Recently noted:

• One of the most prominent websites on earth, WhiteHouse.gov (pictured above) was just relaunched and is now running on the Drupal content management system. While this transition has garnered extensive media coverage (some clueless), it is Tim O'Reilly who recognizes the big picture implications of this decision for governmental transparency and the open source community. O'Reilly on wanting to see advances connected to the the White House e-infrastructure given back to the broader community: "Releasing code is more than just being a good open source community citizen, though. Code sharing is a major cost-saving opportunity for government."
• There are few writers as capable of summarizing and contextualizing an entire symposium/conference as Liz Losh of Virtualpolitik. Losh recently provided an overview of the Nowcasting: Design Theory + Digital Humanities conference that took place at UCLA two weeks ago. The second post covering this event should be of particular interest to Serial Consign readers as it documents presentations by Trevor Paglen, Jeffrey Schnapp, Johanna Drucker, Warren Sack, Lev Manovich and Erkki Huhtamo—there are some great perspectives on information aesthetics being batted around here.
• A Synchronicity: Design Fictions for Asynchronous Urban Computing is a new publication authored by Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova of the Near Future Laboratory. This issue of The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series outlines a case for "epistemological monkey-wrenching" in the city by way of social objects and mediated interventions.
• Jon Dale has posted a lengthy, excellent interview with experimental musician Terre Thaemlitz for Little White Earbuds. This conversation contains everything that is missing from most experimental/electronic music journalism—serious conversations about gender and queer culture, critiques of market-driven distribution and a nuanced historical excavation of the last few decades. Thaemlitz on 1980s NYC clubland: "The East Village scene had a tendency to take itself too creatively."

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