Although the site focuses on places and pictures, it also refers to the community "where local values foster tolerance, compromise and mutual respect — and where diversity defines people rather than divides them."

And it quotes Obama himself: "What's best in me, and what's best in my message, is consistent with the tradition of Hawai'i."

Another Web site emerged last week from local writer Rob Kay after he researched more of Obama's roots in Hawai'i when he contributed to a Wall Street Journal story.

"I realized there was a gap, a missing component to the Obama equation that explained who he was because of his Hawai'i upbringing," Kay said.

"I believe people here understand this intuitively, but it was not something that people outside of Hawai'i comprehend," he said.

Kay's site has some Google ads that could earn money. But so far, he said he got involved more for the research and hasn't quite determined what the business side could be.