Shorts: Second Life for White House, Participation, SocNet Policy

Obama Team Officially Gets a Second Life.When President Obama spoke to a live audience in Ghana, his address was streamed to audiences in the virtual worlds of Second Life and Metaplace. After the speech there was a virtual discussion, led by a panel with the former ambassador to Qatar and an African historian. This event was announced by CBS News and organized as an official White House event by the U.S. State Department. No one knows yet what the future holds for the Obama administration and virtual worlds, but what we are sure of, is that they are actively seeking out, researching, and testing these opportunities. Read more.

Measuring Effectiveness of Participation Projects. What is the return on the investment of the government's time, resources, and attention into cracking open the political sphere to citizen engagement? In other words, how do open government projects operating within the government bureaucracy justify their keep? That's the subtext to a new report out from New York Law School's Center for Patent Innovations, overseer of the Peer-to-Patent project. Peer-to-Patent broke new ground in participatory government and the Patent Office decided to assess whether it's worthwhile to continue the project as part of the standard practice of how the U.S. vets patents. In its two-year life thus far, 2,600 people registered on the site as patent reviewers. More than 180 applications were vetted. Read more from Nancy Scola on Tech President.

10 things you should cover in your social networking policy. When the social networking phenomenon began, many companies dealt with it by not dealing with it — they simply banned/blocked social networking sites on the company network. Now, as social media grows up, policy is starting to try to catch up to practice. Check out the suggestions from copyright to employee conduct on and off the job. More on the TechRepublic blog.