Change.gov, the new administration's transition Website, launched yesterday. PCMagazine's AppScout blog has the story -- Obama Launches Change.gov to Provide Transition Details -- but go kick the tires for yourself.

There you may Apply for a Job in the new administration, Share your vision for what America can be, Share your hopes for the future and more.

After the Netroots campaign, there are high hopes for a giant leap beyond George W. Bush's use of 'The Google'.

Besides the new site, Obama Tech Policy Advisor Is On The Transition Team. At Wired:

President-elect Barack Obama has named a telecom policy and internet business veteran to his transition team, a move that signals the kind of people and policies that we might be hearing about in the days to come.

Rock Creek Ventures' co-founder Julius Genachowski is on the advisory board of President-elect Obama and vice president-elect Joe Biden's transition team, which has been established as a non-profit entity. The group's role is to recommend agency heads and generally manage a smooth transition between the Bush and Obama administrations.

Genachowski chaired the advisory committee that came up with Obama's technology and innovation plan, a wide group that included Stanford Law School's Larry Lessig, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and Craig Newmark of Craig's List, and former members of President Bill Clinton's administration...

Celia Kang, blogging at WaPo, writes the short profile (Obama Picks High-Tech and Washington Veteran to Transition Team) which includes the key detail that Julius and Barack go way back -- to Harvard Law.

Wired continues,

...There's no word on who the chief technology officer could be, although Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Partner and Silicon Valley Democrat John Doerr put his colleague Bill Joy up for the position yesterday during an interview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Bill Joy, of course, is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the author of the cheerful 2000 Wired essay "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us."

The money quote from that essay: "Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. A bomb is blown up only once - but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control." A nervous futurist might be just the antidote to a headlong plunge into technology that could make a lot of money for a few companies before it exterminates us.

More speculation: Stephanie Condon at CNEt: Obama's search for a CTO. If you know what a CTO is, this is your story. (It's a Chief Technology Officer.)

Wish lists: At NetworkWorld, Scott Bradner offers My 10 tech-related wishes for the Obama administration.

I have some wishes, too.

I would like to see universal broadband access to the Web treated as a core necessity for a functioning modern society. It's in the air. An election-day story you might have missed: F.C.C. Nods to New Use of Airwaves:

Over the objections of television broadcasters and other groups, federal regulators set aside a disputed slice of radio spectrum for public use on Tuesday, hoping it would lead to low-cost, high-speed Internet access and new wireless devices.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 5 to 0 to approve the new use for the unlicensed frequencies, known as white spaces...

..."Some have called this Wi-Fi on steroids," (Commissioner Michael J.) Copps said. "I hope they're correct."

That phrase comes from Google co-founder Larry Page. It was laid out in May on Google's Public Policy blog: Larry Page talks about Google's vision of "wi-fi on steroids"

New devices that would use the "white spaces" could combine Wi-Fi (with its range of 300 feet and no more than two walls to go through) and WiMax, which ranges 4-5 miles, and up to 30 under optimal conditions) to offer seamless mobile broadband access.

And one more wish: A review of the copyright office's exorbitant music-royalty fees that have all but exterminated smalltime Web radio. (For noncommercial webcasters, the fee is $500 per channel, for up to 159,140 Aggregate Tuning Hours [one listener listening for an hour] per month. link)

Find another way to compensate musicians record labels than to keep musicians' most ardent fans from streaming their music for others to discover. Kurt Hanson's RAIN (Radio and Internet Newsletter) has been all over this for years.