White House chooses VMware’s Tony Scott to be next U.S. CIO
Will oversee federal IT budget
VMware’s Tony Scott has been chosen to become the next U.S. chief information officer, according to a White House announcement on Thursday.…
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Open data progress is slow, warns Web Foundation
Transparency is a way off
Accessible open data about government spending and services remains a pipe dream across most of the world, an 86-country survey by the…
South Carolina tells Uber to shut down in the state
The latest regulatory battle
On Thursday, South Carolina’s Public Service Commission (PSC) issued an order for Uber to cease operations. The state governing body warned the company to stop its…
Foreign security vendors can no longer bid for Chinese government contracts
A Chinese government supplier list for security firms now includes only Chinese outfits, with Symantec and Kaspersky having been shown the door.
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The White House is going to study big data. Here are 5 things it should know
The White House announced on Thursday that it will form a working group to study big data and report on its implications to privacy, policy and society. That might be easier said than done.
The Times calls for mercy for Edward Snowden
Today, the New York Times editorial board formally asked the U.S. government to consider a plea bargain for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is…
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U.S. Government to discuss privacy policy for facial recognition technology
People have the right to protect the use of our name and likeness, but what do we do about technology that can…
C.I.A. is said to pay AT&T for call data
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/us/cia-is-said-to-pay-att-for-call-data.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1383915686-vNpH2yXBdHGjP3S5FZYfNw A contract uncovered by the New York Times shows that the C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million per year to…
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Lavabit and Silent Circle join forces for Dark Mail Alliance
Although their mail clients have shut down, Lavabit and Silent Circle have joined forces to change the protocols of secure mail.
Just as companies and even armies are becoming media entities, so are governments
The Obama administration has shown what is possible when a government becomes a media entity in its own right. But is that good or bad for a free press and for society in general?
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Do we really need state-funded news entities like the BBC any more?
There have been calls for a restructuring of the British public broadcaster in the wake of scandals involving sexual-abuse charges against prominent British citizens. But does the BBC just need to be shaken up, or does its entire mandate for public journalism need to be reviewed?
Twitter, World War II and the death of official secrets
The government’s attempt to keep the president’s trip to Afghanistan a secret was foiled by Twitter — in the same week that the Associated Press apologized to the reporter it fired 67 years ago for breaking the embargo on the end of World War II.
What happens when social surveillance goes mainstream?
The UK government considers a law that would allow for surveillance of online activity, U.S. universities admit they track what their athletes are saying on Twitter, and employers are asking for Facebook passwords. At this point, advertisers tracking us online is the least of our problems.
Dutch Senate goes digital thanks to iPads
The Dutch Senate is going paperless, and the iPad is going to get them there. A new program to replace most of the governing body’s paper documents with a digital app is progressing smoothly and saving money in the Netherlands, two weeks into launch.
Amazon targets U.S. government with GovCloud
Amazon Web Services has rolled out a new region, called GovCloud, designed specifically for federal government workloads. The region is designed to meet the myriad regulations that government agencies must meet when deploying new infrastructure, which have proven a hindrance in terms government cloud adoption.
Town finds iPads make paperless painless
The town of Cornelius, Colo. has found that a new pilot program replacing paper with iPads is saving the administration money and time, helping the environment and increasing government transparency. It’s a good example of how the iPad could replace laptops for many organizations.
Social media brings out the snitch in all of us
Twitter and Facebook are great tools for reporting on world events — but what happens when we turn those tools on one another? We got a glimpse of that in Vancouver, and it was a glimpse of a future that some would rather not see.
Got a Big Idea? Tell the White House on Twitter
The White House wants to hear from average citizens with big ideas about what projects the government should tackle, and has asked them to respond on Twitter. The responses are being collected by Expert Labs, a non-profit run by former Six Apart executive Anil Dash.
The Impact of Corporate Policies on Web Working Employees
Last week, there was quite a bit of discussion about how some social media web sites, including Twitter, were being blocked for…
UK Conservatives Call for Smart Grid
The Conservative Party in the UK may be trying to one-up Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the rival Labor Party with its…
The State of Telecommuting
When we looked at last year’s Telework Report from CDW, the federal government stood out as a leader in encouraging telecommuting. This…
Mobile Subscribers Forecast to Top 5 Billion-Mark by 2011
A few days ago, I pointed out that India was finally getting its 3G act together by coming up with a liberal…
Vid-Biz: Nielsen, Pando, Stage 6
Nielsen Partnering With Charter Communications for Data; marks the first time the ratings company will collect information from set-top boxes. (The Wall…
VMWare Fusion observations from a mobile perspective
Last week I downloaded VMWare Fusion to see how it compares to Parallels Desktop from a mobile perspective. Remember, when I first…
VoIP, Not Features, New Thinking
Tom Evslin argues that VoIP will be known for its features. Aswath, thinks otherwise, and believes that in order for VoIP to…
