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May 18, 2010 • 8:05 pm 0
links for 2010-05-18
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The Federal research community invites the public to read about the R&D themes, provide your feedback to refine them, identify existing private sector R&D that supports these themes, and to suggest ideas about public-private partnerships that can be used to drive mutual investment in key research areas. To participate, visit http://cybersecurity.nitrd.gov.
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Since ChicagoNow launched last summer our readers have let us know, repeatedly, that we've needed to do two things better: Search and navigation. …
Using software developed by Loud3r, we've launched a revamped site that will do three very important things:
1. Allow the ChicagoNow home page to give exposure to more relevant posts every day.
2. Add a new level of organization, by topic, to ChicagoNow.
3. Vastly improve our search so blogs and bloggers will be easily searchable by name.
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May 17, 2010 • 8:05 pm 0
links for 2010-05-17
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Enter your daily weight, set milestones and track your weight loss all in one place! With simple graphs showing your progress, Shrinking™ is the best way to keep up with your weight loss journey.
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In a recent search it seems that the Government of Canada is seen to be a leader in the global public sector because of our CLF implementation. One of the greatest successes has been the enforcement of a common branding across the public sector. I used to call the CLF 1.0 the Common ugly Look and Feel because it really was boxy and bland, however, it’s gotten a lot better.
Most government sites are looking better than they did a decade ago. Branding shouldn’t force sites to be identical, but it’s important that citizens are able to quickly identify a site as that of their government. This effort should allow some shared learning between departments about best practices for the usability of websites as well.
Accessibility: The Internet has changed dramatically since 1998 when the USA Government released its Section 508 guidelines.
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Our hoarding psychological equivalent is ‘Tend and Befriend’. Humans have a tendency to affiliate and group together in difficult times, coalescing into social groups to fight off threats for survival and trust bonding.
Modern corporate life is rife with this mentality. Affiliation under stress is a survival mechanism where people group together under perceived threats, real or imagined. Concerns about layoffs and reorgs exacerbate this thinking for example, as does command and control hierarchical management, bizarrely opaque unilateral upper management decisions and so on.
While there is plenty of highly sophisticated collaborative software available, it is all too frequently used in a defensive ‘Tend and Befriend’ way, with groups and teams hoarding information based on mutual trust. This translates as many pockets of information with no consistent organizational structure, typically hidden from the larger enterprise whether deliberately or unthinkingly.
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The headache of maintaining public records is intensifying for state and local governments as freedom of information requests from lawyers and other citizens become more demanding. Given that e-mails are often considered public records, archiving them for e-discovery is a priority for many state and local IT departments. Governments unsure of how to proceed ought to look to Washington state.
Since 2008, the Washington Department of Information Services (DIS) has been transferring messages stored in agency e-mail systems into a central data repository. It's a work in progress, as the state prepares to add more types of documents to the repository.
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Tom Scott is an information architect for the BBC
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May 16, 2010 • 8:04 pm 0
links for 2010-05-16
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The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation today unveiled the "Entrepreneur's Pledge," a new component of the Entrepreneurs' Movement that the Foundation launched last fall at http://www.BuildAStrongerAmerica.com. The Pledge went "live" before more than 500 entrepreneurs at the DC10 Summit Series, an invitation-only event in Washington this week for some of the nation's top young innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.
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May 15, 2010 • 8:02 pm 0
links for 2010-05-15
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From day one, Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to become a social utility. He succeeded. Facebook is now a utility for many. The problem with utilities is that they get regulated.
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June 15-18, 2010, in San Jose California and cyberspace! The twentieth annual ACM Computers Freedom and Privacy Conference will take place Tuesday, June 15 through Friday, June 18, 2010, on the San Jose State University campus in the heart of Silicon Valley.
"We have an exceptionally strong program this year, with keynote speakers including Peter Cullen of Microsoft and David Drummond of Google, "hot topics" sessions covering the latest news in freedom, privacy, and networks, and CFP's first "Unconference". Other highlights include sessions focusing on consumer advocacy, human rights, business perspectives, and cutting-edge intersections between technology and policy. " -
A virus walk into a bar…
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May 13, 2010 • 8:06 pm 0
links for 2010-05-13
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An espresso, a real one, requires seven to eight grams of freshly ground coffee roasted two to three days in advance, or preserved using pressurization. The water can't be too soft, and must not exceed 200 degrees F to avoid burning, nor be lower than 190 F in order to extract all the best aromatic components.
The grind is also fundamental. A too-fine grind can create burnt coffee and extract unpleasantly bitter and woody flavors. This is why so many people describe espresso's taste as "bitter." An overly coarse grind doesn't permit full extraction of certain key elements. The proper, medium grind permits extraction of one ounce of aromatic black liquid in 25 to 30 seconds, the ideal amount of time.
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When you're ready to launch your website, you'll want to give visitors the best user experience possible. Learning to evaluate a website effectively is part art and part science, but it's a skill that can be learned. To develop an eye for what works on a website and what doesn't, there are few simple techniques that help you critique your website in 30 seconds or less.
Note where your eyes go first – Type in your URL, then close your eyes before the page loads. What's the first thing you see when you open your eyes? Does it explain the page instantly, or do you have to look around a few more seconds before grasping its meaning?
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The survey, which included 1600 end users in the U.S., U.K, Germany and Japan, found that, in general, employees were much more focused on individual concerns and conveniences than their company’s overall IT security. For instance:
* About 50 percent of those polled have divulged employee-privy data through an unsecure Web mail account.
* Mobile workers were least concerned of all. Across all countries, 60 percent of mobile workers versus 44 percent of desktop workers admitted to having sent out confidential company information via IM, Web mail or social media applications. In Japan, that number jumped to more than three-fourths (78 percent) of the mobile employees polled.
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May 12, 2010 • 8:06 pm 0
links for 2010-05-12
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YouTube's new "unlisted videos" give users the option of uploading a video but not having it appear in any lists or search results. Only those who know the address will see it. So if you ever wanted to share a video with family, or school, or your book club, you can do it without worrying that the whole world will see it.
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May 11, 2010 • 8:05 pm 0
links for 2010-05-11
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Legislation tracking for the 2009 congressional bills: good interface and tour
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IBM SPSS Modeler Professional makes it easy to discover insights in your data. Its simple graphical interface puts the power of data mining in the hands of business users while high-performance capabilities increase analyst productivity.
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What is government 2.0? Tim O’Reilly describes it as government working as a platform. Others might describe it as applying the technologies that make up Web 2.0 to the practice of government, including blogs, wikis, social networking and crowdsourcing. The simplest way of describing government 2.0 may be any technology that helps citizens or agencies solve problems, either for individuals or the community, and enables government to operate more efficiently or effectively.
The following are five ways that the U.S. government is using social media to deliver services or engage citizens in making better policy.
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May 10, 2010 • 8:06 pm 0
links for 2010-05-10
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Tim O'Reilly writes: "During the past 15 years, the World Wide Web has created remarkable new methods for harnessing the creativity of people in groups, and in the process has created powerful business models that are reshaping our economy. As the Web has undermined old media and software companies, it has demonstrated the enormous power of a new approach, often referred to as Web 2.0. In a nutshell: the secret to the success of bellwethers like Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is that each of these sites, in its own way, has learned to harness the power of its users to add value to—no, more than that, to co-create—its offerings.
Now, a new generation has come of age with the Web, and it is committed to using its lessons of creativity and collaboration to address challenges facing our country and the world." -
Year after year, email marketing analysts and experts invest their time and efforts into answering the same question, “what is the best day of the week to send email?” The overall consensus from the numerous studies that have been conducted over the years show that mail sent on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays has the best chance of being opened. While these findings have some weight to them, perhaps the correct answer is that it all depends. To help you determine what is best for your campaign, let’s have a look at the pros and cons of sending email on each day of the week.
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May 9, 2010 • 8:05 pm 0
links for 2010-05-09
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Cloud.com's open source CloudStack software makes it easy for just about anyone to get into the cloud provider business. The Cupertino based company yesterday announced the availability of the open source version of their tool, the change to their new name (they used to be VMOps), the addition of several high profile executives and new financing. They will have commercially licensed versions of their software out by months end that include integration into billing and support tools, as well as more robust APIs.
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Arguably the gold standard of electric health records management, the federal Department of Veterans Affairs could be "re-engineered" as an open-source project.
That was the unanimous recommendation of the Industry Advisory Council, which was asked to study and suggest ways to modernize and simplify the VA's VistA (VA Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture), which serves about 8 million veterans through 153 medical centers and 768 outpatient clinics across the U.S.
343diggsdiggVistA has been continually developed and upgraded over the past 32 years, but if it's to continue being effective, it needs an overhaul. Updates on top of updates have rendered VistA difficult to maintain. So the VA decided to seek recommendations for an overhaul before it needed fixing.
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* Define the terms “web writing,” “content,” “content strategy,” and “information architecture”
* Class blog entry (or discussion list post) #1
* Discuss the ways in which “web writing” relates to other web design and development disciplines
* Summarize the relationship of web content to accessibility, usability, and findability
* Describe a user-centered approach to web writing and contrast this approach with other common writing practices -
Citizens should be allowed to take photos while standing in public spaces near federal buildings, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit challenges regulations that prohibit photography on federal property.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, names the Department of Homeland Security along with the Federal Protective Service, an unnamed federal officer, and Inspector Clifford Barnes of the Federal Protective Service.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Antonio Musumeci, 29, a software developer from Edgewater, N.J.
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Veetle TV is the wildly popular live video application created by a couple of Stanford students.
How to Watch? Download Veetle TV, install it, then click on any channel to watch instantly. No spam, no gimmicks, and no need to restart your browser or computer. Chrome version windows and linux. -
Titan is amazing. It is extremely easy to use and will speed up your development time. If you already know jQuery & Javascript there is zero learning curve.
The only hard part about Titan, has been getting the word out
If you have any questions or comments please use the Titan Google Group.
Titan will be released soon, I just need to do some initial documentation. -
Cammie Croft, former deputy director of new media at the White House, is taking on a new challenge as the director of new media at the Department of Energy.
In her new role, Croft will be upgrading elements of the IT infrastructure at an immense federal agency to enable her and her team to implement the digital tools for online engagement that she applied during the presidential campaign and the new administration's first year in office. The Department of Energy has IT infrastructure challenges that exist within many government bodies at all levels, from an outdated content management system (CMS) to difficulties supporting blogs or commenting.
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