Some of Barack Obama's beyond-delusional fans will no doubt be raving about the magical transformation of whitehouse dot gov into a wonderland of hope and change. While the site has a few new features and a new look, not much has changed.

From whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse-gov:

This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated... The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government... President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it...

The old site had a news section, now it has a blog. There really isn't much different between them, but making the news section into a blog will help show how "hip" Obama is and will lull those who run, say, Myspace pages into thinking he's one of them. And, when Bush gave a speech or similar, there were sublinks below the main link on the news page linking to a transcript, video, and other related content. Depending on how they do things, going to a blog might be a step backward. It does, however, have an RSS feed, which might be a minor step forward; the previous version might have also had such a capability and if it didn't adding a feed to a non-blog is a minor addition.

Like other government websites, you're warned when leaving the site. However, they do that using a neat-o in page Javascript dialog... which is also the same thing you'll see if you click the 'All Tags' link in the right column. It also doesn't work if you disable Javascript, sending you directly to the page without warning you you're leaving for an external page as might be a government requirement or is at least how other .gov sites do things.

Note also that the previous content from the Bush administration appears to have been deleted; these two links used to work but now return a Page Not Found error:

whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070529-7.html
whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070409-12.html

This is just a minor example in the long line of BHO putting on a show, and his beyond-delusional fans falling for it.