Franklin Delano Roosevelt's radio series of 30 "fireside chats" was a key way to connect the presidency to homes across the nation in 1933 and 1934. More than 75 years later, President Obama is using Google+ to "Hangout" with his constituents. 

In his ongoing series paying respect to the New Deal broker, Obama's "Fireside Hangout" starts Thursday at 4:50pm ET (1:50pm PT). The President will answer questions from Americans nationwide concerning his fourth State of the Union address, which took place Monday night.

Obviously no stranger to the Internet, Obama has a history of digital prowess and social media savvy. He knows how to captizlize on a viral meme, can overload Reddit with an AMA, and has long trounced his political opponents in Twitter outreach (even his best fake Twitter account has an unreasonably high number of followers).

To be sure, the President's culturally attuned staff is helping him every step of the way. After all, it was unprecedented  social tools and data crunching that helped him secure his second term.

So if you have something you want to say about the President's State of the Union address, or just want to watch the dialogue in real time, be sure to jump in the Hangout this afternoon. You can also see it at http://youtube.com/whitehouse and http://wh.gov. 

As of publication time, the number of confirmed attenddess of the virtual Q&A is nearing 24,000 Google users, and that number is likely to keep climbing as the kickoff time nears.

Here are the links to the stories and topics we talked about:

• TorrentFreak: BitTorrent Traffic Increases 40% in Half a Year
• Dan Lyons: The Streaming Video Market Is So Messed Up It's Scary
• Dan Frommer: Twitter Is Now The Best Way To Follow Election Results
• ReadWrite Pause
• Tim McCormick: How To Drop Your Data Plan And Keep Using Your Smartphone
• Tim McCormick: What Life Is Like For A Smartphone User Without A Data Plan
• Brian Proffitt: Why I'm Joining The Movement To Stop Answering After-Hours Email
• Jon Mitchell: Do You Need To Go Cyborg To Keep Your Job?
• Reader's response to Do You Need To Go Cyborg To Keep Your Job?

We're talking about the new iPad Mini and updated iPad, whether we desire them or not, and whether we'll buy them anyway.

Here are the links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• ReadWrite's iPad mini coverage
• John Paul Titlow: The 4th-Generation iPad Makes Me Feel Like A Sucker
• Dan Rowinski: The "New" iPad Should Never Have Been Released
• Hack Education: Education, Technology "Journalism," and the Apple PR Machine
• Felix Salmon: Why Apple Doesn’t Care About Its Competition (ᔥ Daring Fireball)
• Mark Hachman: Hands On with Microsoft’s New Surface Tablet

Brian, Dan, Fruzsina and Jon are joined by tech PR consultants Zach Servideo and Jocelyn Johnson to talk about what’s right and wrong with the relationship between PR reps and journalists covering technology. It’s a big conversation, and this is just the start.

Please chime in with feedback. The topic that’s directly about tech, but it is about getting people who love tech the best information possible. Your views on this stuff are the most important, so share them in the comments!

Adam, Brian, Jon and Robyn discuss the future of the music business, which has come up in several RWW stories lately, in our latest Google+ Hangout. Brian describes the argument he just had with a rock star, and Adam tells tales about his recent visit to Myspace HQ.

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• RWW: BitTorrent Downloads Booming - And Benefitting Musicians
• RWW: Screw The New iPods: We Need Better Music Players
• RWW: Justin Timberlake Is Bringing Myspace Back To The Desktop, Where No One Will Use It

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock

Jon talks to Dalton Caldwell, co-founder of App.net, about the present and future of the Web's social infrastructure. They cover the business of social as well as the culture, and Dalton previews some of the diverse, new experiences developers are building on top of App.net.

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• Alpha, the basic client offered by App.net
• @dalton on App.net
• @ablaze (Jon) on App.net
• Directory of third-party devs and apps for App.net
• DaltonCaldwell.com, for all of Dalton's blog posts about the experiment
• RWW: The Twitter Rebellion: App.net Offers a Hacker's Alternative
• App.netizen First Officially Unofficial SF Bay Coastside Drinkup Friday, September 21 at 6:00 p.m.!

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Tablets aren't just the hot holiday gifts of today. They've broken open the idea of what a computer is, what it should look like, and how we should interact with it. Dan, Eliot and Jon were joined by new RWW writer Adam Popescu to discuss the Nexus 7, the iPad, and where touchscreen computing is going next.

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• An iPad-Toting Mom Reviews the Google Nexus 7
• Google I/O: Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean, Will Have Responsive Widgets, Offline Voice Typing
• Counterpoint: The Retina MacBook Pro Is Not a "Boondoggle" at All
• United Future: Creating Interactive Experiences of the Future

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the schedule for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Governments, citizens, media and tech companies are all wrestling with how to handle the hypernetworked future that's rushing in on us, and it's starting to get ugly. In this week's RWW Hangout, Dan, Eliot, Fruzsina, Jon and Ted tried to wrap their minds around Internet censorship, the relationship between governments and social networks, and the ever-changing cultural norms around privacy.

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• Russia's New Censorship Law Diminishes the Entire Internet
• Google Documents Government Snooping
• Everybody is Lying to Me and I Don't Care
• Teen Sexting Really Does Mean Teen Sex

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Microsoft dove headfirst into the hardware business this week with its new flagship Surface tablets. Competition drives innovation, and now four of the biggest tech companies - Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft - have different takes on the touchscreen. Eliot and Jon discussed the implications in this week's RWW hangout.

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• [Video] Surface vs. iPad: Microsoft's Getting Rusty At Stealing from Apple
• Microsoft Reveals A Family of Super-Thin Tablets Called Surface
• [Video] 3 Reasons Microsoft's Windows Surface Tablet Just Might Succeed
• New Chromebook & Chromebox Are Good Enough to Grab Minds & Market Share
• Chrome On a Tablet? New Video Emerges

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• New Chromebook & Chromebox Are Good Enough to Grab Minds & Market Share (Jon's big review)
• Why the New Chromebook Still Doesn't Cut It (Scott's counter-review)
• More Bad News For HP: The New Google Chromebook Compared to a Typical HP Laptop
• Chrome On a Tablet? New Video Emerges (August 9, 2011)

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• RWW Storify: Who do you think will buy Pinterest? (embedded below)
• RWW: Why Flickr & Pinterest Need Each Other
• Engauge: Pinterest: A Review of Social Media's Newest Sweetheart
• Google+ conversation on this Hangout with Greg Cohn from Yahoo
• LA Times: Is Pinterest really worth $1.5 billion?

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• [Video] Gaming's Next Level (our RWW Hangout with game industry expert Matt Tubergen)
• Minecraft
• [Video] Working 16-bit computer built inside Minecraft!
• [Video] Building Megaobjects In Minecraft
• Second Life
• ROBLOX
• Eden for iOS
• Myst for iPhone
• Diablo III

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• Sites With Social Reading Apps Sacrifice Readers to Facebook
• Why I Shut Off Facebook's Spotify Integration

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Matt Tubergen (TOO-brrrrr-gain) leads mobile special projects at TechSmith Corporation in Okemos, Michigan. Matt came to TechSmith after more than a decade of releasing digital products and marketing campaigns across mobile, social and web platforms for companies including AG Interactive, THQ Wireless and AZMob. From founding a ring tone business in college to preparing for the launch of TechSmith’s first Android app, Matt’s got chops.

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• OK, Can We Have Super Mario for iPhone Now?
• CNET: TouchFire makes the iPad keyboard tactile
• Steam mobile (it does exist on iOS, but it's limited.)

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Here are links to the posts and topics we talked about:

• The Google Drive Review You've Been Waiting For
• Google Drive Doesn't Go Far Enough - But It Could
• Full-Sized Screenshots of the Google Drive iPad App
• Read This Before You Move Your Business to Google Drive
• Fabled Google Drive Won't Be Another Dropbox (from February 9)

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

Here are links to some of the posts and topics we talked about:

• Pocket
• Instapaper
• Readability
• PostPost
• Kippt
• Favs for Mac
• IFTTT
• Read It Later blog: Read It Later's Secret: Our Users Love Video, Too
• Nate Weiner: Why Read It Later/Pocket Went Free
• Drewbot: If I Were Huffington Post...
• RWW: Websites Have to Get Better

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!

What will this really look like? How will it work? What can we do with it? Is this even a future we want? ReadWriteWeb's Jon Mitchell and John Paul Titlow were joined by Sherilynn Macale in our weekly +ReadWriteWeb Hangout On Air to talk about the implications of augmented reality.

Here are links to some of the posts and topics we talked about:

• Google+: +Project Glass
• Project Glass concept video
• Google Glasses: A New Way to Hurt Yourself (parody video)
• Nokia Morph concept video
• Wikipedia: Hedonic treadmill (aka hedonic adaptation)

We hang out at 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Thursdays, and you're welcome to join us or just watch live. (Here's the time for every time zone.) Make sure to follow +ReadWriteWeb on Google+ if you want to watch or participate. We'd love to have you!