.

And if that's a bit pricy, check out the Shephard Fairey stickers and pin badges instead (I wish I could afford the $100 poster!).

Did any of us really believe what could happen when will.i.am released his "Yes We Can" video last year? Show's you what positive change can be brought about when people really believe; for once the cynic in me can't help but be swept away by some good old-fashioned American optimism. Until next Wednesday at least.