George Soros is half right

Paulson cannot be allowed a blank cheque

By George Soros

The bill submitted to Congress even had language in it that would exempt the secretary’s decisions from review by any court or administrative agency – the ultimate fulfillment of the Bush administration’s dream of a unitary executive.

Mr Paulson’s record does not inspire the confidence necessary to give him discretion over $700bn. His actions last week brought on the crisis that makes rescue necessary. On Monday he allowed Lehman Brothers to fail and refused to make government funds available to save AIG.

In my opinion, the management of Lehman Brothers and AIG are responsible for the failure of their companies. It will be a very good thing if it is made clear that there is no such animal as too big to fail. In my never-was-humble-opinion nothing else will serve to cure the hubris that played such a large role in the present debacle.

Soros' book, The Age of Fallibility: The Consequences of the War on Terror, is filled with insight and highly recommended.

Edit -
Soros proposes an alternative plan, I am not sure I like it; but it is certainly superior to what the Senate passed last night.

Trojan Horse does the Limbo

Trojan can grab extra personal banking data

A Trojan horse program now available to a growing number of fraudsters can add data entry fields to legitimate online banking sites and entice consumers to give up sensitive information such as bank card numbers and PINs (personal identification numbers).

The Limbo malware integrates itself into a Web browser using a technique called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) injection, said Uri Rivner, head of new technologies at RSA Consumer Solutions, a division of EMC. Because it's so closely integrated in the browser, it can operate even while the user is at the real bank site and can actually change the layout of that site, he said.

In case you weren't already paranoid.

Google makes it look easy

Google Goes to Washington, Gearing Up to Put Its Stamp on Government

"Sometimes they'll look at us and say, 'But what do you actually sell?' " said Mike Bradshaw, Google's head of federal sales, who has sold technology to the government for IBM and Microsoft.

Their answer is nothing. Well, nothing entirely new, anyway. Google wants agencies and the firms working with them to give "cloud-computing" a try. That means, for example, using Google Maps and Google Earth to visualize massive amounts of information, or using Google's search tool to organize internal data, and storing that information on Google's servers "in the cloud." The enterprise versions of the tools, which come with extra storage and security features, cost around $50 per user, per year.

Obviously Google does a great deal, they just make it look easy. They are one of the most successful companies offering cloud computing and clearly they are going to do very well with it.

The Wall Street crisis and its lessons for net neutrality

Art Brodsky

The laws regulating the telecommunications world and those regulating the financial world have a joint history. The Communications Act of 1934 wasn’t passed in a vacuum. It was part of a new generation of laws that passed after the Depression, including the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. A law was passed in 1935 giving the Federal government the power to regulate interstate electricity, which updated a 1920 law governing water power much as the Communications Act updated the Federal Radio Act of 1927.

The Communications Act, as with the laws of the same era, was passed with the intent of protecting the public from the abuses of private industry. The basic tenets of non-discrimination were written into that law. If regulators do their jobs, everyone wins – the industry makes money and provides services, and consumers aren’t harmed. If regulators don’t do their jobs, and/or if a compliant Congress passes laws allowing for an industry to run wild by taking away federal regulation, then it’s a different story. That’s what happened in financial services and in telecommunications the last few years, and now we’re suffering the results.

We’re seeing that last scenario play out now on Wall Street, as firms acted unwisely with no government oversight, and the public ends up losing, whether from the taxpayer perspective, the loss of jobs, or the dumping into the toilet of retirement plans based on the stock market.

I am very concerned that the whole Web 2.0 crowd and the entire tech community are way too complacent about net neutrality. It is true that articles about net neutrality are regularly featured on Slashdot's front page and tech publications have done some great reporting on this, but I think too many people take the point-to-point architecture of the Web for granted and don't realize the entire basis of their business model could be destroyed.

German police arrest two terror suspects

Deutsche Welle

German police have arrested two suspected terrorists at Cologne-Bonn airport. The two men, a 23-year-old Somali citizen and a 24-year-old German born in Somalia, were removed from a KLM plane bound for Amsterdam just before take-off in the early hours of the morning.

The world didn't stop just because of the US financial crisis.

Last week nineteen people were killed in attack on the American Embassy in Yemen. Editors can't stop their national security coverage just because Wall Street is in melt down.

Fog computing

eWeek: Cloud Computing

Meanwhile, Anderson discussed a project he is working on that he calls "fog computing," which attempts to tap the unused power of private PCs and devices owned by people around the world. The goal is to use the underused computing power as a resource pool to tap for scientific research, Anderson said. Already "about 1 million computers are volunteering" in the effort, he said.

We may have to give up all those jokes about vapor ware.

SEC begins to investigate hedge funds

SEC demands records from hedge funds

The Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered more than two dozen hedge funds to turn over trading records and e-mail communications made between Sept. 1-19, The Wall Street Journal reported today

The object is to determine whether traders spread rumors to manipulate shares.

Sock puppets are not just immoral, in the case of hedge funds they are illegal.

Cloud computing and chain of custody

Cloud Computing Reality Check

There are a range of IT governance issues, not the least of which is e-discovery. Some questions that came up: How do you run e-discovery against hosted e-mail? And what privacy protections are in place so that your company's legal experts can access what's needed, but not the cloud service provider? Another way of looking at this is the "chain of custody" of your corporate data in the cloud.

The era of e-Discovery and evidence recovery has begun

F.B.I. Looks Into 4 Firms at Center of the Economic Turmoil

F.B.I. officials said Tuesday that the total number of corporate fraud investigations at the bureau was 26, an increase from the 24 open cases cited just a week ago by Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I. That number stood at 21 as recently as July, but the bureau has not named most of the targets.

Mr. Mueller told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the major corporate investigations are aimed at companies that “may have engaged in misstatements in the course of what transpired during this financial crisis.”

He added that “the F.B.I. will pursue these cases as far up the corporate chain as is necessary to ensure that those responsible receive the justice they deserve.”

In addition to the major corporate cases, the bureau said it had about 1,400 open investigations into smaller companies and individuals suspected of mortgage fraud.

e-Discovery and litigation support software companies are going to do very well indeed.

Specifics of Software as a Service (SaaS)

The Truth About Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS has a distinct meaning that’s essential to understanding its role in your application portfolio. With SaaS, there’s just one code base for the software, used by all customers, in what’s called a multitenant architecture. While the software might be configurable by users to their individual needs, the code itself is the same for all and is not customizable for any individual customer. Any enhancements made based on one customer’s requests immediately become available to all customers. So forget competitive advantage or differentiation based on the software itself.

The underlying data model and system architecture of SaaS is also not customizable. The advantage in this for the vendor is that it spends less time managing compatibility and upgrades across several versions of the software. It also spends less to support customers, as they all use the same version and they don’t run it on their own equipment. That’s one reason that venture capitalists have glommed on to SaaS. The VCs also like the fact that SaaS can reduce startup costs, promising faster time to market, notes Warren Weiss, a general partner at Foundation Capital, which has invested in SaaS startups since 1996.

Definitions: Cloud Computing, Utility Computing, Grid Computing, SaaS

Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing is Internet ('Cloud') based development and use of computer technology ('Computing'). The cloud is a metaphor for the Internet (based on how it is depicted in computer network diagrams) and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals[1]. It is a style of computing where IT-related capabilities are provided “as a service”[2], allowing users to access technology-enabled services from the Internet ("in the cloud")[3] without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them[4]. According to the IEEE Computer Society it "is a paradigm in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that include desktops, entertainment centers, table computers, notebooks, wall computers, handhelds, etc

Utility Computing

Utility computing is a metered service where computing or storage resources are provided on a needed basis similar to the way public utilities (water, electricity, telephone, etc.) are provided to homes and paid for as they are used. The purest form of utility computing requires two service characteristics metered billing and dynamic resource allocation. Customers of utility computing are not billed for a specific computer or server but are billed just for the computing or storage facilities and cycles used. In the simplest terms, utility computing implies the capability to use more resources temporarily and on-demand during peak periods.

Grid Computing

Grid computing allows the virtualization of distributed computing and data resources such as processing, network bandwidth and storage capacity to provide a unique system image, granting users and applications access to vast IT capabilities.

Software as a service (SaaS)

A software application delivery model where a software vendor develops a web-native software application and hosts and operates the application for use by its customers over the Internet. Customers pay for using the software itself, not for owning the software.

Cloud Computing, open source, and business models

From a comment on the Slashdot discussion of Stanford Teaching MBAs How To Fight Open Source:

resistence is futile

unless your product is targeted at such a small subset of users that noone in the OSS world would bother to create a competing product there will always be some geek out there willing to dedicate all their spare time to create something that will compete with your product... for free. What proprietry vendors need to do is charging for software as a service and provide support packages that the OSS world don't bother to do.

In a world of Software as a Service and Cloud Computing, where the developer charges for the initial work and usage, the role of intellectual property in guaranteeing a return on investment will diminish.

Cloud Computing Expo 2009, call for Papers

SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo 2009 East in NYC: Call for Papers Now Open

SYS-CON Events, producer of Cloud Computing Expo 2009 East, to be held March 22-24, 2009, in New York City, announces that its Call for Papers is now open. Topics include all aspects of providing or using massively scalable IT-related capabilities as a service using Internet technologies...

Call for Papers Deadline - October 15, 2008

Blogging on the cheap

BL Ochman has an excellent post on the limits of blogging, shorter version, it is not for every company. She goes on to say that companies must be prepared to spend significant money on blogging. Here I must dissent.

It is my view, which I argued with some force at the Technology Council of Maryland, individual employees should be encouraged to blog, or Tweet, or whatever they prefer. The collective impact of numerous individual employee blogs is far greater than any corporate blog that could be devised. The role of the professional communicator in all this is to advise on blogging platform, develop appropriate guidelines and then let employees run with it.

The Microsoft blogs are a perfect example of this. There are hundreds of Microsoft blogs, my favorites include .Net DevHammer, Brian Noyes Blog, Jonathan Cogley’s Blog, and Justin Burtch’s blog. While not all of them are kept up to date, collectively they give a reader a feel for Microsoft culture.

Blogosphere, social media, and social networking still in early stage

My distinguished competitor, Geoff Livingston suggests that the market for social media services is mature. I disagree. Here are some trends I am noticing - people are using technology in new ways. For example I am now a member of four groups within the LinkedIn community. Before I just had my profile on LinkedIn and didn’t think much about it; but clearly others are forming communities within LinkedIn to promote their interests. Understanding communities within a social media platform is going to be very important in the near future. Very large PR agencies will not just have social media specialists, they will have microblogging experts, social networking experts, blogging experts, YouTube experts, and so on. Incidentally, I think video blogging is going to be a huge growth area for online marketing, it is so efficient.

I am also noticing a blurring between citizen generated content and professional news organizations. For example, Computer World has Tech Dispenser. CNN is using Twitter and blogs in its reporting. I have mixed feelings about this. I am concerned that cheap corporate management may think they can fill their pages with donated copy rather than paying salaries for reporters who know what they’re doing. Such a trend would not be in the interests of our clients. Journalism is work. You need smart people to do it and you need good salaries, health plans and pensions to attract and retain smart people.

I remain convinced that we are still in the very early days of social media and a year from now our world will be transformed again.

Amtower's Ultimate Guide to Getting Publicity in the B2G Market

Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 7:30 AM-11:30 AM

Nothing gives you more credibility than being written about in an industry trade publication or being interviewed on the radio station that targets your market. You can buy advertisements, billboards, send out email or snail mail – but those quoted in the publications or interviewed on the radio are considered the “experts”. Ever wonder how those people get that coverage?

When you tune in Federal News Radio or open Washington Technology, how often do you hear your voice or see your name?

Are you tired of seeing and hearing your competitors being interviewed or quoted? Do they really know more than you?

If you are ready for prime time, if you know enough to get quoted in industry trade publications you need to attend

Amtower’s Ultimate Guide to

Getting Publicity in the B2G Market

Since 1996, Mark Amtower has done over 500 interviews, appeared in over 150 publications, on over 100 web sites, done radio interviews around the country (including Alaska, Hawaii and Canada) and has delivered over 100 speeches. He has been in Federal Computer Week, Government Computer News, Washington Technology, VAR Business, Government VAR, Federal Times, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Forbes, Entrepreneur (4 times, including interview and photo), Chicago Tribune, Washington Business Journal and many others. Without a doubt Amtower is one of the most quoted people in the government market.

And….he does this without a PR agency.

Through tactics developed since his first major press exposure in March, 1994, a photo spread and interview in Marketing Computers (March, 1994), Amtower has targeted trade media and national media and garnered more press – and received the expert status that goes along with it.

Join us for this in-depth look at how Amtower targets very specific media for coverage - and gets much more than his fair share.

HEAR the skills and tactics Amtower employs, the tools he uses and all of his secrets to getting massive press coverage;

DISCOVER the difference between “on the radar” and “off the radar” publicity, and how to get both;

FIND OUT what reporters want and need from you;

LEARN the difference between what radio wants and what print wants.

No one is this market gets more press than Amtower – it’s time you got your fair share by learning from a master!

New local tech blog

CollabArchitect

Washington, DC and Lehman Brothers

It seems that Lehman Brothers handled some of DC's bonds and the tightening markets mean that DC City taxpayers will pay a higher interest rate on bonds. It is a great pity, the needs of this city are so great.

Congressional hearing blues

Lehman’s Fuld called to Capitol Hill

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has scheduled a hearing to examine the regulatory mistakes and financial excesses that led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

There is a whole speciality within PR crisis communications that consists of preparing clients for congressional testimony. Unfortunately Presto Vivace does not offer this because these practitioners are going to earn a bundle in the next twelve months and very likely beyond.

Brand parody

Rolex Lobbies for Inclusion on Terrorist Watch List

From Thomas Claburn, who has a very amusing blog.

What is Cloud Computing

See also:
15 Ways to Tell Its Not Cloud Computing

Velocity, Cloud Camp, Structure - Cloud Conference Week, Part 1

You Think It’s Bad Now: Get Ready for Cloud-* - Defining Cloud Computing - Cloud Conference Week, Part 2

Your Cloud Consumer: ISV or Enterprise? - Cloud Conference Week, Part 3

Don’t confuse SaaS with Cloud Computing - Cloud Conference Week, Part 4

Cloud Standards and Open Source - Cloud Conference Week, Part 5

In remembrance of all those who were stolen from us

New to me local PR blog

Capital Communicators Group, he Capital Communicators Group is an organization of more than 600 communications professionals in the D.C. area. Our "meetings" consist of monthly lunches focusing on communications-related topics. And our blog will let you know about upcoming lunches, provide overviews of past lunches, and address communications-related topics.

How To Add New Media To Your Existing Media and Communications Department

Think of social media as the online version of business socials. Groups such as the Tech Council of Maryland offer the opportunity to meet with your colleagues. Social Media is the online version of that, only it offers the possibility of working all the time. Your online conversations will be similar to the sort of things you say in the social hour before meetings and the individual conversations at the tables.

Put your blog or blogs on your site, failing that, build an RSS reader that picks up headlines of posts.

Redo your media page to make it friendly to social media

Build a sense of community, for example, on your website, link to online discussion groups concerned with your industry. This will encourage your employees, partners, and customers to participate in those discussions, drive traffic to your site, and build your online presence.

Most important tip of all:
Encourage your employees to use social media. Encourage them to link to your partner’s blogs. Social media should NOT be the monopoly of the communications department.

Blogs and microblogging (Twitter, Friendfeed, etc.) can be used to promote upcoming events. Twitter can amplify the effect of an event as participants send out Tweets about the event in progress. This can be good or bad, but it is something we all have to get used to.

Develop some basic guidelines for corporate blogging, no flame wars, etc.

Keep in mind we are speaking of corporate blogs. We live in a free society, your employees' personal blogs are not your concern.

Examples of good local tech blogs

Encourage employees to put links to their Twitter account, Digg, Slashdot page, and any other site they use in their work.

Most of all, keep in mind that social media is here whether we want it or not. Better to make it your friend rather than your adversary.

How can you add a 2.0 media room to a website?

Start with your present media room. Are your press releases still in PDF format? Your first priority should be to change the to HTML. Ideally each press release should have tagging icons at at the top or side of each news release (the same way news organizations use social tagging). Photos, in a format suited for news publications, will encourage news organizations to use your stories. Do not use iStock photos in your media room, use actual photos of your personnel and company events.

Use categories and tags to assist navigation.

If you have more than one video, establish a theater room. Videos can be used to illustrate technical concepts.

Make your presentation notes and slides available in the event section of your website before your events. Give each slide presentation its own link and use tagging in the event that readers wish to tag individual presentations.

Wherever you use social tagging you should also use Sphere It; this will enable site visitors to see what others are saying about your releases, which will encourage them to join conversation about your company. It will also convince journalists that your company is newsworthy.

Above, never forget the basics, contact information should be at the top of each news release, name, direct phone number, and email. It is surprising how often otherwise excellent companies forget the basics.

Links for cloud computing

I am going to write a proper post about cloud computing; but until then here are some good links:

The 10 Laws of Cloudonomics

Cloud Computing's Impact on Digital Marketing - Trends to Watch

Maryland Tech Council: Social Media for Business

Register now for the Growing Your Business Through Social Media Seminar on Wednesday September 10th at Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus in Rockville from 8:00 am until 12:00 noon.

The Growing Your Business Through Social Media Seminar is vitally important for marketing professionals and the professionals who manage the day-to-day business. You’ll learn easy-to-use tips to increase your company’s web footprint for little or no cost.

Learn how to leverage the power of new media to acquire leads, drive new business that will help your company grow. You’ll learn how to take advantage of FREE Web 2.0 tools at this FIRST-TIME seminar.

Over a dozen Web 2.0 marketing veterans will teach you and your staff expert tips on Internet channel marketing to help increase your company profile, generate leads, and earn press coverage from the comfort of your desktop.

Sponsored by Vocus, the cost to attend Growing Your Business Through Social Media is $49 for TCM MemberPlus; $60 for TCM members and $129 for everyone else. Only 20 seats remain! Register now!

Twitter and disaster preparedness

David Stephenson has some very good tips on the use of text messaging, camera phones, and Twitter in a disaster situation.

Tropical Storm Gustav

Tropical Storm Gustav regional imagery, 2008.08.27 at 1315Z. Centerpoint Latitude: 17:05:47N Longitude: 72:26:01W.

Free legal and litigation software reviews

The eDiscovery Paradigm Shift

With the potential changes to The Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey, I started to research alternatives for substanttive research on litigation technology. I am pleased to report that I have found LitiReview by Lexebe.com.

Launched in August of 2008, LitiReviews boasts the largest collection of free legal and litigation software reviews on the web. All reviews (100+) are full-text, and have been published in legal magazines, journals, websites and blogs. LitiReview links to copies of reviews available on the internet, or hosted by us at the author's request.

Litigation support is going to be a growth industry.

New to me local XML blog

finegameofnil

New to me local tech blog

Consumer Electronics Association Digital Dialoge

The technology of open source intelligence

Content-driven Applications in the Federal Government

These organizations and others are using MarkLogic Server to deliver useful information hundreds of times faster than with search engines and relational databases. MarkLogic Server lets you store, aggregate, enrich, search, navigate, and dynamically deliver the most relevant information in any format required.

It's not just the ability to collect masses of raw data, you have to have the processing power to analyze it. The technology behind this, while similar to marketing and other commercial applications, clearly has some distinct requirements. I am still learning about open source intelligence.

Tweetake and records management

The Buzz Bin has a nice write up of Tweetake, a service that backs up your tweets. Marinel Mones gives some good reasons for backing up your social media, but fails to include possible litigation. It is just a question of time before social media is included in legal discovery. This is something PR practitioners are going to have to discuss with clients.

Schadenfreude

News Corp stock and Rupert Murdoch in the toilet?

"Media company News Corp., whose stock fell 29% in fiscal 2008, reported compensation of $27.5 million for Chairman Rupert Murdoch during the period."

I guess a business model based on lying isn't working too well.

XBRL and investor relations

SEC to Junk Paper Filings, Require Interactive Online Reports

Within two years, the SEC will require all corporations and mutual funds to file using a technology called XBRL (extensible business reporting language) with the first wave beginning in December. This transition coincides with the agency's plan to replace its document-based system, for collecting, analyzing and retrieving data, known as EDGAR, with an Internet-based platform, IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications. ...

... To illustrate the system during a recent interview, Blaszkowsky sifted through volumes of financial information with a few clicks of his mouse, extracting data from several companies and creating a multicolor bar graph to compare the figures. Then he exported the data into an Excel spreadsheet. What took Blaszkowsky only seconds could have cost hours for a reader of current SEC filings.

"The centerpiece of our regulatory approach is giving investors the information they need to make wise decisions," said SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. "We have an opportunity to exponentially improve the way we perform that mission."

This will make it much easier to understand SEC filings and far easier for financial reporters and bloggers to report on it. Far more data will be publicly available in a form that is easily comprehended by the general public. Investor Relations practioners would be well advised to explain all this to management.

DISA creates Technology Review Boards

Defense Systems

The Defense Information Systems Agency will no longer rely on third parties to alert it to promising technologies from sources that it might not otherwise identify, agency officials said last week.

DISA will abandon the third-party capability-broker concept it advanced last year and has instead established Technology Review Boards that will meet regularly to receive input on potentially valuable new technologies directly from small businesses and other likely sources, said Hank Beebe, technical director of DISA’s Program Executive Office for Command and Control Capabilities (C2C), at DISA’s Forecast to Industry 2008 last week in Arlington, Va.

I think that this is a good idea and will reduce the amount of "wired" bids.

What is Really Happening in the Agile Community: Beyond the Rhetoric

International Association of Software Architects

You've likely heard a lot about agile software development over the past few years, and some of it may even be true. Did you know that agilists are just as likely as traditionalists to write documentation? That the vast majority of them invest time in up-front requirements and architecture envisioning? That agile teams of several hundred people have successfully shipped software into the marketplace? That agile has a measurably higher success rate than traditional approaches? That people are succeeding at combining agile strategies on globally distributed teams? In this presentation, Scott Ambler, Practice Leader of Agile Development at IBM Rational, shares results from surveys run over the past three years by Dr. Dobb's Journal and strategies for scaling agile techniques to the real-world situations that you face. Find out what's really going on out there in Agile Land!

FOIA, torture, and records management

Judge Gives Government 10 Days to Avoid Contempt on CIA Tapes

But the judge, the Southern District of New York's Alvin Hellerstein, said at a hearing that he would give the government 10 days to produce a declaration to convince him why he should refrain from a contempt finding and from ordering production of a list of the tapes, information on witnesses and any documents or memoranda relevant to the Freedom of Information Act request of the American Civil Liberties Union.

So now the CIA must produce a list of evidence that it destroyed. How does an administrator produce such a list. Imagine the buck passing going on right now within the agency, for those who destroyed the evidence are keen to arrange that someone else be responsible for describing that which was destroyed, leaving that individual or individuals on the hook for any contempt citation.

All the worker bees within the agency and their contractors are going to play this by the book, let the big shots go to jail.

Command? Or watering hole?

Inside the Cyber Command Turf Battle

Reports by the Associated Press who obtained a memo on the subject said this week the Pentagon delayed and may even kill the Air Force's planned Cyberspace Command. Why exactly is up for speculation, but according to one insider who absolutely did not want to be identified - "It's a dollar Grab".

The insider went on to say that "with an estimated $30 billion being spent on cyber capabilities, who can blame them?"

As I tally it, the Army, Air Force, CIA, NSA, DIA, DHS, StratCom and two unidentified black-ops units have already begun developing cyber warfare capabilities. Anyone with an ounce of sense would not want to get in the middle of that group! The Pentagon has to be thinking it would be better to have one unified cyber command rather than all these dispirit efforts.

Cyber warfare is a highly desirable command area -- it is new, it's exciting, it's a real threat and arguably the hottest topic in military circles. Multiple security experts, including myself, have warned that significant and very special resources and expertise are required to execute the core elements of the Bush administration's cyber security plan.

Unified command? Or one isolated silo that only meets the needs of one service? And would one unified command promote the idea of information sharing so central to security?

Edit Comment on Schneier blog reacts to the news:

Russia vs. Georgia-Poland-Estonia are nothing when compared with AF vs. DHS? :-)

Effective use of video

Explaining cloud computing.

Using metadata to expose astroturf

Wanted: Writers for D.C. tech lobby group, secrecy mandatory

A CNET News article published in June reported that the name of an LMG employee, Alexandra Esser, appeared in the metadata of the letter ostensibly written by the corn growers and other grassroots groups. LMG Vice President Gil Meneses told us at the time that Esser "merely PDF'd a copy before distributing it" to reporters.

This is a great argument for using text instead of attachments. That or you could do real public relations and build an actual coalition of groups that actually share your client's point of view.

The days of turning a blind eye to astroturf are at an end.

Convention communications in the age of social media

Qwest said it added about 2,600 data lines, 3,400 voice grade circuits and 140 miles of single strands of copper and coaxial cable to handle the Democratic National Convention.

The company issued a statement Friday saying it expects the volume of calls, e-mail messages, instant messages, text messages, blogs, videos, and other data to be unprecedented.

"Qwest is well prepared to handle all of the data content that will be streaming through the Democratic National Convention," said Chuck Ward, Qwest's president in Colorado. "Never before has speed played such an important role in a national convention and Qwest is excited for the world to see the capabilities of our network infrastructure."

At least 35,000 politicians, media and delegates from across the U.S. are expected to attend the Democratic National Convention 2008 next week. Much of the focus will be on presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama who is expected to capture the party's official nomination.

Qwest said it added about 2,600 data lines, 3,400 voice grade circuits and 140 miles of single strands of copper and coaxial cable.

I had not previously considered the impact of social media on the physical requirements of communications infrastructure. Hope it all works.

Cyber attack on Georgia: from servers inside the US

Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks

Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group that tracks malicious network activity, reported that the Web site of the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, had been rendered inoperable for 24 hours by multiple D.D.O.S. attacks. They said the command and control server that directed the attack was based in the United States and had come online several weeks before it began the assault.

Precisely where in the US?

Broadband penetration in the Potoamac Area

DC Area Gets High Marks for Internet Speeds

Speeds in the Washington region improved this year. Virginia has the fourth-highest download speeds in the country with 5.0 mbps, up from a ranking of 11th in the country last year. Maryland rose to 8th in the country, up from 10th, with 4.0 mbps And the District ranked 16th in the nation, up from 39th, with 2.8 mbps. That's bound to improve now that the District and Verizon have reached a deal to extend its FiOS service into the city.

That is very encouraging.

2008 Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States.

Scheunemann: coin operated expert

McCain Adviser Was Lobbyist for Georgia

John McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is a leading expert on U.S.-allied Georgia -- and was a paid lobbyist for the former Soviet republic until March, in the run-up to what has become a major battle between Georgia and Russia.

This is just plain crude. Most of the time a lobbying firm will advise their clients to contribute to a think tank who will then recruit a sympathetic scholar, thus preserving a patina of expertise. This is just plain foreign policy payola.

The situation in the Caucuses

Saakashvili says Moscow wants to oust him

President Mikheil Saakashvili on Monday accused the Russian government of invading undisputed Georgian territory and of seeking to depose his government as foreign ministers from the Group of Seven urged Russia to agree an immediate ceasefire with Tbilisi.

Blow to hopes of oil pipeline security

The so-called east-west energy corridor across Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey established with strong political backing from the US, has eroded Russia’s stranglehold over energy exports from one of the world’s few remaining untapped oil provinces.

Dubbed the “pipeline for peace” by its western promoters in the 1990s, the 1m-barrels-a-day Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline commissioned in 2006 has brought a new source of high-quality oil into the Mediterranean to compete with Russian supplies.

Open source content management

Alfresco as a SharePoint alternative

It's an interesting option. As readers of our ECM Suites Report 2008 know, Alfresco is one of the more interesting ECM vendors around. The question you might ask yourself however is, why would anyone want to do use Alfresco instead of SharePoint? Clearly open source enthusiasts will herald this as a major breakthrough - and those enterprises that espouse open source may well become customers. But then again, if you are going to dump Microsoft for the back end, why use Office at all, given there are open source alternatives?

But this release has appeal beyond the open source community, for the simple fact that by using the Alfresco alternative you are not locked into the Microsoft stack. This isn't so much an issue now, but will be when Office and SharePoint effectively merge at the next major release. Unhooking the two from each other (or at least having the option to do so) is good risk mitigation, and a powerful thing to have in your armory when negotiating with Microsoft.

Just as clearly Microsoft would like to lock you in with their solution.

Alice Marshall! live at the Tech Council of MD!

Growing Your Business Through Social Media

September 10, 2008

08:30 am - 12:00 pm

Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus, Academic & Research Building, Room 106-110 9601 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD 20850

Social networking websites are fueling America’s next big business and marketing boom. We’ve all been asking ourselves what's next after e-mail marketing and the answer is Social Networking!

Social Networks help people connect over the web in unique ways. Businesses are turning to Social Networks to market to clients they never met and meet new prospects they would have never known.

Learn everything you could ever want to know about Social Networking at the Tech Council of Maryland’s Social Networking Conference. Learn how to leverage a blog, how to build an account on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, or upload your video on YouTube to drive traffic, interest and money to your business! We’ll teach you how to enhance your company’s reputation, connect with customers and build trusted relationships like never before.

Our interactive morning brings together expert panelists who will teach you how to get started in social networking circles and how to market like never before. Learn best practices and killer marketing techniques to get you noticed in different media. We’ll teach you how to stand out, how to rise above and how to drill into Social Networking circles for big money.

Whether you are a newcomer to the social networking phenomenon or someone who is utilizing multiple sites, this workshop will to you how to maximize social media and how to make it work for your business and your personal goals.

Social Networking Agenda

8:00 - 8:30 am	Registration and Networking
8:30 - 8:40 am	Welcome Rick Harris, Executive Director, Tech Alliance, Tech Council of Maryland
8:40 - 9:10 am	Opening Keynote Marketing Survival Strategies for the Attention (less) Economy Jeremy Epstein, Marketing Navigator; www.jer979.com
9:15 - 10:00 am	Using Social Media For Lead Generation and To Find New Customers Chris Hopkinson, Director of Business Development, DubMeNow Tien Wong, Chief Executive Officer, Lore Systems and Opus 8
10:00 - 10:15 am	Break
10:15 - 10:45 am	Using Social Media to Generate The Right Kind of Press Coverage For Your Company I.J Hudson, former NBC-TV4 technology reporter and current Director of Communications for Garson Claxton LLC Jiyan Wei, Product Manager, PRWeb, Vocus
10:50 - 11:20 am	How To Add New Media To Your Existing Media and Communications Department Marc Hausman, President and CEO, Strategic Communications Group, Inc. Alice Marshall, Founder and President Presto Vivace
11:25 - 11:50 am	Social Network Superstar Case Studies Chuck Kramer, Sr. Vice President &CTO, Social & Scientific Systems Robin Ferrier, Communications Manager, Johns Hopkins University, Montgomery County Campus Chris Frew, Scientific Recruting Manager, Tech USA
11:50 - 12:00 pm	Closing Comments

Sponsored by:

Register for this Event

Member Plus (Individual) $49.00, Member (Individual) $60.00, Non Member (Individual) $129.00

DNA, databases, and crime fighting

mordaxus

An example of his: there's an increasing desire among politicians and law enforcement to create huge DNA databases for forensic purposes, to aid in crime fighting and whatever. This will work until criminals start collecting DNA samples and scatter them at a crime scene creating confusion.

Angell didn't mention a counter-measure, and I have one that I'm sure the politicos will want to use: make the possession of DNA a crime. There's the obvious exemption for your own DNA, but this brings new and important expansions of the old standby of "inappropriate contact."

More and more, I am convinced that lack of privacy = lack of security.

Solutions for e-waste

Bull Dog Reporter has an item on the growing problem of e-waste and dumping it in poor countries.

There are businesses that specialize in recycling e-waste. If you look at your municipal government's website they may list companies that perform this service. That is how I found Turtle Wings.

Hillary Clinton on Reforming Government Contracting

Hillary Rodham Clinton writing in the Wall Street Journal

I've proposed a comprehensive overhaul to root out corruption in no-bid contracts and other shady deals. Reforms must include the following:

- Instead of rewarding companies that exploit tax shelters and incorporate in tax havens, let's ban the federal government from contracting with companies that hide profits offshore.

- We should put in place safeguards so that contracts are awarded to responsible companies that abide by the law and complete the work they're hired to do.

- Let's put a stop to the disgraceful practice of giving bonuses to contractors for work never performed, which has been allowed to happen in Iraq and throughout the federal government according to the GAO and inspectors general.

- We need to increase transparency and competition in the contracting system, and to stop the ideological privatization of critical governmental functions.

She's not going to be President, but she could could very well put these ideas into practice.

Did the Central District Court of CA just leagalize industrial espionage?

E-Mail Hacking Case Could Redefine Online Privacy

The case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America, involves a hacker who in 2005 broke into a file-sharing company's server and obtained copies of company e-mails as they were being transmitted. He then e-mailed 34 pages of the documents to an MPAA executive, who paid the hacker $15,000 for the job, according to court documents.

The issue boils down to the judicial definition of an intercept in the electronic age, in which packets of data move from server to server, alighting for milliseconds before speeding onward. The ruling applies only to the 9th District, which includes California and other Western states, but could influence other courts around the country.

In August 2007, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, in the Central District of California, ruled that the alleged hacker, Rob Anderson, had not intercepted the e-mails in violation of the 1968 Wiretap Act because they were technically in storage, if only for a few instants, instead of in transmission.

"Anderson did not stop or seize any of the messages that were forwarded to him," Cooper said in her decision, which was appealed by Valence Media, a company incorporated in the Caribbean island of Nevis but whose officers live in California. "Anderson's actions did not halt the transmission of the messages to their intended recipients. As such, under well-settled case law, as well as a reading of the statute and the ordinary meaning of the word 'intercept,' Anderson's acquisitions of the e-mails did not violate the Wiretap Act."

Anderson was a former business associate of an officer for Valence Media, which developed TorrentSpy, a search engine that helped users find "torrents," or special data files on the Internet that can be used to help download free audio, software, video and text. According to court documents, Anderson configured the "copy and forward" function of Valence Media's server so that he could receive copies of company e-mail in his Google mail account. He then forwarded a subset to an MPAA executive.

The documents sent to the MPAA included financial statements and spreadsheets, according to court papers. "The information was obtained in a legal manner from a confidential informant who we believe obtained the information legally," MPAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman said.

Valence Media alleged that the MPAA wanted those documents to gain an advantage in a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company and its officers.

"The case is alarming because its implications will reach far beyond a single civil case," wrote Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Friday. If upheld, the foundation argued, "law enforcement officers could engage in the contemporaneous acquisition of e-mails just as Anderson did, without having to comply with the Wiretap Act's requirements." Those requirements are strict, including a warrant based on probable cause as well as high-level government approvals and proof alternatives would not work.

If I am reading this correctly, anyone with the technical know how can set up shop as the secret police. I would love to know what e-discovery experts think of this ruling.

The Sullivan principles come to the Internet

Spurred By Olympics Web-Coverage Debate, Internet Companies Agree on Code of Conduct for Operating in Repressive Countries

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft said this week that they were close to finishing a voluntary code of conduct for doing business in China and other countries that censor the Internet — a project they started in January 2007. In letters released by Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, the companies said they have agreed on principles "protecting and advancing the enjoyment of freedom of expression and privacy globally," the LA Times reports.

It looks like they are searching for a cyber version of the Sullivan principles. I wish them well, but doing business in a police state will always be a faustian bargain.

Call for papers: ITVirtualizationLive

I just received this email:

Call for Papers

Deadline for Submissions: August 22, 2008

Dear Colleagues,

ITVirtualizationLive, the premier conference addressing the business and technology drivers behind the adoption of virtualization technologies, has officially opened up its Call for Papers and will be accepting speaking proposals until August 22, 2008.

Taking place in Orlando, Florida on December 9th - 11th, we are expecting an impressive audience of business and IT executives to be in attendance. Conference attendees will be looking to understand the business benefits that virtualization has to offer and the technical challenges facing IT organizations looking to implement these new technologies.

I am honored to serve as the conference chairperson for ITVirtualizationLive. We are committed to providing in-depth, unbiased technical content to our attendees. To that end, I am asking you and your colleagues to submit proposals that achieve that goal. The topics listed below are suggestions, broken down into three broad categories. If you have another topic that fits into one of the categories and would like to submit it for consideration, feel free to do so.

Thank you for submitting your speaking proposal for consideration. I hope to see you in Orlando in December.

Sincerely,

Keith Ward
ITVirtualizationLive Conference Chairman



Topics of Interest :

TOPIC 1: Virtualization Planning and Implementation
This track covers the basics of virtualization – how to lay the groundwork for getting the most out of your virtual infrastructure. Suggested topics include:

Understanding the layers of virtualization and how they affect your planning
Capacity planning
Performance benchmarking
Security architecting
Understanding the different virtualization architectures
Why go with Microsoft vs. Citrix vs. VMware
Installation issues
Choosing the right hardware for virtualization
Implementation gotchas
Virtual desktop infrastructure planning – thin client/fat client/zero client considerations
TOPIC 2: Management
Once your virtual infrastructure’s in place, you need to manage it. Virtualization brings unique management challenges, and we’ll help you get a handle on them. Suggested topics include:

Differing management frameworks
Managing the physical vs. the virtual
Is a single pane of management glass best?
Management tools – what’s out there? What works best? Free vs. commercial
Virtual storage management
Virtual network management
Virtual I/O management
Virtual desktop infrastructure management
TCO/ROI considerations
TOPIC 3: Best Practices
Your virtualization infrastructure is humming along, but you need to keep it running smoothly and efficiently. Here’s how. Suggested topics include:

Optimizing your network for virtualization
Improve your disaster recovery system
Backup tips and tricks
What you need to know about licensing to save money and stay in compliance
Top tips for application virtualization
Best practices for: VMware/Microsoft/Citrix/Virtual Iron/Parallels
Security best practices
Lifecycle management best practices
Submission Guidelines
Please include the following information with your submission:

Speaker’s Name
Speaker’s Title
Speaker’s Company
Title of presentation
100-word description of presentation
3-5 bullets explaining what the attendee will learn from presentation
Speaker’s color photo (hi-resolution)
Speaker’s Bio, including previous conference speaking/presentation experience


How to Submit Your Proposal

Submit your speaking proposals by going to: www.itvirtualizationlive.com/speak.aspx

Spam, who sends, who recieves

Government Computer News reports a survey from MessageLabs that lists, Illinois, South Dakota, Oregon, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Alabama as the most spammed states.

So where is the spam coming from? An earlier report from MessageLabs lists Florida and Texas.

Mark Sunner, CTO of MessageLabs, said: "Florida and Texas are the only two US states where bankruptcy laws treat the company or the individual so favourably."

"The laws in Florida actually favour the spammer," added Sunner. He told silicon.com that spammers base themselves there because in their worst case scenario - getting caught and being put out of business by hefty penalties - they will be able to keep possession of assets "bought with their ill-gotten gains" such as cars and houses.

Boca Raton, Florida has the dubious distinction of being the spam capital of the world.

August 1, Switzerland's national day

Liberation: Federal Pact and the Rütli

The new trade route made those regions far from the centers of power look interesting for the counts of Habsburg (northern Switzerland) who were trying at the time to strengthen their dynastic power. As a reward for help in several war expeditions to Italy, German king Friedrich II exempted the valleys of Uri (1231) and Schwyz (1240) from the jurisdiction of any counts and dukes so they would be subject to the king alone.

When his successor king Rudolf of Habsburg, the first German Emperor from this house, died in 1291, people from Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden feared that the counts of Habsburg would try to regain influence in their territories. So they swore to help each other against anyone attempting to subject them. This is the historical background of the legend of the Oath on Rütli (a meadow on the western shore of Lake Lucerne, see picture). While the Federal Charter (Bundesbrief), dated from "the first days of August, 1291" is a historical fact and can be seen at the Museum of the federal charters in Schwyz [during summer of 2006, the federal charter has been on exhibition in the USA for a few weeks], the Oath on Rutli is a legend (anyway well composed, because of the secret nature of the beginning of the history of the old Swiss confederacy). Towards the end of the 19th century, August 1st was introduced as a national holiday.

The William Tell Overture, in observance of Switzerland's national day.

Why journalism matters: John Walcott

Walcott wins journalism medal for Iraq coverage

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - McClatchy's Washington bureau chief has won the Nieman Foundation's first I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence for pre-Iraq war coverage.

Congratulations to Walcott for a richly deserved award and the Nieman Foundation for making so excellent a choice.

The problem with Gmail

I just received an email from a spammer using a Gmail account. Perusing Gmail support, I was unable to work out how to report spam. I have no desire to join a discussion group, I simply want a way to inform Google that 5zigen.com, a spammer who lists their contact address as whoisdatashield[@]gmail[.]com, is using Gmai. If I were Google, I would want to know about things like that.

Incredibly Sad News, Ed Foster has died

Ed Foster: 1949-2008

I'm sorry to inform you all that my dad, Ed Foster, Died on Saturday of an apparent heart attack. He was 59. He was very proud of the work he had done and the community he had built here. He was very engaged in what you all had to say, and we had many running instant message conversations about comments or emails people had sent. He was an extremely smart man, and he loved to be mentally stimulated, whether it was a good book, an interesting conversation, or one of the many comments you posted that made him look at something in a slightly different way. As you can probably tell, I'm not half the writer my dad was, and it's very difficult for me to think of the words to say what I feel(It doesn't help that when I get stuck on a word or phrase, I think "I know, I'll ask my dad!") , but I just want everybody to know that this site and the people on it meant a lot to him. I'm going to miss him. More then words could express, even if he was here to help me think of them.

He was an incredible consumer advocate and made a tremendous contribution to product quality. We will not see his like again, he will be missed.

Venture Capital slumps

Venture

Capital Funding Slips, Slowing Business Development
Locally, the National Venture Capital Association said this month that disclosed second-quarter venture capital investment slid 15 percent from the same period of 2007, to $234 million.

Not very encouraging, but still better than housing or finance.

Why I swtiched to Cuil

Like everyone else, I noticed the huge discussion about the launch of Cuil. Even though the initial response was not favorable, I decided to give it a try. It is now my default search engine for two reasons, privacy, and they made it easy to put it on my Firefox search bar. I also like the visual presentation of the search results, it is very cool to the eye.

ReadeWriteWEb examines how Cuil got such a spectacular launch. From a PR point of view, two things interest me; first of all, do people really care about privacy? How many will choose Cuil just for privacy protection. This will be an excellent test of the market power of privacy marketing.

The other thing that interests me is their methodology If Cuil catches on the whole science of search engine optimization will become passé. No longer will we worry about disgruntled elements dirtying up our clients' search results, and no longer will we be gaming search results. That would be a very positive thing.

Truer words were never spoken

PR Rule #1: People who are telling the truth about themselves do not insist on being ‘off the record’

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and litigation support

Exposing Bush's historic abuse of power

July 23, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

There is a specialty within crisis communications PR that trains clients for testifying before congress. Those people are going to be very rich.

We are going to spend the next twenty years examining the misconduct of the Bush administration. Look for major advances in content management, enterprise search, litigation support, e-discovery, and evidence recovery.

The Open Web Foundation

Community-Driven Specifications

At OSCON yesterday Dave Recordon, of Movable Type, announced a new nonprofit organization. The Open Web Foundation has been created to support the development and protection of non-proprietary specifications for Web technologies.

Standards for mobile banking

FSTC Establishes Mobile Standards Group

The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) has created a working group to establish mobile banking standards and best practices. The goal is to facilitate a model that allows for interoperability of a mobile payments infrastructure, according to the New York-based industry group.

If you have an opinion about this, now is the time to get involved.

New to me local business blog

The Female Entrepreneur, As you can probably guess, I'm a female entrepreneur. I'm blogging to share my thoughts, experiences and cool stuff I've learned.

Anti-CIA paranoia

CIA-Funded UW Program Trains the Next Generation of Online Spies

When classes at the University of Washington resume this fall, some students at the school will be under the watchful eye of a Central Intelligence Agency spook. In fact, some of them will even be learning from him.

This fall, Dr. Tim Thomas, a CIA agent specializing in "open source" data mining, will begin a two-year stint as an officer-in-residence at the UW's Institute for National Security Education and Research (INSER), which is financed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That office is an umbrella organization for groups such as the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the CIA—which will provide the university with $2.5 million in grant money over the next five years.

There is nothing sinister in what is described here. We use this sort of technology in public relations. We use software that spiders the internet for anything concerning our clients and then analyze it for trends. The difference is that this sort of data-mining from publicly available sources is looking for different material for different purposes.

The threat to freedom does not come from data-mining, it comes from lack of privacy. If our financial, medical, and other personal data is subject to this sort of monitoring then indeed freedom is at risk.

Open source intelligence is reading my blog, subscribing to my twitter feed, and otherwise following publicly available information. Snooping is tapping my phone, reading my email, and a bunch of other things that infringe on my right to privacy. These are not subtle distinctions.

Congratulations Homeland Security Today

HSToday Wins Prestigious Azbee Award of Editorial Excellence

HSToday has won the Gold Azbee Award for Excellence for the Central Southeast Region from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) for its “2007 Homeland Security Report Card.”

GAO questions progress in informaiton sharing

Information Sharing Effectiveness Questioned by GAO

Now nearly seven years since 9/11, not only are state and local law enforcement agencies across the nation questioning the efficacy of anti-terror information sharing pushed by the federal government and intelligence reform measures, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports the government isn’t able to effectively measure whether it has made progress in information sharing, or how effective it’s been in thwarting terrorism.

“Work remains, including defining and communicating the Information Sharing Environment’s (ISE) scope, such as determining all terrorism-related information that should be part of the ISE, and communicating that information to stakeholders involved in the development of the ISE,” GAO reported to Congress this week.

Information sharing isn't just about exposing terrorist plots, it is also about catching money laudering, gun running, drug dealing, fencing operations and other sorts of crime.

Intelligence collection, walk down memory lane

David Hubler

In those Cold War days, listening to and translating news items into English from Radio Moscow and satellite states’ broadcasts from Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, East Berlin, Sofia, Beijing, Pyongyang, Havana and, yes, even Tirana, proved invaluable to the agency, the White House and the rest of the intelligence community.

President Kennedy learned that the Soviet naval vessels were being turned around and would not attempt to cross the Cuban blockade from a news “flash” on Radio Moscow in 1962.

It used to be that intelligence gathered from public sources would be put into a report and the report marked classified. Nowadays the classification system is a little more pragmatic. The practice of gathering information from public sources and analyzing it for strategic significance is known as Open Source Intelligence, or its acronym, OSINT. We are going to be hearing much more about this.

Bloggers and the media food chain

New Cision Research Shows Growing Blog Influence in Print Media has Elevated Need to Develop Strong Blogger Relationships

ision (www.cision.com) recently released figures that clearly demonstrate the growing influence of blogs in the mainstream print media. A study of the top 20 national magazines and newspapers shows that over the last 5 years, the number of times blogs and bloggers are mentioned in articles has increased more than 16-fold. ...

..."As stories with origins in the blogosphere begin to spill into magazines and newspapers, the benefits of developing relationships with bloggers continue to grow," Granat said.

For the most part the media food chain seems to start in the commerical press, filter down to amateur bloggers, and sometimes filters back up. Blogs are a test of newsworthiness and blog buzz makes it easier to pitch a story to the commercial press.

The most important thing to remember about blogs is that the time to make friends is before you need them.

Seachles Discovery comes to Washingtonpost.com

Searchles

Discovery Widget Launches on washingtonpost.com's MyPost Personal Profile Pages
Intelligent search technology powered by Searchles auto-assembles a user-generated tag cloud based on consumption -- both quickly relaying user interests and expertise when viewing profiles as well as serving as a basis to offer a display of related users. A 'searchle it!' bookmark button will also be installed on washingtonpost.com articles, pushing content out to Searchles' community of users as well.

I am not clear on how this is different from Sphere.

Verizon's 911 failures endanger Prince William County

Service Disrupted Four Times in Past Two Months

The first gap in service occurred May 28, when 911 calls to report a house fire in the 4500 block of Kingston Road in Dale City went unanswered, McGee said.

Jennifer Meyer, who lives across the street, said: "In the time that I watched the fire spread while listening to the phone ring, it went from a small fire to a fire that was throughout the entire top story of the house. If the 911 call had been answered promptly, the family that was living there might still be living there and their house might be reparable, instead of gutted." No one was injured in the fire.

An investigation by the fire department and Verizon found that "software issues" left the calls "trapped in the equipment," causing 911 service to be out for five minutes and 20 seconds.

To prevent future glitches, Verizon has agreed to submit its plans to the county in writing before starting work and have qualified technicians on hand to fix all types of equipment, McGee said.

The 911 service failed three more times in the next 15 days, McGee said. On July 4, supervisors at the communications center discovered the problem and reported it to Verizon, which reestablished service.

The investigation found that Verizon was notified about the disruption but did not notify the county. The 911 operators were pushed off-line, Verizon said, when a server replaced May 28 rebooted itself. Verizon replaced the data switch that had caused the reboot the next day and revised how it notifies the county of system problems.

This is the kind of disaster that can turn opinion against a company like no other.

My advice to localities is to award public safety contracts to members if IJIS, that way you know they understand the requirements of public safety.

What is the New Leaders Council?

The New Leaders Council says that it is "building the future of progressive leadership by providing young people with mentoring, networking and job placement programs in the fields of journalism, business, politics, and government."

They do not list their board of directors, staff, or chief sources of funds. They don't even give their address and phone number. They do however, have an online donation form. They don't inspire very much confidence.

Congratulations Lurita Doan

Just received this from Federal News Radio:

Federal News Radio Continues To Grow Staff
Lurita Doan On Board as Analyst and Commentator


WASHINGTON, D.C. July 22, 2008 – Washington’s Federal News Radio WFED (1050 AM) has announced the addition of the Honorable Lurita Doan, the candid and controversial former Administrator of the General Services Administration, as a regular contributor of commentary and analysis. Her segment - “Leadership Matters” - will focus on leadership challenges facing the federal government. “Leadership Matters” will air every Tuesday morning at 7:28 a.m. beginning July 29.

Administrator Doan has been described as controversial, outspoken, a contrarian, a catalyst, a breath of fresh air, and an “inside Washington outsider.”

“Those characteristics make her a perfect fit for commentary and analysis on Federal News Radio,” says Program Director Lisa Wolfe. “Her insights on how the federal government operates and her opinions on how it should operate will be food for thought for the senior executive, political and contractor. You’ll be able to hear her commentary on the radio and also read her OP-EDs on the web at FederalNewsRadio.com.”

Doan served as the Administrator of GSA from May 2006 to April 2008. Prior to her Senate confirmation, Lurita worked for 15 years as the CEO of a surveillance technology company she founded in 1990. Administrator Doan has received numerous awards, including the prestigious, tri-national 2008 “Friend of the Americas.” Previous recipients include Secretary Tom Ridge and then Governor George Bush. Other honors include the National Women’s Business Council Award for Entrepreneurship, the Committee of 200 Luminary Award for Innovation in Technology, the Office Depot Entrepreneurial Visionary Award, the Visionary Award from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Network Journal’s 25 Most Influential Black Women in Business and Washington Business Journal’s Women Who Mean Business.

Quite a change of pace. I am glad to see that she landed on her feet.

New to me local writing blog

The Editorial Advantage

Deep-packet inspection, or Stalker Marketing

Internet Providers Quietly Test Expanded Tracking of Web Use to Target Advertising

Although common tracking systems, known as cookies, have counted a consumer's visits to a network of sites, the new monitoring, known as "deep-packet inspection," enables a far wider view -- every Web page visited, every e-mail sent and every search entered. Every bit of data is divided into packets -- like electronic envelopes -- that the system can access and analyze for content.

"You don't want the phone company tapping your phone calls, and in the same way you don't want your ISP tapping your Web traffic," said Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group. "There's a fear here that a user's ISP is going to betray them and turn their information over to a third party."

What's in your customer service agreement?

Every security expert I have spoken with tells me that lack of privacy is itself a security vulnerability. Besides, it is just plain creepy to be stalked.

Solzhenitsyn Quote on Data and Privacy

As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions . .. There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If these threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a spider's web, and if they materialized as rubber bands, buses; trams and even people would all lose the ability to move, and the wind would be unable to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city. They are not visible, they are not material, but every man is constantly aware of their existence.... Each man, permanently aware of his own invisible threads, naturally develops a respect for the people who manipulate the threads.

Congratulations Geoff Livingston!

Social Media Group to Acquire Livingston Communications

How we know climate change & natl. security are hot

The Onion is making fun of it.

Lynn Espinoza rules!

You are NEVER Off the Record. Not only that, you shouldn't even try to go off the record.

Military cyber and electronic security

TaoSecurity

Since we're talking military cyber operations, a blog reader asked for my opinion of the new story U.S. Army challenges USAF on network warfare. I saw this first hand at a cyber conference recently. The Air Force colonel who will be vice commander of Cyber Command, Tony Buntyn, spoke, followed by an Army colonel, John Blaine, from NetCom. Col Blaine said the Army had been doing cyber operations for years, seemingly in contrast to the "new" Air Force Cyber Command. Of course, my previous history post noted that the Air Force Information Warfare Center was established in 1993, and the AFCERT was created the year earlier. Air Force cyber history is very extensive, especially if you expand to electronic warfare in Vietnam.

Selling your book proposal

Adam Shostack

So a proposal for a new book has to do two main things: first identify a market niche that your idea will sell, and second, convince the publisher that you can write. You do that with an outline and a sample chapter. Those are the core bits of a proposal. There are other things, and most publishers have web sites like Addison Wesley's Write for us or Writing For O'Reilly. Think of each of these as a reason for some mean editor who doesn't understand you to disqualify your book, and make sure you don't give them that reason.

Adam didn't do too badly, his book was reviewed on the front page of Slashdot.

I wanted to write a book about how the voting machines industry blew their public relations, but never put together a proper proposal, so I have a lot of respect for writers with the discipline to do this.

Great moments in records management policies

Using a File Erasure Tool Considered Suspicious

By a California court:

The designer, Carter Bryant, has been accused by Mattel of using Evidence Eliminator on his laptop computer just two days before investigators were due to copy its hard drive.

Carter hasn't denied that the program was run on his computer, but he said it wasn't to destroy evidence. He said he had legitimate reasons to use the software.

Schneier goes on to say:

I have often recommended that people use file erasure tools regularly, especially when crossing international borders with their computers. Now we have one more reason to use them regularly: plausible deniability if you're accused of erasing data to keep it from the police.

Not sure about that, might want to check with the revised rules for civil procedure.

Homeland Security accountability

Bruce Schneier recommends The Quixotic Quest for Invulnerability: Assessing the Costs, Benefits, and Probabilities of Protecting the Homeland, which concludes amongst other things, that we abandon any effort to imagine a terrorist target list.

Maybe, but it seems likely that targets that have been hit in the past will be targeted in the future. It is difficult to imagine that our adversaries would ignore possible targets such as the White House, Capitol, and Pentagon. But then maybe he is correct. Once you start thinking of likely targets in the Greater Washington area you will never stop.

New to me defense blog

Naval Open Source INTelligence

The international market for crisis communications

IRS asks Swiss for help probing $100B in tax evasion

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has asked the Swiss government to help in an expanding investigation of tax evasion by U.S. clients of banking giant UBS.

It's also a great day for XBRL.

The coming boom market in crisis commiunications and corporate reputation repair

Auction rate probe hits Wachovia

Securities regulators from several U.S. states on Thursday raided the St. Louis headquarters of Wachovia Securities, seeking documents and records on the company's sales practices. ...

... In April, the Securities Division launched a full-scale investigation, requesting documents, e-mails, transcripts and other records from Wachovia Securities and other banks.

Wachovia Securities has not fully complied with these requests, prompting Thursday's onsite inspection, Missouri officials said.

It's a great time to be in e-discovery.

How to deal with an overbearing customer

Well said Murky Coffee, extra points for standing up for your employee.

Congratulations Mark Amtower

Mark Amtower is included in BtoB's WHO's WHO IN 2008, see the Direct and Database section.

Nice to see a local boy do well.