When my aunt and uncle-in-law emailed me on November 6th, asking for some advice on what they can do to help Barack Obama "address the great challenges that he and our country face moving forward," I was embarrassingly stumped. Err, there were plans in the works, I knew, to ramp up Americorps and even start some new -corps, like one for inner city teachers. Frankly, though, my relatives aren't looking to devote their lives to Obama. They just wanted to help the country along a bit in their spare time.

Luckily, I remembered something that might just be perfect. During the campaign, Barack Obama had promised to inaugurate just such a part-time volunteerism system, an idea the campaign catchily called "a Craigslist for service."

Covered: Online Right Sees a Chance to Take Root; While the Online Left Considers the President Elect; The Agenda Returns, Somewhat Tamed; Inside a Team Meeting; From World of Warcraft to Washington; Jobs in Internet Defense; and a good deal more.

The Obama campaign, such as it still is, is asking supporters to help figure out where the enormous volunteer network built by the campaign should go next. And the questions they have hinge upon whether a grassroots organization is still viable with its namesake firmly ensconced in the White House.

A new survey hosted on MyBarackObama.com is asking supporters to "help shape this movement" -- possibly a suggestive choice of words when the decision has yet to be made over whether or not to keep the network the campaign built outside the political establishment.

Understandably, there's been a lot of discussion in the last two weeks about the future of the powerful Obama Internet operation. Does the vast, empowered constituency serve as a virtual public advocacy campaign for Obama policy initiatives? Does it work toward the mid-terms in 2010? Re-election in 2012?

Or does it inspire a "flash cause" that puts tens of thousands of people into the streets in outraged protest less than two weeks after the election in what is a clear sign that what the Obama campaign unleashed in online organizing is just the start.

Based on the incredible success of JointheImpact.com, which channeled anger over California's passage of the anti-gay Proposition 8 into an instant same-sex marriage advocacy organization that put the old line gay rights groups to shame, we're voting for the latter.

Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google and Chairman of the Board of the New America Foundation, spoke earlier today about technology, innovation, the economy, energy, and how they are all linked. Schmidt is on the short list for Obama's CTO, and he is a member of President-Elect Barack Obama's Transition Economic Advisory Board, so here's an opportunity to learn a little about how he thinks on these topics, through a transcript from his talk.

During the campaign, presidential hopeful Barack Obama put volunteerism front and center -- quite literally, dedicating valuable home page real estate to, for example, calls for help during Hurricane Gustav. The practice helped to define him as a compassionate "brother's keeper" candidate, and President-elect Obama seems intent on taking with him to the White House; when it comes to the first national CTO, are we not actually talking about a Chief Information Officer -- that is, less a nuts-and-bolts technologist-in-chief and more an executive-minded leader with a vision of how government handles its IT duties; and a good deal more.

Watching the news media and a few hard cases in the blogosphere wring their hands over the vetting of former President Bill Clinton's philanthropy in the wake of President-Elect Obama's offer of the State Department to Hillary Clinton, you begin to wonder what life would be like if the Clinton Global Initiative went transparent with all of its charitable commitments.

With so much focus on CGI over the last 48 hours and the billions it has processed for causes like global warming, HIV AIDS, and education, it's hard not to wish it maintained a large searchable database open to anyone with a web connection.

Oh, wait a minute.

(Gong Szeto is a Sante Fe-based designer and inventor whose recent submission [pdf] to the 2008 Buckminster Fuller Challenge sparked our interest. We're thrilled to have an abbreviated version of his submission posted here. Note: What follows are screenshots of one possible way of fleshing out Szeto's vision. These are not (yet) actual working web pages, but are instead prototypes meant to spur discussion and further refinement. -- the editors)

YOUROWNDEMOCRACY is a powerful new web-based application geared to empower citizens of any democracy in the world to directly engage one another and their elected leaders on important issues on local, state, and national levels.

As Republicans debate how to rebuild the party with new technology and stronger grassroots, watch for the media to fawn all over Obama's use of the Internet as President as he brings (some) of the tactics of his winning campaign to the White House.

It began this weekend with the release of President-elect Obama's YouTube address and the transformation of the anachronistic radio address. This generated an explosion of media interest, even though 1) the format is not especially compelling, and 2) at least initially, ratings and comments on the video have been turned off, preventing ordinary Americans from talking back -- contrary to what happened on My.BarackObama.com during the campaign.

Let's say President Barack Obama follows through on his promise to make government data more open, more standardized, and more transparent. How, then, do we keep track of all that freed information and the rich bounty of political reporting and commentary it will -- cross our fingers -- give rise to? Enter OpenCongress's new MyPoliticalNotebook, what is, to be reductive, basically a political-themed Delicious meets Google Notebook.