As the clock ticks down towards the Vice Presidential debates in Washington, the Obama campaign has once again pushed the boundaries of campaigning in the 21st century by launching a free Official Obama 08 iPhone application.

This is by no means a rushed attempt at embracing yet another technology or social media channel, such as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. This iPhone app contains a number of advanced features designed to streamline the flow of relevant information and services to Obama supporters.

The local events and get involved features leverage the iPhone’s location awareness (using either GPS, WPS or Cell ID) to find nearby campaign events and offices. Unfortunately no results were returned over here in London, but that isn’t much of a suprise… 

Another highly innovative feature enables you to call friends directly from the application in order to canvess their vote. If you get suck on key issues during a conversaion then of can simply refer to the issues feature that lists Obama’s views on key points such as healthcare, education or defence. This is almost perfectly executed, to the point that contacts are ordered by state so that swing states can be prioritised. However, unfortunately my friend list wasn’t populated until I added a US state to a contact in my address book. So, if your contacts don’t all have full addresses then the feature is very limited. It would be excellent if the entire address book could be displayed and updated as you assign people to states – further populating the contacts that the same time… 

Aside from the above killer features, the app includes news and media updates with links straight to YouTube performances.

To ensure the Obama iPhone app is even more widely distributed, I think it should also provide viral features to help spread the applications amongst connected iPhone users. For example, allow the user to select known iPhone users from their contacts lists and email them with an link formatted for the app store. 

Functionality aside, the Obama iPhone app is a great example of mobile interface design that provides a consistent experience with a supporting website, whilst maintaining the polished interface elements to which iPhone users are now accustomed.