Yesterday, Rick Smolan released the top secret project he’s been working on with HP: THE OBAMA TIME CAPSULE, a customizable book. Using the HP print-on-demand technology we last showed you with MagCloud, people can weave their own names, photos and messages into an historic large format book featuring the work of the world's leading photographers, graphic artists and writers.

The book can be extensively personalized by answering a few questions and uploading photos to the project website. THE OBAMA TIME CAPSULE offers readers seven different ways to personalize the book. If you’ve been courting your own ISBN, you’ll come close with co-author credit on the front cover and a photograph of you on the back (as well as inside amongst celebrity supporters). Each collectible copy of the book is printed one at a time. Most publishing industry analysts agree that print-on-demand will be the publishing model of the future.

“From grass roots Facebook campaigns to viral YouTube videos, the Obama campaign took the presidential race to a new level in terms of personalization,” said Smolan, co-founder of Against All Odds Productions (AAO). And the book follows suit: Using the Internet, publishers have fewer barriers to market and by only printing what is necessary, excess inventory and waste are eliminated.The OBAMA TIME CAPSULE (retail price $64.95) is now available exclusively through Amazon at an introductory price of $34.95. Additional sponsors for the book include Google, AOL, Facebook, Glam Media, Blurb, Microsoft, eMotion and NewPage.

Today is a very important day. We couldn’t be more excited about an Obama presidency. Just to add to our excitement we cracked up over this Obama Run DC shirt. You can pick up your own here for $20. More importantly, we hope you enjoy today’s celebration and historical significance, regardless of whether or not you have a clever T-shirt on.

Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States of America. To honor and celebrate his historic achievement, Robert Bosch, Faculty at Oberlin went ahead and created a portrait of President-Elect Obama out of 44 complete sets of double-nine dominoes. Want to do this yourself? Thought so, here are the plans by number, also after the jump.
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There are official-looking men on the street corners in downtown Denver, and eying them while they whisper top secret information into their pen caps is sort of exciting. However, even men in black lose their mystery, and when that time comes there are more vibrant things worth watching at the Democratic National Convention. Manifest Hope Gallery, for example, is a paint-packed exhibition of over 10,000 square feet of art created in support of hope, change, progress and patriotism. It’s one of the best things to hit the political scene since term limits.

Participating artists include Shepard Fairey, Adrian Tucker, Scot Lefavor, and Sam Flores (among dozens of others), and after hitting up the press unveiling on Sunday, I will say that the gallery lives up to what it wanted to be and more. It’s thrilling enough to go to any one of these artist’s shows, but to go to one of this magnitude, with talent of this significance and a voice of this strength is incredible.

All of the work at the gallery has been donated by the artists to help fund the Obama/Biden campaign, and some of the pieces are up for auction on eBay (but I imagine if you want to score any and all of the art, you can find appropriate contact info on the website. For more info on the gallery, and to find out when you can swing in if you’re in the area, go here.

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