You may have seen it, but when the President signed a pardon it was done securely over Cisco Webex. The popular show 24 either believed it is the best or it was product placement. Either way, its an incredible solution.

Not only, as we have discussed here before, will online meetings save time but travel costs as well. Imaging how much the government will save in airline flights, car travel and hotels.

There is actually a bigger opportunity here. When the government awards a contract to a contracting company the government specifies it’s requirements. They could require the contracted company to use online meetings and software. It is not uncommon for billion dollar and multi-million dollar contracts to be awarded. Imagine if a Lockheed Martin or other larger government contractor received a 1 billion dollar contract and all those individuals they employed were encouraged and required to utilize online meetings every change they got. The amount of fuel from lack of flights and amount of time, which also saves money, would be substantial.

We humbly suggest, and hope, that the Obama CTO will implement video conferencing and online meetings as a requirement. This is not a request for them to give a contract to a company to install $100,000 video conferencing units but instead to use an open source or other product to enable every government worker to host and participate in online meetings from their computer whether at work or at home.

Let’s go green and online meetings will be one of the many tools to do that.

After looking at them all I happened to be online that evening. I noticed many of the same products featured in the advertisements, the discounted products and coupons were basically identical to what was online. What was more interesting was that in basically every comparison of a product at a local store as opposed to the same product online, the online pricing was better. Many of the items you are looking for, now a days online you can get domain names, rent video games, buy your cooking supplies, sneakers, pet supplies as well as medicine and even diamonds and jewelry. I never saw a local store with a cheaper price, sometimes the same, but usually online was much cheaper.

Obviously online shopping will only continue to increase. You may want to think about getting a domain name at a registrar like GoDaddy as some day you may want to sell online yourself.

I was then able to buy everything I needed without the crowded parking lots, shopping malls and all the headaches that go along with it. Just as the online meeting technology allows us to have meetings without having to move to another location, at a much cheaper price than travel, online e-commerce has now eclipsed local shopping.