Ben Shoemate's Notebook

Over the weekend, the White House new media team announced (via AP) that whitehouse.gov now runs on the open source content management system Drupal. Tim O'Reilly puts this news into context:

This move is obviously a big win for open source. As John Scott of Open Source for America (a group advocating open source adoption by government, to which I am an advisor) noted in an email to me: "This is great news not only for the use of open source software, but the validation of the open source development model. The White House's adoption of community-based software provides a great example for the rest of the government to follow."

John is right. While open source is already widespread throughout the government, its adoption by the White House will almost certainly give permission for much wider uptake. Particularly telling are the reasons that the White House made the switch

Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal [radar.oreilly.com]

Clark Kent told us about this "thought-provoking, artful schematic that explains the differences in basic political philosophy between progressives and conservatives."

It was created by David McCandless and Stefanie Posavec, and appears in The Visual Miscellaneum, which comes out on November 10.

I'm looking forward to the book. Below are some of the other infographics that are in it:

20th Century Death: What's Killed the Most? • 22 Stories • 30 Years Makes a Difference Alternative Medicine • Amphibian Extinction Rates • Articles of War: Most Edited Wikipedia Pages • Bee Limit Warning • Behind Every Great Man • Being Defensive • Better than Bacon • The Billion Dollar-o-Gram • Body by Insurance Value • The Book of You: Your Complete DNA • Books Everyone Should Read • Calories In, Calories Out • Carbon Aware The Carbon Dioxide Cycle • Celebrity Causes • Chatterboxes • Cocktails • Colors and Culture Cosmetic Ingredients • Creation Myths • The Creationism-Evolutionism Spectrum • Daily Diets • Dance Genreology • Dangers of Death • Enneagram • Fast Internet • Feeding Frenzy: the Organic Food Market • Food Coloring: Unpleasant Health Effects • The Future of Energy • The Future of Our Future • Global Media Scare Stories • The Global Warming Skeptics vs. the Scientific Consensus • Good News • Google Insights • The Great Firewall of China • Immortality • In 25 Words or Less • The "In" Colors • The "Interesting" Colors International Number Ones • Internet Virals • Kyoto Targets • Left vs. Right • Looking for Love Online • Low Resolution • Mainstream-o-Meter • Making the Book • Man's Humanity to Man • The Media Jungle • Microbes Most Dangerous • The Middle East • Moral Matrix Most Common Avatar Names • Most Popular Boys' Names • Most Popular Girls' Names Most Profitable Stories of All Time • Most Successful Rock Bands • Nature vs. Nurture The One Machine: Map of the Internet • Painkillers • Personal Computer Evolution Peter's Projection • Postmodernism • Red vs. Blue • Rising Sea Levels • Rock Genreology Salad Dressings • Selling Your Soul • Sex Education • Snake Oil? • Some Things You Can't Avoid • Stages of You • Stock Check: Nonrenewable Resources • Taste Buds • Things That'll Give You Cancer • Three's a Magic Number • Time-Travel Plots in TV and Film • Tons of Carbon • Types of Coffee • Types of Facial Hair • Types of Information Visualization Vacation Time by Country • Varieties of Romantic Relationships • Vintage Years • Virtual Kingdoms • Water Towers • We Broke Up Because ... • What Are the Chances?: Survival Rates • What Is Consciousness? • When Condiments Go Bad • Which Fish Are Okay to Eat? Who Clever Are You? • Who Owns the Top 100 Websites? • Who Reads the Most? • Who Runs the World? • Who Really Runs the World? • World Religions • X Is the New Black

Infographic: Left vs Right

Chicago may have lost its Olympic bid due to the insane fingerprints-and-photos regime at the US border: the Chicago bid team was questioned by an IOC member who called the US border "a rather harrowing experience." I've actually found the O'Hare border procedure pretty painless, but God help the foreigner who lands in Texas. At DFW, I was told by a border guard that I wasn't allowed to listen to headphones in the (two-hour-long) line; at Houston, we once stood in line for three hours just to change planes between Honduras and the UK.

Among the toughest questions posed to the Chicago bid team this week in Copenhagen was one that raised the issue of what kind of welcome foreigners would get from airport officials when they arrived in this country to attend the Games. Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, in the question-and-answer session following Chicago's official presentation, pointed out that entering the United States can be "a rather harrowing experience..."

"It's clear the United States still has a lot of work to do to restore its place as a premier travel destination," Roger Dow, U.S. Travel's president, said in the statement released today. "When IOC members are commenting to our President that foreign visitors find traveling to the United States a 'pretty harrowing experience,' we need to take seriously the challenge of reforming our entry process to ensure there is a welcome mat to our friends around the world, even as we ensure a secure system."

Chicago's Loss: Is Passport Control to Blame?