Hey PresNet fans,

William and I are working on getting some content together. We have our outline of it, but, being busy college students, we can’t meet to discuss it sometimes. We’re working to get up the first State of the Internet! Please come back soon.

Hey there, PresNet fans!

Today is Groundhog’s Day, so we thought it was time for an update. It also means that we would like for you guys to start submitting stuff to us at PresNet (you can click here to e-mail it to us). Just send us the link and an explanation about why you think it is important and should be sent to President Obama. We’ll package up the State of the Internet February 2009 and send it near the beginning of March.

We also wanted to introduce you guys to some online social media services that we are fans of. Throughout the next few weeks, we’ll start devoting a post to a different online media site and explain why we like using it.

Until then, feel free to e-mail us submissions or just questions in general! We also love constructive criticism. If you notice anything on the site that you think needs to be changed (such as grammar or broken links), e-mail that to us also. We’ll do our best to get to work on it.

William and I (Owen) sent the letter we wrote to President Obama last Wednesday (Jan 21) and took photos along the way. We’ll let those tell the story.

Owen, finalizing the letter to President Obama before it is printed.

Owen and William approve of the printed letter.

William, sliding the letter into a prepaid envelope.

The post office at Mississippi State University where we mailed the letter.

Our friendly postman, weighing the letter to be sure we don’t need more postage.

Owen, dropping the letter into the mail slot.

Owen and William approve of the letter being sent.

Check back soon for more PresNet updates!

Today is January 20th, 2009. Earlier today, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States. If you’ve read our about page, you know a little bit better about what we are doing with PresNet. The letter (the end of this blog post) also explains our goal and purpose.

We decided we would start our monthly summaries with the State of the Internet February 2009 edition. The first letter we are going to send Obama is just an introduction to our service.

We are going to send the letter tomorrow (Wednesday, January 21st). When we post about it, we will include pictures of the letter writing process, as well as the packaging and sending.

With this first letter, we also decided to enclose some pictures from an experiment called 52to48 by Internet collaboration guru Ze Frank. Please click those links and check out the project. We are not affiliated with or working in conjunction with Ze (though we are big fans).

We hope you were able to enjoy the historic events of this day. America is the greatest country in the world.

The full text of the letter we sent President Obama is as follows.

Dear President Obama,

Our names are William Cleveland and Owen McGuire.

We have enjoyed following the stories of your Blackberry and concerns of whether or not you would be able to use it in office (we are both smartphone users, ourselves). Even though it was recently decided that you will be able to keep your personal Blackberry, we know that you will not have the same freedom to use the Internet that you did before.

In order to help you stay connected to the latest information from the Internet, we have created a service called PresNet (short for Presidential Internet). Through this service, we will be sending you a monthly State of the Internet in the mail. To help gather and publish content, we have started a blog at www.PresNet.us. Visitors will be able to see posts about what we have been sending you. They will also be able to send us content that they believe should go into each monthly update.

William is a Computer Engineering major at Mississippi State University. Owen is a Communication major (also at Mississippi State). Because of our experience, we believe we are in a great position to gather the essence of the Internet (rumors, viral videos, new media tools, innovations, etc), summarize it, and send it along to you.

We hope that you enjoy your monthly State of the Internet updates from PresNet and wish you the best of luck as the new president of our great country.

William Cleveland
Owen McGuire

Click for a PDF of the Introduction Letter to Obama

Click for a PDF of the summary of 52to48

Check back on Inauguration Day (Jan 20) for more information about the start of PresNet!