Picking up where President Barack Obama’s 2008 grassroots campaign left off, the Democratic National Committee has rolled out the a new app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad called Barack Obama Organizing for America to reach out to voters during the 2010 election season.
To be clear, this app is for Obama supporters or people who want to get involved with the Democratic Party. If you don’t fall into either of these categories, OFA really isn’t for you. Politics asides, OFA has some useful features and some bugs.
Much of the app is location-based, but the GPS feature gave me an error each time it tried to find my current location. Entering in my zip code worked to get the correct district information, but this is a pretty significant bug. After determining your location, the app will display your local representatives and senators, and their affiliation and phone numbers in the “Call Congress” section for you to quickly contact them. OFA will also link you to nearby events, which you can RSVP to via an in-line browser.
The app features “AirMail” alerts to keep voters up-to-date on breaking news and nearby events. Other sections include discussion points that offer information on current topics such as the Gulf Coast oil spill, immigration reform and economics; video clips; and news, which can be viewed on a national or local level. Photos would not display in landscape mode, nor do they have captions for background information. There’s a donation link, of course, but tapping it for some reason launches a donation page in Safari. Developers really should integrate this feature better; if it can’t be built-in completely, it should at least launch in-line.
Although Organizing For America will make it easy for people to become involved in grassroots efforts for Vote 2010, the app still needs some tweaking.
