Obama signs the first recent presidential ropeline autograph, on an iPad

If you've ever tried to "sign" an Adobe Acrobat document with your mouse. It's not that easy. Thus, comes the story of U.S. President Barack Obama, who visited the University of Washington in Seattle on Thursday. A fan asked him for an autograph, on his iPad.

The iPad-owning fan, Sylvester Cann IV, wrote the request, "Mr. President, sign my iPad" on his iPad using Adobe Idea (yes, yes, without the "please" it sounds more like a command). Although, according to Cann, the Secret Service wasn't too keen on it at first, it happened. In fact, generally, no President will sign autographs along the ropeline because pens can be used as a weapon, so this was a clever idea.

Of course, comparing it to his real signature, it's pretty dissimilar. Here are some details from the YouTube video, which shows Obama signing:

It was kinda funny because he looked up and gave me a big grin afterwards as if he thought it was pretty cool too.

This has to be the first time the iPad has received a Presidential autograph on the ropeline.

A few funny things to notice:

1. Look at the secret service behind him shake his head at first
2. Listen to me say, "can you sign it with your finger?" at around 0:17
3. Reggie Love apparently found it pretty funny too
4. If you see the actual autograph, notice how there is a small black mark in the lower right corner, I had to give him a demo on how it works.

Obama also visited the SF Bay Area (and both Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google exec Marissa Mayer) on Thursday. We wonder if he asked Steve Jobs why Adobe's Flash was not supported, if Idea worked just fine (ahem), and if he complimented Mayer on how Android supports Flash, and asked if Idea would show up on the Samsung Galaxy Tab.