In yet another repudiation of its predecessor, the Obama administration this week migrated the White House Web site to Drupal, the popular open-source Web site management software. By dumping the Bush administration’s proprietary system and embracing software authored by the community and available to everyone, the consensus holds, the White House embodies the very essence of the new politics.

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The council of elders that runs Wikipedia confirmed last week that, sometime soon, the unwashed masses will no longer be able to directly edit the profiles of famous living people. The proposed policy, first reported by the New York Times (NYT) and later clarified by the Wikimedia Foundation, would require an ordained Wikipedia editor to approve changes before they become visible.

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On April 30, 2007, with all the usual fanfare that accompanies a software update, Microsoft (MSFT) added Barack and Obama to Office’s dictionary. It was a fairly quick canonization for the Illinois senator. His surname had been on Microsoft’s candidate list for new words since Jan. 5 of that year, and his first name followed three days later, in the same recruiting class as Zune, Klum, and Friendster. Three months later, it was official–no longer would Microsoft suggest Boatman as a replacement for the future president’s last name.

Of course, by April 2007, Obama was already a figure of some renown. He’d announced his bid for the Democratic nomination in mid-January and had been an object of intense fascination since his July 2004 speech at the Democratic Convention. But escaping the shackles of Microsoft Word’s red corrugated line is no small feat, and the list of those who’ve made the cut can seem arbitrary: Why does it recognize the surnames of Matthew Broderick and Susan Sarandon but trip over DiCaprio and Blanchett?

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