Phil Windley points to a series of articles from Tom Adelstein on the use of open source software in state and local governments.
Adelstein is heading the Open Government Interoperability Project whose position statement says:
Aging infrastructure and legacy data processing systems have created a dilemma for communities in their attempt to meet the expectations of users. How do local governments meet these expectations with limited financial resources? Most localities face declining revenues and increased costs of providing services. Local governments struggle to maintain existing IT resources and have budgetary constraints if they wish to expand and/or upgrade infrastructure or systems.One will find few communities with the financial resources necessary to meet its IT requirements. Two potential strategies exist that local governments can use to address these problems:
(1) less reliance on costly proprietary software by utilizing open source software where possible; and
(2) creating mechanisms to cooperate with other cities to share the cost of developing systems that address needs common to local governments.
The O'Reilly book, Spidering Hacks, talks about creating an RSS feed for a site that doesn't already have a feed:
Wouldn't it be nice if you could simply visualize what data on a page looks like, explain it in template form to Perl, and not bother with the need for parsers, regular expressions, and other programmatic logic? That's exactly what Template::Extract helps you do.
The Pew Research Center reports on Consumption of Information goods and services in the United States:
Computers and the Internet are encroaching on the TV and the landline telephone as important information and communication tools for a growing number of tech-loving Americans, especially those in their twenties.
Among other things, they indicate that there are eight different groups of technology users, including Young Tech Elites, Older Wired Baby Boomers, Young Marrieds, and Wired Senior Men. People are becoming increasingly unwired and substituting connection for more traditional media, like television, newspapers, and magazines.
Boxes and Arrows discusses defacto design standards on the web.
Design elements used by more than 70% of the sites studied included:
Less common on sites were breadcrumbs (45%) and underlined links (62%).
The Free Range Librarian has a No-Brainer Method for getting started with RSS:
I love RSS (the acronym means various things, but my favorite definition is "Really Simple Syndication"). I can track all kinds of news from new and familiar sources, from Dilbert to the New York Times, without filling up my e-mail box or tying a string around my finger to check various Web sites. The news comes to me as headlines and brief abstracts (with one-click access to the entire article) through my RSS reader (aggregator).
The Center for Democracy and Technology has an informative report on background and policy proposals on the 'spyware' problem:
The vast majority of writing about the spyware problem to date has focused on the privacy dimension of the issue. Privacy is one of the major concerns raised by spyware, but the larger issues are transparency and control. Users are typically unaware that spyware programs are being installed on their computers and often unable to uninstall them. These programs can change the appearance of websites, modify users' "start" and "search" pages in their browsers, or change low level system settings. They are often responsible for significant reducations in computer performance and system stability. In many cases, consumers are mistakenly led to believe that the problem is with another application or with their Internet provider, placing a substantial burden on the support departments of providers of those legitimate applications and services. Even in cases where theses programs transmit no personally identifiable informatin, their hidden, unauthorized use of users' computers and Internet connections threatens the security of comptuers and the integrity of online communications. Arguably, a better term for many of these applications would have been "trespassware."...via Freedom to Tinker
Posted by dcoates at 10:19 AM
Blogger offers this public service announcement:
These days, many companies are blog-friendly because they recognize a valuable tool for communication and the sharing of ideas when they see it. However, as with any public medium, care should be exercised from time to time. Here at Blogger, we want you to keep your job and as always, ending your blog should be a last resort reserved only for woeful situations. Fret not gentle blogger, we've put together this document to help you keep those paychecks rolling in.
A CNET News report on why Johnny can't blog (which is actually about whether heavy investments in technology pay off):
While such reports are promising, few education experts expect computer instruction to translate directly into better grades--a factor that could pose problems for federal funding of technology programs down the road, depending on how heavily the Education Department's evaluation program relies on test scores."No one will say, 'Give me technology and I'll guarantee test scores will go up in two years,'" said Saul Rockman, founder of San Francisco-based technology education consulting firm Rockman Et Al and former head of education research at Apple. "The feds are saying, 'Prove that it makes a difference.' The fact is, technology programs don't have the weight to raise test scores."
Adactio has a set of Photoshop tutorials online combined with a download with macros for achieving the affects explained in the tutorials.
RSS really is for everyone, as evidenced by the number of definiteions for RSS in Google.
...via BoingBoing
Technorati, which offers curent info on who's linking to who, what they're talking about and other blogging stats, has been suffering some growing pains. Mostly because the rate of growth in the number of weblogs is huge:
Allow me to give you some growth statistics: One year ago, when I started Technorati on a single server in my basement, we were adding between 2,000-3,000 new weblogs each day, not counting the people who were updating sites we were already tracking. In March of this year, when we switched over to a 5 server cluster, we were keeping up with about 4,000-5,000 new weblogs each day. Right now, we're adding 8,000-9,000 new weblogs every day, not counting the 1.2 Million weblogs we already are tracking. That means that on average, a brand new weblog is created every 11 seconds. We're also seeing about 100,000 weblogs update every day as well, which means that on average, a weblog is updated every 0.86 seconds.
HBS Working Knowledge offers an article on IT Investments that Pay Off:
Our research revealed, in particular, that three practices distinguish the companies that were most successful in their IT investments. First, such companies targeted their investments at the productivity levers that mattered most for their industries and themselves. Second, they carefully thought through the sequence and timing of their investments. Third, they didn't pursue IT in isolation but rather developed managerial innovations in tandem with technological ones. Let's look more closely at how these imperatives drive productivity.
Emerald Fulltext is offering free access to Journal of Knowledge Management
...via elearningpost
The New York Times has an article on whether robots will ever become conscious:
To Dr. Moravec, if it acts conscious, it is. To ask more is pointless.Dr. Chalmers regards consciousness as an ineffable trait, and it may be useless to try to pin it down. "We've got to admit something here is irreducible," he said. "Some primitive precursor consciousness could go all the way down" to the smallest, most primitive organisms, even bacteria, he said.
Dr. Chalmers too sees nothing fundamentally different between a creature of flesh and blood and one of metal, plastics and electronic circuits. "I'm quite open to the idea that machines might eventually become conscious," he said, adding that it would be "equally weird."
Time Magazine also has a cool inventions for 2003 list, including:
ComputerWorld delivers a report on sales and use of the tablet PC after one year:
It's been a year since Microsoft Corp. launched Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and declared a new chapter in the history of personal computing to be starting. The platform hasn't caught on as fast as its biggest cheerleader was perhaps hoping but despite a quiet first year few are willing to dismiss the platform just yet.
Fast Company reports on how MapQuest gets you from here to there:
MapQuest uses state-of-the-art satellite images and computer algorithms, but it also relies on actual observations in the field. So it is that an army of modern-day explorers is continually remapping the nation. As Clark steers a Ford Taurus through Avalon Way's newest streets, she recites what she sees, starting with street names and building numbers at the beginning and end of a block. "Hemison-- H-e-m-i-s-o-n --Court. There's a gate . . . number four is on the right."
...via elearningpost
The making of a brick is a combination of animation, text and very short video clips to convey interesting information.
...via elearningpost
invisiblog.com provides the means to publish a weblog anonymously:
invisiblog.com lets you publish a weblog using GPG and the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network. You don't ever have to reveal your identity - not even to us. You don't have to trust us, because we'll never know who you are.
First Monday has an article on Copyright and Authors by John Ewing that addresses some of the history and philosphy of copyright law and some of the current issues that we need to address.
Popular Science talks about what's best of what's new in 2003, including:
...via Gizmodo
The RSS in Government blog has been quiet since this summer, but it's back today with three interesting posts:
Harro Ranter, Senior Knowledge Consultant for the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management is happy to announce that his agency has recently started a RSS news channel. Wide and immediate dissemination of their news is vital since the agency is responsible for mobility policy in the Netherlands and for protection against floods or falling water tables.
Weblogs provide for collaboration between experts on an as needed basis and virtually eliminate the need to send correspondence and documents by e-mail. TeamPage, in particular, allows users to set up a portal for viewing several Weblogs from one page. This faceting capability seems to be the significant feature possibly not available through other less expensive open source alternatives. According to Washington Technology, Traction's server-based enterprise software ranges in price from $5,000 per server to $10,000 per server plus $125 per account, depending on features. A single user version runs for about $250.
Games are becoming ever more popular as tools for learning, both in teaching and the workplaces. Despite major differences of opinion among different disciplines, both researchers and developers agree on one thing: The strength of games is that you learn things in the context in which you use them.
Matt Locke tells us the things that Wired has promised in the past would become things of the past:
...via BoingBoing
...or, Sometimes Redundancies Aren't
We talk a great deal in Extension (as almost all large organizations do) about 'eliminating duplication.' We want to be as lean and efficient as possible. This isn't a bad goal; we want to do as much as we can, spread our resources as far as we can, and be as effective as possible.
The problem arises when this works better in the all-mental abstract than it does in the rubber-meets-the-road concrete. In particular, when our definition of 'duplication' is not specific enough to identify things (for example) that look the same, but aren't. Sometimes eliminating 'duplication' that isn't really duplication, when--for instance, two groups do the same thing, but serve very different audiences--eliminates the ability to serve either audience rather than making the organization as a whole more efficient.
In The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen talks about processes:
If the acquiring company's processes and values are the real driver of its success, then the last thing the acquiring manager wants to do is to integrate the company into the new parent organization. Integration will vaporize many of the processes and values of the acquired firm as its managers are required to adopt the buyer's way of doing business and have their proposals to innovate evaluated according to the decision criteria of the acquiring company. If the acquiree's processes and values were the reason for its historical success, a better strategy is to let the business stand alone, and for the parent to infuse its resource into the acquired firm's processes and values. This strategy, in essence, truly constitutes the acquisition of new capabilities (pg. 198)
Of IBM's acquisition of Rolm:
This situation is reminiscent of IBM's 1984 acquisition of Rolm. There wasn't anything in Rolm's pool of resources that IBM didn't already have. It was Rolm's processes for developing PBX products and for finding new markets for them that was really responsible for its success. In 1987, IBM decided to fully integrate the company into its corporate structure. Trying to push Rolm's resources--its products and customers--through the same processes that were honed in its large computer business, caused the Rolm business to stumble badly. And inviting executives of a computer company whose values had been whetted on operating profit margins of 18 percent, to get excited about prioritizing products with operating margins below 10 percent was impossible. IBM's decision to integrate Rolm actually destroyed the very source of the original worth of the deal. (pg. 199)
This approach and occasional miscalculation are not just perpetrated via company acquisition. Let's look at an example in the university environment that I'm familiar with:
We often talk, at the university, about 'centralizing services.' For example, the idea that we should centralize computer support services in one shop. On the surface, this immediately looks like a way to gain efficiencies without much tradeoff. After all, support's support, right? And it's possible to make this kind of centralization work, but it's important not to over look two vital things:
In other words, computer support services are not necessarily duplicative.
All support staff are equal in the sense that they all have valuable skills and knowledge. No group--departmental, outreach, central--is a subset of another group. We often make the mistake of thinking central support staff know all about central services, as well as all the more local services, but this is almost always not so. For example, outreach support services on our campus, support a state-wide network that isn't relevant to central services. Most of the expertise to support that network resides with the outreach support group, not the central support group. The different support services, then, are neither heirarchical or duplicative. They are different. Simply merging without recognizing the different processes and value systems would likely result in loss of services to all groups and not provide the efficiencies you expect.
All support staff are not the same because the focus of a departmental support person (for example) is necessarily different than the focus of a central support person. To a central support person a deparment faculty member is 1/25,000th of users. Within the department that same faculty person might be 1/300th of users or even 1/50th. Department units often support different software, provide more hands-on service, include one-on-one training, are available more quickly, and are local.
Sometimes something has to go. Budgets get cut; resources are no longer available. But it's important to look at whether the things we want to eliminate are resource that are the same--desks and printers and offices--or whether it involves eliminating processes and knowledge that are actually not duplicated and which are vital to the system in some important ways.
Diego provides an awesome introduction to weblogs if you're looking for something to share with people who ask you, 'So what are weblogs, anyway?'
Among other things, he details some good practices for weblog posting:
- Links are good for you. Always link back to whatever it is you're talking about, if possible. A hugely important component of weblogs is the context in which something is said, and links provide a big part of that context.
- The back button rules: Never repost a full entry from another person without their permission. "Reposting" implies to take someone's text and include it in your own entry. Usually this is done to comment on it, but I think it's better to send people to whatever it is you're talking about, with quotes when necessary to add specific comments, rather than reposting everything. All web browsers have "back" buttons; once someone's read what you're talking about they can always go back and continue reading your take.
- Quote thy quotes: Quotes of another person's (or organization's) content should always be clearly marked.
- Thou shalt not steal. Never, ever, ever, repost a full entry that someone else wrote without at the very minimum providing proper reference to the person who wrote it. Even then, try to get permission from the author. See 'the back button rules' above.
...via Scripting News
The Berkman Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard supported by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation has launched the Digital Media Project :
The Digital Media Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, in collaboration with Gartner|G2, the business strategy research arm for Gartner Inc., aims to extend our understanding of the current landscape and unresolved questions related to the distribution, use, and control of digital media. In particular, the Berkman Center and Gartner|G2 are conducting a study of how the shift to digital media (primarily music, movies and books) is affecting the legal and regulatory landscape. The Project will produce a foundational paper identifying the critical features of technological, economic, and legal change that have resulted in the current situation. From there, the project will propose and critically analyze potential legal and business models for the future, with the goal of shedding light on the current directions of digital media distribution on the Internet while balancing the interests of consumers, artists and entertainment companies, and technology manufacturers.
Elizabeth Lawley reports from the Internet Librarian conference (I hope I have that right) on 30 Search Tips in 40 Minutes by Mary Ellen Bates
Matt at Exposure liveblogged his daughter's birth
UPDATE 6:32 PM Unfortunately, the hotspot petered out just as The Wife was about to start pushing, and she was oddly unsympathetic to my bodily contortions as I wheeled around the room trying to get a signal. So, I had to wait. THEN, we got into the Post-Partem room and no hotspot at all. Sooooo punk. Now I'm home: I ate and showered quickly, I'm typing this as fast as I can, then I'm heading back up to the hospital with Chinese food for the wife.
Boingboing offers a pointer to Microsoft's new blogging tool.
I've been asked to give a presentation at ISU's Professional Development day in March and they needed a description of the talk by the end of last week. I said sure, it'll be easy to write a description since I've recently done talks at a couple of conferences.
Of course, I couldn't find any of those descriptions when I went looking so I had to write a new one:
Title: Blogging--What is it and Why should I care?Over 2 million people are using weblogs (or blogs) to voice their opinions, brainstorm, update projects, tell stories, filter knowledge, create circles of trust, and connect and communicate. Bloggers include journalists, academics, students, librarians, CEOs, lawyers, and many, many others. A weblog is a personal publishing system that comes with pre-defined templates and arranges entries chronologically with automatic archiving and easy search and update notification capabilities. We'll be talking about what weblogs are and how they can help you communicate, build networks, provide information, build your own expertise, and stay up-to-date with less effort.
There...now, I'll be able to find this one if I ever need it again.
BTW, I recently gave a talk to a group of people at Texas A&M. It was supposed to be a videoconference, but the video didn't work. So, we tried to hook up via a different mechanism but only half the audio worked (me talking to them). Fortunately, I'd sent my presenation to them earlier and chat worked so I talked to them, they followed the presentaation there and occasionally gave me words of encouragement via chat. I'm not sure how useful it was for the folks in Texas, but it was definitely an interesting experience.
Here's the presentation I gave (.ppt file).
NewScientist.com interviews Harold Varmus about open-access publshing:
The system as it exists has produced many good journals, but journals are expensive and increasingly people are reading and searching online. There's an opportunity here to eliminate boundaries between the individual and the information, and between pieces of information. I think all of us were startled by the incredible power that the internet provided for looking at and working with the genome. If we had published pieces of genomes paper by paper we would be much less far along than we are. That model has been a powerful force in helping people to think about how the scientific literature can be worked with. An important issue is having widespread searching through a public library. That's why we use Public Library of Science, PloS, as our name. We strongly believe in this concept to go to one place and look at everything. But the issues are many. Most of us who are of a certain age grew up at a time when there was essentially no science in the developing world because there was very little access to information. One of my prime motivations is simply getting the information that governments and other philanthropic organisations have paid for into the hands of the people who have a vital interest in seeing it.
...via Dan Gillmor