The candidates in this Presidential election are facing challenges that others before them have not faced. It's not the economy, it's not healthcare, it's the war in Iraq. It's the Internet. It's Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. The world of social networking and online life has played a key part in drawing in the "youth" vote for this election. Earlier today, Barack Obama released an official iPhone application.
You can use the application to call friends and encourage them to vote for Obama. The feature actually organizes your friends based on where they are located, with battleground states listed first. And it's quite smart: I have a friend who recently moved from California to Indiana, and it lists her as an Indiana contact. It also provides you with call stats.
I'm not sure if it places calls through the iPhone feature, or through VOIP, but I'd imagine the former, since VOIP goes against the iPhone terms of service.
Get Involved locates the Obama headquarters closest to you, while Receive Updates signs up to... receive updates - nothing exciting there.
The News tool is a fairly handy feature, as it provides you with an aggregate of information from the Obama website, which then links to the full news stories. You can sort these features by National or Local - quite handy, actually. The Issues tool is also impressive, because you have Obama's formal positions at your fingertips.
The Local Events feature is a little annoying, unless you live in an area that has lots of events registered with the Obama website. The closest thing to me is roughly an hour away, and I live 10 miles away from the state capital.
You also have a Media feature, which connects you to the latest videos and photos sent out by the Obama campaign.
All in all, it's a great way to keep yourself updated with the Obama campaign without getting off your ass and searching for information. The downside? The information you get is all filtered through the Obama website, so you may not be getting the most neutral perspective on things.
I think they could have done more with the application, such as include polling results and more explicit information on Joe Biden, but what can I do about that? Yeah, nothing.