How do you overturn conventional wisdom?

Jim Horton explains the method.

What is AJAX?

AJAX is shorthand for "Asychronous Javascript and XML." (Read Adaptive Path's defining paper.) The term itself has a pretty loose definition (for example, some of the most well-known AJAX applications do not use XML). A good way for a layman to think about it is "doing things with DHTML that you would normally need something like Flash to accomplish." Things like Google Maps and Gmail are the granddaddy AJAX applications that got people excited about the concept.

Now you know.

Sasha

In 1994 I adopted a Pomeranian/Schipperke mix from the animal shelter. I was still recovering from the loss of my mother and I needed a little friend to keep me company. Sasha took me for walks every day and reminded me to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. In 2001, when I lost my father, Sasha helped me cope with my loss. This morning Sasha succumbed to kidney disease. He was probably 16 years old. He will be missed.

How to place software stories in the media

John Cass point to a terrific article on how to get the media to pay attention to your software company. It is full of good ideas, but I would like to draw your attention to this one:

A PR primer for software CEOs

Tactical Tip 1A: Return their phone calls and respond to their e-mails. OK, this is so obvious as to be painful. But, you'd be amazed how many people — and I'm talking about CEOs of tiny companies that could really benefit from the publicity — do not return calls and e-mail inquiries.

I realize that SoftwareCEO is not The Wall Street Journal; but did you ever consider that some people at the Wall Street Journal read SoftwareCEO?

With the media, you never know where influence starts and stops. Not only do journalists read (and steal from) each other, they also change jobs often, and many are freelancers who write for multiple publications. Offend one, and you're at risk with dozens more.

I would go further, return all phone calls promptly. Assume every call is important. If you have the hideous music-on-hold, get rid of it. Even worse is the custom of forcing callers to listen to advertisements for your company while they are on hold. Satan has a special place for the person who came up with that idea.

If your company is in the custom of dealing with inquiries in a prompt and courteous fashion, you will not have to make a special effort when you deal with the press.

Shopping for Enterprise Search Packages?

Tony Bryne has a list of 33 Enterprise Search Packages

The records management implications of blogging

Jesse Wilkins, eDoc

Technology-wise, blogs are similar to content management systems in that authors can update Web pages without having to know HTML or scripting, making blogging very user-friendly. Blog postings will frequently include links to supporting or contrary resources that provide additional context. Posts may be made in chronological or reverse chronological order, and may additionally be sorted by topic. Many blogs allow readers to post comments to the author's posts. ...

So what does all this mean to records management? As organizations use blogs to communicate both internally and to their customers and the public, the information will need to be managed effectively from a policy perspective. Some of the postings will rise to the level of a record, particularly those made by public companies or those in highly regulated or litigious industries. Many public blogs have elected to turn off comments due to the abusive nature of some; it may make sense to turn off comments for internal blogs or to periodically review them to ensure they comply with organizational policies.

Another issue relates to discovery. A fundamental tenet of discovery is that anything that is relevant must be produced, whether it is considered a record by the organization or not. Anything posted to a blog would be discoverable. For most blogs, archiving is both automatic and permanent. Blogs that allow comments will archive those comments unless the author removes them. The organizational communications policy must identify the process for removing posts and comments and the application should provide an audit trail not only of posts and comments made, but posts and comments removed.

Translation From PR-Speak to English

Daring Fireball gives us a hilarious tranlation of Adobe’s ‘FAQ’ Regarding Their Acquisition of Macromedia. My personal favorite:

What is the mission of the combined company?

Adobe’s mission remains the same — to help people and businesses communicate better. With the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe strengthens its mission through the combination of leading-edge development, authoring and collaboration tools — and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash.

Where by “complementary” we mean “the two leading technologies that irritate people when they’re used in lieu of regular web pages.” Note that we’re using PDF to serve this very FAQ — in our synergistic future, perhaps we’ll serve our FAQs in a hybrid PDF/Flash format. One can dream.

Thanks to Gabe Goldberg for the tip.

Taking FUD to a whole new level

A new low in FUD has been reached:

Reporter Claims To Expose Groklaw Editor's Identity

Interest is swirling around the Linux-advocacy site Groklaw.net, following the weekend posting of an article by Linux Business News, which purports to uncover information about the identity of site editor Pamela Jones.

Jones has long cultivated her anonymity in the face of curiosity about her background. Interest in Jones has risen along with the profile of Groklaw, which has pointedly tracked SCO's ongoing Linux litigation with IBM, Novell, and Red Hat. While Jones has given interviews to several trade publications and Web sites, they have typically been conducted via e-mail, and her picture hasn't appeared. In postings, Jones has said she has a paralegal background.

The Linux Business News article claims that Jones is in fact a 61-year-old who lives in a garden apartment in Hartsdale, NY. The article publishes Jones's purported address and phone number, along with her religious affiliation.

Slashdot has a thread on the controversy.
Groklaw responds.

Why would you publish the home address and home telephone number of a writer? What does her religious background have to do with her analysis of legal briefs? This is clearly an attempt to intimidate her. I hope she will pursue whatever legal remedies apply in such situations.

I have never understood the controversy over pseudonymous writers. If writers such as Mark Twain and others wish to separate their everyday life from their writing, why shouldn’t that be respected?

Congratulations Army-Times Publishing Company

'Marine Corps Times' Probe Leads to Recall of Faulty Vests

NEW YORK Proving that you don't have to be a major big city newspaper known for investigative scoops to get dramatic results, a probe by the Marine Corps Times apparently triggered the recall of more than 5,000 ballistic vests issued to Marines despite tests indicating they might be flawed.

Many of the vests were issued to Marines in Iraq. The reporter on the story told E&P today that officials tried to "steer" him away from the story.

"Faced with the imminent publication of this story, the result of an eight-month investigation by Marine Corps Times, the Marine Corps on May 4 issued a Corpswide message recalling 5,277 Interceptor vests from 11 lots that failed government ballistic performance tests — slightly more than half the total vests issued to Marines from questionable lots," Christian Lowe, a Times staff writer, wrote in the weekly.

Well done.

What is EDXL?

Emergency Data Exchange Language

The Department of Homeland Security is facilitating a process to bring together leaders of key emergency organizations which have been developing XML standards for their professions. The goal of the initiative is to coordinate the definition of requirements specifications and the content of data sets for emergency information sharing between professions. This is a unique initiative and should accelerate the use of data sharing and XML in emergency response communities.

These communities are represented in the process by leaders from the various XML data initiatives, including law enforcement, public safety, EMS, fire and rescue, emergency medicine, emergency management and transportation. These include specific pre-existing data initiatives such as the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM), the IEEE ITS Incident Management (IM or 1512) Initiative, the National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) standard recently issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and EMS groups, and 9-1-1 and related organizations.

Now you know.

Testify brother Raspberry!

In the Plame Case, Losers All Around

I want to get really exercised about what the government is doing to a pair of fellow journalists -- Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. I do hope they can stay out of jail.

But the more I look at it, the more it looks like a fight with nothing much in it for anyone, including the American public.

Precisely so. At this juncture it would take more courage for Cooper and Miller to talk to the grand jury. But it would be the right thing to do. National security is so much more important than the narrow question of privileges for journalists.

For those who have not been following the case, these are the facts as I understand them. In his book, The Politics of Truth, James Wilson named Scooter Libbey and Karl Rove as the men who betrayed his wife. Apparently their story to the grand jury (and this is just rumor) is that they learned of Plame’s identity from some journalists, they can’t remember who. So Fitzgerald is obliged to get testimony from every journalist they talked to, to demonstrate this is a lie. As long as Miller and Cooper refuse to testify, these men can cling to their story.

You can be sure this case has devastated our nation’s intelligence capability. It is not just that Plame’s network had to be shut down, at least the part of it that was not thrown into jail, along with those merely suspected of being her agents. We cannot recruit new agents as long as we are known to betray them as part of our domestic political vendettas. Nor will any ally share information with us where there is a chance it will wind up in the press. We need to bring these criminals to justice as if our lives depended on it.

Real ID, a really bad idea

How Real ID will affect you

What does that mean for me?
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.
News.context

What's new:
The House of Representatives has approved an $82 billion military spending bill with an attachment that would mandate electronically readable ID cards for Americans. President Bush is expected to sign the bill.

Bottom line:
The Real ID Act would establish what amounts to a national identity card. State drivers' licenses and other such documents would have to meet federal ID standards established by the Department of Homeland Security.

The Real ID Act hands the Department of Homeland Security the power to set these standards and determine whether state drivers' licenses and other ID cards pass muster. Only ID cards approved by Homeland Security can be accepted "for any official purpose" by the feds. ...

You said the ID card will be electronically readable. What does that mean?
The Real ID Act says federally accepted ID cards must be "machine readable," and lets Homeland Security determine the details. That could end up being a magnetic strip, enhanced bar code, or radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.

In the past, Homeland Security has indicated it likes the concept of RFID chips. The State Department is already going to be embedding RFID devices in passports, and Homeland Security wants to issue RFID-outfitted IDs to foreign visitors who enter the country at the Mexican and Canadian borders. The agency plans to start a yearlong test of the technology in July at checkpoints in Arizona, New York and Washington state.

Do you really want to carry around an ID card with an RFID tag in it? And, other than our government, who else will be able to monitor that RFID signal? Does that make you feel more secure?

Edit-
More problems with Real ID: Real ID Act And ID Theft.
Bruce Schneier explains why Real ID will make us less secure.

Happy mother's day

Roses

Bewares and background check

Absolute Write Water Cooler > The Conference Room

Java blogs: Web Services and XML

Microsoft XML blogs

XML Team’s WebLog

.Net Security Blog

On the anniversary of Victory in Europe

A festive mood prevailed at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate Saturday

Germany opened celebrations across Europe to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of Nazi Germany. On Sunday, commemorations in Berlin include reflective speeches as well as an uncomfortable march by neo-Nazis.

Germany opened a "festival of democracy" Saturday to mark 60 years of the end of the Second World War as celebrations continued throughout the continent this weekend.

The festival of democracy includes pop concerts and a 30-kilometer (18-mile) chain of candles.

At the Brandenburg gate, a giant screen is to be erected to show the retransmission of an interfaith church service and speeches Sunday, May 8 by President Horst Köhler and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who is then to fly to Moscow to attend official ceremonies on Monday marking the end of the war in Europe.

Schiller's Ode to Joy

The future of PR measurement?

Why Attention.xml Could Change PR Forever

Attention.xml is a new technology standard that's being proselytized by influencers like Steve Gillmor, David Sifry, Robert Scoble and Jeremy Zawodny. Basically it is metadata that records and shares information on the "attention" users give to their RSS feeds and blogs. ...

Before attention.xml can get going, however, there are some stumbling blocks such as privacy/technical issues and questions over who should own the standard that need to be overcome first.

Privacy is going to be a huge issue as the implications of the Internet’s monitoring power begins to sink in.

Why security and privacy are linked

Mitch Wagner, TechWeb Security Pipeline

Mass surveillance simply creates an illusion of security, as described in a recent report by the International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance (link via Bruce Schneier). The databases are faulty, they create large numbers of false positives and false negatives. Honest citizens are, at best, subjected to humiliating searches and delays and, at worst false imprisonment. "[D]emocratic institutions and protections, which would be the safeguards of individuals' personal security, are being weakened. And national sovereignty and the ability of national governments to protect citizens against the actions of other states (when they are willing) are being compromised," the report says.

Link via Privacy Digest.

Journal of Information Assurance, Security, and Protection

Information sharing, the challenge

Ex-trooper McCreary gets federal, state and local law enforcement agencies together on data-sharing

The challenge? Get a wide range of law enforcement organizations to solve a problem as technically and politically thorny as sharing information across multiple legacy systems.

The kicker? Persuade them to get on board and modify their own programs without offering much—or, in some cases, any—financial assistance.

Such a task requires considerable diplomacy, empathy and industriousness. Those words, colleagues say, also describe James Patrick McCreary, a senior adviser at the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance. ...

People who know McCreary describe his style as easygoing.

“He is very easy to work with. He is very low key but very focused and organized,” said Cabell Cropper, executive director of the National Criminal Justice Association.

“He knows how to say thank you, and does so frequently,” said Paul Wormeli, executive director of the Integrated Justice Information Systems Institute, a Justice-funded nonprofit that assists law enforcement agencies in implementing JXDM.

The Webby Awards

Nominees & Winners

The IRS wasn’t even nominated for best navigation; although, in my judgment it should have won. I guess the association was just too negative for people to judge it on the merits of its design.

A great loss

Col. David. H. Hackworth, 1930-2005

His last article was characteristic of his work -
Concerning the mistreatment of Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) Marines

Edit-
POGO remembers Col. David Hackworth

Rave review of Nearson’s antenna

Gadget Madness gives my client’s antenna a rave review.

Review: Nearson 7-dBi 2.4 GHz Wireless Antennas

I immediately noticed that wireless performance was significantly increased using the Nearson antenna on my Linksys WET-11 wireless bridge. I use the WET-11 for wireless gaming on my PS2 and my router is on the far side of the...um...underground base, that's it. Before installing the Nearson antenna, I would get occasional lost packets and lag. Now the connection is strong, and I don't get random lag while sniping in SOCOM II. Link quality is improved, my packet loss is eliminated and throughput is much better than it was. (I confirmed this by loading up Netstumbler and measuring signal strength both with and without the Nearson.)

The best work in technology is being done by the small companies

Edit-
Technology Bytes comments.

Upcoming events involving the internet and world wide web

Internet and World Wide Web Conferences Worldwide

This list appears to be limited to academia. If anyone knows of a similar site for trade shows please put the link in the comments.

How NOT to handle a crisis

Time Warner Loses Employee Data

The last remaining doubt that corporate America is utterly incapable of guarding sensitive data disappeared into the Internet's thriving black market in Social Security numbers on Monday. Time Warner lost computer backup tapes containing sensitive data, including the names and Social Security numbers and dependents of about 600,000 current and former employees. In a companywide message broadcast to its employees,Time Warner said the data, stored in a cooler-sized container, went missing more than a month ago while being shipped to a storage center. ... A spokesperson for Iron Mountain, the records management company that lost the tapes, was a bit less contrite. "It happens,'' said Iron Mountain flack Melissa Burman.. "We've got humans involved in the process.''

When you lose personal data you don’t wait a month to inform those affected, you inform them immediately. If your company is responsible for the loss of records for 600,000 people, you do not blow it off as human error. You express profound regret and assure the public that the company is conducting a thorough investigation and will review its procedures to insure such a thing never happens again.

Edit-
Jim Horton takes a more sympathetic view.
A former employee of AOL Time Warner comments.

Securing Computational Grids

IEEE Computer Society, Northern Virginia Chapter
Monday, May 16, 2005; Held at Oracle Facility, Reston, Virginia, 6:00 - 9:00pm

Dr. Steven L. Arementrout
Founder and CEO, Parabon Computation, Inc.

Computational grids, particularly those that operate outside a controlled enterprise environment, make attractive black hat targets, not only for the power they wield, but also for the sheer expanse of their potential vulnerabilities. Even the providers of power and the users thereof must be presumed untrustworthy. This talk identifies many of the security threats to which public computational grids are exposed and discusses the approaches that are being used in practice for addressing such.

What is XFDL?

Acronym for Extensible Forms Description Language, a document description language introduced and submitted to the World Wide Web Committee in 1998 by the Canadian Internet forms company UWI.Com. XFDL is an XML-based language for describing complex forms, such as legal and government documents. It is designed to allow for interactivity, yet remain consistent with Internet standards.

Now you know.

Business blogging, small business leads the way

Anita Campbell posts about an HP study on small business blogs:

HP Survey: 10% of Small Business Marketing Plans Include Blogs

Ten percent of small business owners in a recent study reported that they have included blogs in their marketing plans. And 16% plan to invest in blogs over the next 2 to 3 years.

This is from a study of small business owners that HP announced last week. The study was conducted by Harris Interactive in March of 2005, and was part of HP's activities during national Small Business Week. I was pleased to participate in discussions about the Harris/HP study results.

This is hardly surprising as blogging is a cost effective way to promote your business. Blogs offer your prospects a way to get to know you without any direct contact. It is the store window for any consultant or service.

This is additional evidence to support my view that small businesses are more innovative than their larger competitors.

Truth in Broadcasting Act

Kerry, Lautenberg Introduce Legislation to Stop Taxpayer-Funded Fake News Hearing on Bill Set for Early May

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Senators Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced legislation to address “covert propaganda” produced by the government. The legislation would require all “prepackaged news stories,” or video news releases, produced by the Administration to contain a disclosure of the source of the material. ...

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens has committed to holding a hearing and a markup on the bill in early May.

Should be an interesting hearing.

Can you make money giving away music?

Rick Mullin, Chemical & Engineering News

If there is any question that the Internet has changed the music business, Tweedy's story should clear that up. When Wilco's record company, the Reprise subsidiary of Warner Brothers Records, dropped the band in 2001--the firm rejected the new album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," featuring "War on War"--the band decided to stream the music on its website and go on tour. Tweedy says he was shocked when big crowds showed up at Wilco concerts singing along with songs that were commercially unreleased.

The next big surprise came when Nonesuch Records, a smaller, more entrepreneurial Warner subsidiary, heard the music, signed Wilco, and released the album despite the fact that hundreds of fans had already downloaded it from peer-to-peer websites that took the music from Wilco's site. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" went on to be among the most critically acclaimed records of 2002. It hit the Billboard chart at 13 and became the band's best-selling record.

Apparently so.

High interest loans

How Al-Qaeda bankrolls terror in Pakistan

A recent security operation in Pakistan has unveiled interesting details about Al-Qaeda's funding of its operatives.

A recent security operation in the lawless tribal zones of Pakistan resulted not only in the arrest of several militants linked to Al-Qaeda, but also revealed the terrorist network's ability to channel funds from one place to another and maintain a pension system for its cadres. Counter-terrorism officials in Pakistan said they learned about the financial dealings of Osama bin Laden's network when they arrested two Alegerian militants in the Pakistani city of Peshawar in April.

According to officials, Al-Qaeda runs a sophisticated network for transferring money where and when it is required for various operations, as well as for payment of its operatives.

For example, when Pakistani authorities initiated a dialogue with tribesmen in South Waziristan several months ago in an effort to restore peace in the tribal areas, local tribesmen told them that they had obtained huge loans from the terrorist group and had no option but to offer its members shelter or to work for its interests in the region.

Loan sharking. It should have been obvious.

Consulting vs. Contracting

I would have thought it is a there is a fine distinction, but Jonathan Cogley points to Consulting vs. Contracting; it seems there is a big difference. Cogley also points to a more cynical view.

For my Microsoft developer readers

Mid-Atlantic Code Camp Session Schedule - May 7th, 2005 (updated)

Thanks to Jonathan Cogley for the tip.

Edit-
Apparently Code Camp is full; but you can get on a waiting list.

Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre

National Gallery of Art, East Building, Mezzanine and Upper Level

Went to see the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit today. Lautrec is one of my all time favorite artists and this is a great exhibit of his work. It includes not just his celebrated posters and paintings of nightclub life, but also his drawings of the circus and even brothels. There are paintings by other artists of the era so you get a more complete picture of Montmartre.

I have seen most of the pictures in this exhibit, either in books or the originals, but there was one delightful one I was not familiar with - Monsieur, Madame and the Dog.

Great moments in content management

Political Animal

SGRENA REPORT GOODIES....The U.S. military released a report last week clearing American troops in the March gunfire incident that injured Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and killed Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent, as they were driving to the Baghdad airport. Italian reaction has been outraged, and the Italian government is expected to issue a report on Monday contradicting many of the U.S. findings.

But here's a question: do you think the Italian computer whizzes will be any more competent than their American counterparts when they release their report? The U.S. report is full of redactions, as you can see in the picture above, but once again an American agency has used the searchable PDF format to distribute a report, and all you have to do is save the report as a text file in order to recover all the redacted parts.

Emphasis added.

Mark to market

In 1997 the SEC changed the accounting rules, allowing publicly held companies to chose a mark to market valuation system, where an asset could be valued on its market value. This change in accounting rules made the Enron debacle possible. My hearty congratulations to those in the SEC who made the ruling for remaining anonymous. Excellent bullet dodging and buck passing, even on Washington standards.

I learned about this watching Enron, the smartest guys in the room. It is a very revealing film and I recommend it. One of the things the movie makes very clear is that this was not just a question of a few bad guys at the top of Enron. This scandal was only possible because all those who could have stopped it, the accountants, financial analysts, the financial press, FERC, all eagerly cheered it on. Enron represented a perversion of our economic system, whose lessons have still not been learned in my judgment.

How not to pitch a blogger

John's scrapbook

How many PR firms are ordering bloggers around?

After mailing me a review copy of Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, the PR shop pushing this film, Special Ops Media, repeatedly nagged me to inform them (along with other bloggers, see postscript) "asap" as to when I am going to review it, and when I am going to tell them about my plans to review it:

John - This is just a reminder that your review of the film needs to be posted this week or next (before April 21).

John -- let me know what is going on with this asap

John -- I made it clear from the outset when the review needed to be posted (see the emails below).

It isn’t their job to hype your client, it is your job to explain why their readers would be interested. Sheesh.

How It Works: XML & Justice Integration

Tod Newcombe, Public CIO

Criminal justice leaders have long envisioned how technology can expand and improve information sharing, only to be frustrated in their efforts. Now the justice community has extensible markup language (XML) in its sights, which will allow police, prosecutors, court clerks, judges and corrections officials to exchange information in a timely manner without breaking the bank.

Within the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Office of Justice Programs put together a task force of 32 federal, state, local and international organizations to design an XML standard specifically for criminal justice.

Their hard work seems to be paying off -- funds are beginning to flow toward pilot projects, and more than 50 justice information-sharing projects now use XML.

In February, the National Governors Association awarded six states -- Colorado, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- each a $50,000 grant to run pilots to improve existing justice systems.

Also in February, the U.S. departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced a new partnership encouraging use of XML throughout federal, state and local government. Government officials believe this is a major step in broadening how the public sector uses XML standards, especially the Global Justice XML Data Model (Global JXDM) being developed by the DOJ.

Making systems work is as much political cooperation as technical advance.

On Arbor Day

Liberty Tree, Annapolis, Maryland

Russia’s FSB Demands Control Over Internet

MosNews

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Thursday that special services need an extension of their authority to control communication networks.

Dmitry Frolov, spokesman for the FSB information security center, was speaking at the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, RIA Novosti reported. In particular, the FSB representative said his agency suggested developing new rules for internet providers that would prevent the spread of extremist ideas on the Internet, register internet activity.

He also said that the FSB should get access to user databases of telephone companies with information on all internet addresses of users, both static and mobile. Frolov also said it was necessary to introduce obligatory registration of all mobile phone users, as they can also use the Internet.

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

Project management schedule games

Schedule Game #1: Schedule Chicken

Schedule Game #2: 90% Done

Schedule Game #3: Bring Me a Rock

Schedule Game #4: Hope is Our Most Important Strategy

Schedule Game #5: Queen of Denial

Schedule Game #6: Sweep Under the Rug

Schedule Game #7: Schedule Dream Time or Happy Date

Congratulations Daddy Lark

Sophia Virginia Lark

The Counterterrorism Blog

The first multi-expert blog dedicated solely to counterterrorism issues, serving as a gateway to the community for policymakers and serious researchers. Designed to provide realtime information about cases and policy developments.

Where buzzwords come from

Tekrati

Harbor’s new study, "Connecting to Your Future: The Networking of Every Manufactured Thing", finds that the Pervasive Internet is unleashing an age of “living intelligence” enabled by networked devices, and companies are creating new business opportunities for themselves and their partners. These new business opportunities are quite different from traditional product development roles. Harbor Research has identified four major new ways to organize a business: the Embedded Innovator, the Solutionist, the Synergist, and the Aggregator. Knowing which business model to use and how to use it are becoming increasingly important for maintaining a competitive market position. Companies that can master these skills in the near-term will be strategically positioned for growth.

Analysts love to invent buzzwords. They can invent these terms and charge money to explain their meaning to the rest of us. Why do we put up with this?

Buzzwords confuse prospects, lose sales and are the leading cause of PowerPoint poisoning. Presto Vivace was founded to liberate our industry from the grip of buzzwords.

The privacy challenge for wireless technology

Andy Dornan, Network Magazine

Mobile light switches may be attractive to consumers, but the main enterprise use for ZigBee will be automated sensors. These will require a link to the LAN and a secure way to ensure that different ZigBee networks remain distinct. Without strong security, ubiquitous wireless could mean that every appliance becomes a potential rogue AP, and every visitor a potential war driver.

Ultra wideband’s potential

Andy Dornan, Network Magazine

The main advantage of UWB is even lower power consumption than current 802.15.4, allowing devices that require no batteries at all. Futurologists predict that UWB meshes will eventually be composed of "smart dust," microscopic radios that generate their own energy through nanotech windmills or photoelectric cells.

Wouldn’t that be something?

Wireless terminology

Telemetry: A space-to-ground data stream of measured values (including instrument science data, instrument engineering data, and spacecraft engineering data) that does not include command, tracking, computer memory transfer, audio, or video signals.

Wi-Fi: Short for wireless fidelity This is another name for IEEE 802.11b. It is a trade term promulgated by the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA). "Wi-Fi" is used in place of 802.11b in the same way that "Ethernet" is used in place of IEEE 802.3. Products certified as Wi-Fi by WECA are interoperable with each other even if they are from different manufacturers. A user with a Wi-Fi product can use any brand of Access Point with any other brand of client hardware that is built to the Wi-Fi standard.

also:
A wireless data networking protocol generally used to connect PCs and laptops to a network. Also known as 802.11b and WLAN (Wireless LAN), it is the most common means of wireless networking and operates at 2.4 GHz.

NIC: Network Interface Card.

AP: Access Point, A device that transports data between a wireless network and a wired network (infrastructure).

Bluetooth: The code name for a new wireless technology developed by Ericsson Inc., Intel Corp., Nokia Corp. and Toshiba. The technology enables data connections between electronic devices such as desktop computers, wireless phones, electronic organizers and printers in the 2.4 GHz range. Bluetooth would replace cable or infrared connections for such devices.

VPN: Virtual private network, a private data network that makes use of the public telecommunication infrastructure, maintaining privacy through the use of a tunneling protocol and security procedures.

PDA: Personal Digital Assistant. A handheld computer that provides a calendar and organizer for personal information. A PDA normally contains at least one database with names and addresses, to-do lists and a notepad.

PAN: A personal area network, or PAN, is a networking scheme that enables computing devices such as PCs, laptop computers, handheld personal computers, printers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) to communicate with each other over short distances either with or without wires.

UWB: UWB stands for Ultra Wideband, a new kind of wireless broadband which emits radio waves over a broad spectrum, risking the disturbance of other data traffic.

MultiBand OFDM Alliance (MBOA)

QoS: Quality of service. Measure of performance for a transmission system that reflects its transmission quality and service availability.

ZigBee: ZigBee is a proprietary set of high level communication protocols designed to use small, low power digital radios based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless personal area networking. The relationship between IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee is analogous to that existing between IEEE 802.11 and the Wi-Fi Alliance. The ZigBee 1.0 specifications were ratified on December 14, 2004, but are available only to members of the ZigBee Alliance. It is expected that the standard eventually will be open.

Edit-
GSM: Global System for Mobile Communication. Originally developed as a pan-European standard for digital mobile telephony, GSM has become the world's most widely used mobile system. It is used on the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz frequencies in Europe, Asia and Australia, and the MHz 1800 frequency in North America and Latin America

GPRS: General Packet Radio Service. A GSM data transmission technique that does not set up a continuous channel from a portable terminal for the transmission and reception of data, but transmits and receives data in packets. It makes very efficient use of available radio spectrum.

Great moments in misapplication of government policy

In a Freedom of Information Act request by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, the FBI has redacted information on bin Laden to protect his privacy rights!

Because online content is forever

Beware the Stealth Interview

Library of Congress debates whether or not weblogs are considered "serials" in librarianship term

Weblogs No Longer Candidates for LOC ISSNs

Attention Potomac area entrepreneurs

From the MIT Enterprise Forum:

Application Deadline: Calling Early Stage Startups!
Apply now for the May 17 “Talk to the Angels“ Roundtable Forum.

Talk to the Angels presents a unique opportunity for qualified early stage startups to ask a question and receive feedback outside the board room, receive a diversity of responses, get a better understanding of how experienced execs and financing sources might view your businesses, possible areas for improvement, and learn from other entrepreneurs who face similar problems.

Apply online now - it's free!
Application deadline May 7, 2005. Companies will be notified by May 10, 2005.

New to me blog

Thank you BL Ochman for pointing to Defense Industry Daily.

Academy Sharing Knowledge

Ask Magazine, published by NASA’s of Program and Project Leadership.

Why journalism matters, Saleh Ibrahim

AP cameraman killed, photographer injured in Iraq

Congratulations David Nitkin

Baltimore 'Sun' Reassigns State House Bureau Chief

The statehouse bureau chief for The Sun of Baltimore -- one of two Sun writers whom Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich barred state employees from speaking to -- has been reassigned away from the state capitol and into a new position, Editor Tim Franklin told E&P Friday.

Beginning next week, David Nitkin, a six-year Sun employee who has headed the statehouse bureau for three years, will become Maryland political editor -- a post that will combine oversight of political coverage with reporting on some issues.

The problem with astroturf

In the age of the Internet it is just too easy to get caught. Giovanni Rodriguez and Dan Gillmor both point to an article in the Contra Costa Times detailing a recent incident where letters were printed under assorted pseudonyms.

There are web sites such as this one which track political astroturf.

Shameless self promotion

BL Ochman would like you to nominate What’s Next for Marketing Sherpa's Best Business Blog Awards. I would like you to nominate Presto Vivace Blog. Make your own choice.

MarketingSherpa Issues Call for Nominations to 2nd Annual Best Blog Awards

McDermott: Feds closing the door to information

Florence Olsen, Federal Computer Week

Patrice McDermott remembers when government information was freely available on the Web. Beginning about 1994 and up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, federal employees published thousands of documents on the Internet. Information that previously had been difficult to find suddenly was easy to get.

The mood then was "let a thousand flowers bloom," said McDermott, deputy director of the American Library Association's Office of Government Relations. "People were independently putting a lot of stuff up. There was not a lot of oversight."

But lately, McDermott has seen the flowering of electronic access to government information begin to fade. It's one of several trends that worry her.

Another is that prospects for expanding e-government, which she said looked promising in the early days of the Bush administration, now appear diminished. Administration officials who favor more government secrecy in the wake of the terrorist attacks seem to have gained the upper hand, she said.

Since the attacks, online government information has been disappearing, and McDermott said that is a dangerous trend. "The greatest risk to the public is the notion that the government should withhold anything that might potentially be of use to terrorists," she said.

Truer words were never spoken.

Rembrandt's Late Religious Portraits

National Gallery of Art, West Building, Main Floor

Went to see a special Rembrandt exhibit today. I love Dutch masters, so I really enjoyed it. Rembrandt painted two pictures of the grieving Mary. I think it is the first time I have seen a painting of Mary as an middle aged woman. She is simply portrayed as a grieving adult. Her eyes are clear but downcast. The Dutch painted women much differently from the Italians or French, resolute with a penetrating look.

Philistines!

A hacker has created a virus that targets music lovers by deleting MP3 files on infected computers, according to antivirus company Sophos.

Comment and Track Back spam; where it comes from

A Look Inside the Blog Spammer’s Bag of Tricks

In defense of the trade press

Paul Graham was very unfair when he wrote this:

Different publications vary greatly in their reliance on PR firms. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them. [2] The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it look like a magazine. They're so desperate for "content" that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you take the trouble to write them to read like articles.

I encourage anyone to read Colin Clark’s articles on the debate over Iraq that ran in Defense News during the summer of 2002. Unlike The New York Times or The Washington Post, Clark’s reporting holds up very well.

Or read Michael Hardy’s coverage of the voting machines controversy in Federal Computer Week. Vastly superior to anything I have seen in any mainstream publication.

I have heard of trade publications giving away editorial for advertising, but never the kind of payola journalism that currently infests allegedly credible news organizations.

Paul Graham’s submarine

Paul Graham has written a fascinating analysis of PR’s influence on the press. Shorter version, Graham is not enthusiastic about our work. He is correct to say we have a huge impact on story selection, otherwise our clients would not pay us.

Organizations, commercial and otherwise, need to get their message out, news publishers and broadcasters need stories to tell. I would suggest there is a creative tension between the two that serves the public interest.

I certainly agree with Graham that PR is essential for small businesses whose advertising budget is limited; that is why I started Presto Vivace, Inc. I also think this observation is exactly right-

Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think.

I didn't realize, till there was an alternative, just how artificial most of the writing in the mainstream media was. I'm not saying I used to believe what I read in Time and Newsweek. Since high school, at least, I've thought of magazines like that more as guides to what ordinary people were being told to think than as sources of information. But I didn't realize till the last few years that writing for publication didn't have to mean writing that way. I didn't realize you could write as candidly and informally as you would if you were writing to a friend.

Next time I write a press release I will try to bring my blog sensibility to bear, and see if it does not improve the copy.

Dan Gillmor comments.

Reptile Rants comments.

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Virtual journalist

Control the pipes and you control the Internet

Barry Steinhardt and Jay Stanley explain.

For my developer readers

Extreme Markup Languages® 2005

A peer-reviewed technical conference. An unfettered festival of unconventional markup. Pointy-brackets, pointed questions, and sharp ideas. Nearly a week of geek speak.

August 1-5, 2005
Montréal, Canada

New to me blogs

Data Direct blogs

M2M Blog

Susan Smoter and George Coffin of the IRS talk about Portals and Content Management at NCC AIIM

George Coffin, Chief of the Public Portal Branch, opened his remarks by saying the IRS had only been in the web business a few years, having recently migrated from a dial-in bulletin board. The IRS public website needs to run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Information must be available whenever the taxpayer requests it. There is a tremendous emphasis on security for obvious reasons.

There are three different portals. There is the public site where information can be anonymously requested. The IRS does not track visitors to its public site. There is a registered secure portal which is password protected, where taxpayers can request specific information on their return, such as the status of their refund. There is also an internal portal for IRS employees.

The IRS has introduced new services at its registered portal, including the ability to apply for an Employer Identification Number, free-file, e-file and a suite of e-services for tax preparers.

The key features of IRS web portal design are: role based design (based on user needs, not internal structure), search enhancements (Because users need to retrieve what they want when they want it, the IRS continuously improves its search engine.), key words on the home page (such as “the 1040” and “file an extension on April 14”), usability testing, and an advanced content management system to be sure that displayed information is current.

Coffin offered a glimpse of the site traffic on the IRS public site. There are 80,000 items, 39,000 static files, 24,000 HTML files, and 12,000 JSP files. The IRS is currently using Vignette (Congratulations Vignette!).

He listed the their key successes. The IRS implemented a decentralized content management application and created an organization to manage it. Two hundred and fifty users were trained, including authors, reviewers and publishers. Business rules and standards were established. They were able to improve content quality and establish a consistent look and feel for their web documents.

Coffin concluded his presentation with lessons learned. Pay attention to organizational readiness. Be careful of the URL format. Be sure to create forms for feedback. Address the taxonomy and metadata issues early. Implementation is a continuing effort.

Richard Barry asked if the IRS had a records management system to archive the website as changes are made and if its system is 5015 compliant. Coffin responded that there is a manual system for tracking the public site but not for the employee web portal.

Coffin concluded with a slide illustrating the day’s site traffic. The IRS was receiving 2,148 hits per second as of 4:15 PM, April 14.

Susan Smoter began her part of the presentation by saying she would not answer tax questions, “I do IT.” She asked if anyone had not heard of e-file; no one raised their hand. She was surprised, but given the number of IRS contractors in the audience, this was to be expected.

She showed a slide quoting from The Washington Post:

Taxpayers filed nearly 56 million returns electronically as of April 8, an 8 percent increase over 2004 figures. That translates to nearly two-thirds of all tax returns, the IRS said. Not only that, Uncle Sam's bean counters expect that this year will mark the first time that more than half of individual tax returns will be filed online. A lot of that is due to the Free File software, which the IRS said accepted more than 4 million tax returns as of April 6, an almost 45 percent increase over the number filed last year.

Referring to the Washington Post story, Smoter said, “I’ve only been in this town all my life, and I still believe what they tell me”. Here, there was general laughter, not a good sign for The Post.

Smoter showed a series of slides illustrating how paper returns are handled and offering a glimpse of the massive volume the IRS must deal with. Boxes of returns are sorted, and each return must be keypunched into the IRS system. Paper returns for individuals have a 21% error rate, business returns 13% and e-filing 1%. Processing paper returns requires 40 days, e-filing 21 days. Obviously the IRS is eager to encourage e-filing.

Free-filing is available to taxpayers who meet certain criteria. The IRS worked with a consortium of partners to develop this service.

Smoter said of the IRS, “We are all civil servants; we’re here to serve the people.” She went on to joke, “I’m from the IRS and I’m here to help”, to general laughter.

Smoter began to talk about future developments for IRS web portals. The IRS plans in terms of enterprise portal business strategy, “because it is not about technology.” Their strategy includes better channel management and the use of existing structures to capitalize on investments. Here, she pointed out that tightly coupled structures are desirable for good data management. Smoter talked about the importance of chunking, “so you can throw away old chunks and insert new ones.”

Smoter talked about the importance the IRS places on its partners, the software providers who, as Smoter put it, “are our front end.”

She listed the benefits of an enterprise strategy: the ability to develop once and reuse, composite applications, the ability to store once and use many, and transparency. Here, Smoter threw the floor open for questions.

The first question was about personalization. Smoter was emphatic that the IRS would never use personalization. “We know our customers don’t want us to know who they are.” (general laughter) She went on to say that multilingual web pages are at the top of IRS priorities.

The second questioner wanted to know what was being done to make sure that the IRS did not turn into another ChoicePoint. Smoter said the IRS is very concerned with protecting taxpayer security and privacy. The IRS is in the process of examining what Smoter described as the entire “tax ecosystem.” They are reviewing requirements for how IRS partners handle the information they receive from taxpayers.

Smoter said that, according to Gartner, XBRL will be the business reporting language. The European Union is adopting XBRL. The IRS is looking at it.

The last questioner wanted to know if Smoter could “tell us about procurement terms and planning.” “No!” responded Smoter, but she went on to say that they had a Request for Information out, and “I hope you’re all reading it.”

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A record e-filing season, David Perera, Federal Computer Week

ChoicePoint Data

During the April NCC AIIM meeting, a member of the audience asked how the IRS’ Free-File could avoid becoming another ChoicePoint, clearly a reference to recent security breaches. Everyone in the room immediately understood the reference; no explanation was needed.

Susan Smoter explained that the IRS was reviewing security procedures with its partners. Partners must explain to the IRS how they handle information they receive from taxpayers and what security policies and procedures they have in place.

ChoicePoint Data is now synonymous with security breach and loss of privacy. This is a public relations disaster for the company.

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Adam Shostack has additional information.

An inadequate response from Visa

"Carders" can put fraudulent info on swiped cards - a "very serious threat" to smartcard security - Visa won't say what if any action they will take

If you know you have a security problem, try do take action before you hear from the press. If the press contacts you before you take action, do not give them the run-around. The worst possible approach is to sit and wait to see if the story has has legs. That is the path to PR disaster.

Well done New York Times

RSS becoming a key driver of traffic for NY Times - Feed-related traffic up more than 300%

Source code metrics

JDepend

ET.gov, now live

ET.gov

Why should I Register with ET.gov?
Registering with ET.gov provides the opportunity for your emerging technology to ‘get discovered’ by the Federal community and fosters the maturity of your technology in the Federal market. ET.gov can shorten the ‘Time to Market’ for your emerging technology in the Federal community.

I participated in the usability test. I think this is going to be very helpful, especially to small contractors.

AcqNet

The debate on software productivity metrics

Behavioral Effect Of Metrics

Signatures from BehavioralEffectOfMetrics

A Metric Leading to Agility

The RSS Nook

Nooked Blog

David Patton at the Washington DC XP User Group

David Patton presents Agile .NET to an XP audience

David Patton gave a presentation at the Washington DC XP User Group on Monday night. It was different to the typical XP/TDD presentation due to the audience (who needed no introduction to TDD!) and also David's experiences. It was interesting to hear the audience's surprise at the maturity of the tools for Agile development on the Microsoft platform and also to hear the comparisons to tools on other development platforms.

If you don’t understand user groups, you don’t understand technology.

Sarbanes-Oxley & other Regulatory Compliance: A Legal and CEO Perspective

NCC-AIIM Monthly Meeting
Thursday, May 12, 2005

Panelists: Dendy Young, Chairman and Chief Executive of GTSI
Peter Unger, Esq. of Howrey Simon Arnold & White, LLP
Moderator: Suresh Shenoy, Executive Vice President with IMC, Inc.


Regulatory compliance is a serious challenge impacting nearly every organization. Rising costs, risk assessment, and operational impact assessments are just some of the legal and business areas being examined as part of this roundtable discussion. Please join us to learn more about how your business can face some of these daunting challenges!!

Mr. Dendy Young is the CEO of GTSI – one of the largest government contractors in our region. He will discuss the burdens placed on publicly traded companies and the practical challenges for compliance. Attorney Peter Unger from Howrey Simon Arnold & White, LLP will present the view from a legal and regulatory perspective. The panel will be moderated by Suresh Shenoy, Executive Vice President from IMC, Inc. IMC is a leading technology services and solutions company.

The panelists will discuss the emergence of compliance as a business problem – demanding methodologies to meld process, security and archiving to deal with increasing governance issues and increasing regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Basell 2, and HIPPA others.

We will also examine how IT services can help the CEO to create a “real time enterprise” with access to both structured and unstructured information for compliance. Professionals chartered with managing content – incoming mail, paper transactions, fax/scanned images – and those seeking new & better ways to improve accuracy, speed and costs of capture, will benefit by attending.

IRS Announces the 2005 Dirty Dozen

List of notorious tax scams reminds taxpayers to be wary of schemes that sound too good to be true.

Consumers Not Told Of Security Breaches, Data Brokers Admit

Jonathan Krim, Washington Post

Executives of two major data brokers acknowledged to a Senate panel yesterday that their companies did not tell consumers about security breaches that occurred well before recent incidents exposed more than 400,000 people to possible identity theft.

ChoicePoint Inc. and LexisNexis also suffered breaches before passage of a California law in 2003 that requires companies doing business in the state to notify consumers that their data might be at risk, officials said. But the companies chose not to alert the public in those cases.

"Why not?" snapped Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Judiciary Committee chairman.

"I can't explain it," replied Douglas C. Curling, president and chief operating officer of ChoicePoint.

Somehow that does not seem an adequate response.

Broadcasters Must Reveal Video Clips' Sources, FCC Says

Frank Ahrens, Washington Post

Television broadcasters must disclose to viewers the origin of video news releases produced by the government or corporations when the material runs on the public airwaves, the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday.

The FCC's ruling comes as video news releases produced by the Bush administration and aired as part of local television news reports have come under attack from critics who call them unlabeled Republican propaganda.

That was fast.

National Center for State Courts

NCSC GJXDM Wayfarer 1.9

S. 678

Paragraph (22) of section 301 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (2 U.S.C. 431(22)) is amended by adding at the end the following new sentence: `Such term shall not include communications over the Internet.'.

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New House bill protects political bloggers

Software agents give out PR advice

New Scientist, Duncan Graham-Rowe

Governments and big business like to indulge in media spin, and that means knowing what is being said about them. But finding out is becoming ever more difficult, with thousands of news outlets, websites and blogs to monitor.

Now a British company is about to launch a software program that can automatically gauge the tone of any electronic document. It can tell whether a newspaper article is reporting a political party’s policy in a positive or negative light, for instance, or whether an online review is praising a product or damning it. Welcome to the automation of PR.

Till now, discovering whether the coverage you are getting is good or bad, negative or neutral has usually meant hiring a “reputation management” firm. Teams of people employed by the company will read through everything written about a chosen organisation, person, event or issue and report back on how favourable it is.

As well as being expensive, this can be a long, slow process, says Nick Jacobi, director of research for the Corpora Software company in Surrey, UK. “There’s a massive information overload.” A single news agency may churn out more than eight articles each hour. That is almost 200 stories a day per news outlet.

With any luck PR software is more reliable than translation software.

Why don’t lawyers work with PR Pros?

Jim Horton has an insightful post on Maurice Greenberg, former CEO of AIG, losing PR war with Eliot Spitzer, attorney general of New York. Spitzer is clearly choosing his prosecution targets for maximum political effect. Putting aside whether you think this is a bad thing or whether you think it is a good thing, if you are counsel for the defense you cannot ignore the PR side of the case. Spitzer would never do this were it politically counterproductive.

I have not followed this closely and I am not a lawyer, so I cannot comment on the particulars of the case, but any lawyer whose client is being pursued by the Eliot Spitzers of this world would be well advised to work closely with the public relations spokesman.

Va. Lawmakers Aim to Hook Cyberscammers

Karin Brulliard, Washington Post (reg. req.)

The Virginia General Assembly this year passed a handful of new bills aimed at cracking down on computer and online crimes, including a statute that observers say is the nation's first law that criminalizes "phishing" schemes.

Makes me proud to be a Virginian.

Thanks to our good friend Privacy Digest for the tip.

Laugh of the day

Unitarian Jihad

Top technologies honored at FOSE

Here’s a list of all the Best of FOSE winners:

- Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server, Adobe Systems Inc.
- Altova XMLSpy 2005, Altova Inc.
- Apple Remote Desktop 2, Apple Computer Inc.
- Comet 12, Tadpole Computer Inc.
- Gateway 9415 Server, Gateway Inc.
- HP ProCurve 3400cl series switches, Hewlett-Packard Co.
- HP xw9300 Workstation, Hewlett-Packard Co.
- Intel Centrino mobile technology, Intel Corp.
- Kodak i660 Scanner, Eastman Kodak Co.
- MPC Transport X3100, MPC Computers LLC
- Telkonet PLC, Telkonet Inc.
- VoteFiler, Comfidex Corp.

Congratulations to the winners.

Blogging FOSE

FOSE!

Going to FOSE

LinuxBiometrics.com

Wallace Wireless Introduces Emergency Mapping Application for the BlackBerry

MacGossip am 6. April

DEJA DE JODER Y ESPERA !

Tiger sightings - FOSE

Intel in the Beltway

Googlestuff

Intel's Otellini Calls for Government Action on Broadband

My Hard Drive has over heated!

Cingular Answers Fort Hood Police’s Call

Tiger 8A428 on display at FOSE

6Mi-Co Exhibits Mi-Forms Governmental Software Solutions with Key …

"Federally Challenged"

Some advice on e-mail records policy

Jason Miller, Government Computer News

When is an agency e-mail message an official federal record that must be preserved? That is the question puzzling records managers as e-mail volume among and within agencies continues to grow exponentially.

Michael Kurtz, assistant archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, said 95 percent of all agency e-mail messages are considered federal records, but only a small percentage need to be kept.

"Most e-mail is transitory in nature for setting up meetings or going to lunch," Kurtz said today at a meeting of the Federal Information and Records Managers' Council at the FOSE 2005 trade show in Washington. "This is an area of some contention or concern because of the public interest groups that want to save the records. We will work through it. Most e-mail should disposed of quickly and not entered into the file system."

Kurtz said NARA issued a draft policy in November to help agencies quickly dispose of e-mail records except for a small number that employees will continue to print and file until NARA finishes developing the Electronic Records Archive.

The Federal government is leading the way in managing email archives.

Another spammer for the slammer

Spammer gets 9 years in prison

Leesburg, VA, Apr. 8 (UPI) -- A Virginia judge Friday sentenced one of the top 10 spammers in the world to nine years in prison.

Makes me proud to be a Virginian.

First responders to get biometric IDs

Alice Lipowicz, Government Computer News

About 200,000 first responders in the Washington region will be issued biometric smart card IDs under a new program to be deployed by the Homeland Security Department, in partnership with state and local agencies in the Washington region, Lee Holcomb, DHS chief technology officer, said today.

The initiative will involve police, fire and emergency response agencies in the District of Columbia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, Holcomb said at a forum on interoperability at the FOSE trade show in Washington.

I would have thought a decent communications system that allows fire and police to communicate with each other would have been more to the purpose.

Which journalists are blogging?

Cyberjournalist keeps a list of journalist blogs. Thanks to BL Ochman for the tip.

Freedom blogs

Congratulations to Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen, and Declan McCullagh for being nominated for have been nominated for a Freedom Blog by Reporters Without Borders.

XML Humor

The W3C Wind tunnel test

Thanks to Loosely Coupled Thinking for this gem.

Saudi security concerns mount

Janes

Clashes earlier this week between Saudi security forces and militants north of the capital Riyadh come shortly after an influential US Army War College report recommended that US policymakers develop "a well-established plan in the event of catastrophic events in the Kingdom."

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

When you don’t care about public relations

A marketing brochure from Barrett Firearms boasts that its 50 caliber sniper rifles are capable of destroying aircraft with a single shot.

Advice for Sale In Battle for Federal Contracts

Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post (reg. req.)

The impetus for the growth is clear. While local companies collected $42.5 billion in federal-contract revenue in 2003, $19 billion of that went to 1 percent of the firms, about 60 companies, according to a study released by the Greater Washington Initiative this week. The industry has ballooned, but not everyone is getting an equal share of the business.

Small firms have long complained that it is expensive to become a qualified government vendor and tough to compete against large companies that offer more services and seem to know every federal procurement official on a first-name basis.

Even though the Federal government has requirements that a certain amount of business go to small firms, the reality is that the big firms get almost everything. This is partly because of the we need to go with an established firm mentality.

The best advice I can offer any small business is get involved with the trade associations and user groups. That is why I have many of them linked on my sidebar.

Great moments in copy editing

A brief excerpt from a popular (and unnamed) PR newsletter: