Users can use the Layar AR viewfinder to find nearby Foursquare locations and by linking the app to their account can check in without leaving Layar. There is also a feature in each layer to view entries on a map, or in list view. The map is especially handy for Foursquare integration because Foursquare's own app disappointingly doesn't support a map view. An equally interesting layer to investigate is the Recovery.org layer which shows you which U.S. organizations in your area received funding (and the amount they received) from the Recovery Act.

"The new Layar Reality Browser has a re-engineered engine under the hood. This new engine makes the application light, stable and very quick," the company said on its blog. "It is ready to handle all the current layers and it is a good base to realize all of our exciting future plans."

Layar's return to the iPhone platform comes just in time for the company's new layer marketplace which will allow developers to charge users for their content; in other words, an App Store for mobile AR. If Subway wants to create a layer with all of their locations and charge $.99 for it's use, they or any other company will easily be able to do that. One could assume that Layar will make use of Apple's in-app purchase functionality on the iPhone, but it would be sad to see Layar lose a percentage of their cut on the purchases to Apple. If anything, that could raise prices on the layers themselves, but that's a whole other argument.

This could be a huge step forward for the mobile AR space. As these applications become more useful, more refined and more popular, companies will be excited to participate in providing branded content in an AR experience. Expect an announcement from Layar in the next few weeks about the launch of this exciting new platform, but in the meantime, iPhone users (3GS only) can go snag Layar's free app (iTunes link) in the App Store.

The author of the memo, Peter P. Swire, who was also the attorney for the New Media team during the Obama-Biden transition, argues that the transition from a campaign to the White House is not just a transition to fewer staff members, but also a transition from having to scale from 10 million motivated supporters to 300 million Americans. While it would be great if the White House could respond to every comment on a blog individually, it would be hard to scale this with just a handful of people running whitehouse.gov (and, because this is Washington, there is already a White House Correspondence Office that is officially charged with answering letters and calls from citizens).

From Talking Points to Policy

In addition, responses now also have to be 'cleared,' that is, vetted by all the relevant agencies. As Swire points out, it was easy to ask a North Korea expert about what to say about a developing situation in North Korea during the campaign and to use that expert's opinion as a talking point, but now, White House bloggers don't just speak for the campaign, but for America, and a talking point could have real, potentially dangerous consequences. Now, the White House team has to get clearance to post about pretty much any topic.

Video

Swire also talks about the White House's extensive use of video. Thanks to using YouTube and other vendors, scale is not an obstacle for the New Media team, and thanks to the fact that these videos tend to be short, it is relatively easy to get clearance for these videos.

The Purple Folder

According to Swire, President Obama receives a purple folder every night, with 10 letters, faxes, or emails from the general public that are "broadly representative of the day's news and issues."  However, while it is nice that the President would read these letters, maybe it would also be nice if he read a couple of blog posts from representative political blogs every day as well (of course, we don't actually know that he doesn't do that already anyway).

It's All About Scale

The one recurring motif in this memo is that it is hard for the White House to scale its operation in order to really engage the public, and that politics obviously often get in the way. It obviously also doesn't help that the White House staff can't rely on the hundreds of volunteers that the Obama campaign was able to recruit at a moment's notice, as that would open up a whole other range of political issues.

Thanks to the Resource Shelf for pointing us to this memo.

Crowdsourcing

Maybe the most interesting aspect of ShovelWatch, however, is that it plans to engage citizen reporters to track how the stimulus money will be spent in their local communities. Essentially, the site plans to crowdsource the coverage of the stimulus plan.

Besides its focus on content from The Takeaway, ProPublica, and WNYC, ShovelWatch also tracks stories about the Stimulus Bill on other news sites and features a nice list of resources in its sidebar.

With Recovery.gov, the government has obviously created its own site for tracking the stimulus bill, but Recovery.gov doesn't currently feature as much in-depth information as ShovelWatch (the 'announcements on the site haven't been updated since the middle of last week) and its focus is more on providing a high-level overview and not on tracking local developments.