Federal acquisition wiki

Alice Lipowicz reports that GSA is testing a Better Buy wiki.

I knew that once the civil service was given the chance they would enthusiastically adopt social media. Collaboration is what government service is all about, so it is just too useful not to be used.

DC Hackathon

RHoK #1.0 – RHoK’s First Global Hackathon

Random Hacks of Kindness is going global! On June 4th through 6th, 2010 RHoK, in collaboration with the Crisis Commons, is hosting its second hackathon. This event is going to be a global gathering of hackers in many locations around the world, coming together in real time for a marathon weekend of coding around problems relating to natural disaster risk and response.

The Main Stage for RHoK #1.0 will be in Washington D.C., where events will kick off with a June 4, 2010 reception at the Department of State, followed by forty-eight hours of hacking madness at the Microsoft offices in Chevy Chase, MD. Simultaneously, hackers will be coming together on every continent for five global satellite RHoK events in Sydney, Australia; Nairobi, Kenya; London, England; Jakarta, Indonesia and Sao Paolo; Brazil.

This international group of hackers will be working on problem definitions contributed by Crisis Commons, The World Bank, the State Department and teams on the ground in Haiti. Don’t miss RHoK’s inaugural global hackathon. Register below for one of RHoK #1.0’s six global locations.

New to me local marketing communications blog

rp3 Agency

Is Facebook more trouble than it is worth?

I am beginning to think so. Everyday brings more stories about Facebook's ever changing privacy policies and the ever more complicated steps users must take to opt out of Facebook anti-privacy default settings.

The most annoying thing is that you have to keep an eye on this and continually adjust your settings to maintain the level of privacy you want. It is very difficult to do business with a company that continually alters their policies.

And that doesn't even include Facebook's continuing problem with security vulnerabilities.

In my industry I am more or less expected to maintain a Facebook account in the event that a client wants my company to build a Facebook site. Otherwise I would probably pull my account. As it is I have taken to posting every Facebook privacy breach story that I see on my facebook account. It is just my little way of telling Facebook that they have a problem.

Note - Pip.io has better privacy settings. If it catches on I am moving my material there.

Edit -
Richi Jennings has an excellent run down of the controversy.

New to me local tech blog

Thinking Clearly, a semantic web blog from Clark and Parisa

Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders' meeting

Dan Gillmor makes a good point:

Is there another big public company whose top people sit and take questions like this? #brk2010

My congratulations to their investor relations team who must have spent weeks preparing for this.

Also, some seriously good reporting by Gillmor with pithy comments at 140 characters at a time. Not so easily done.