EGov Electronic Government Center of Excellence

Building secure systems

Mark Burnett

While we're at it, let's just abandon all insecure network protocols. For every insecure protocol, there is an encrypted version, so why even keep the insecure protocols around? Why even install telnet when there's SSH? Why use FTP instead of SFTP? And what about instant messengers, plus IRC, NNTP, SNMP, and all the other unencrypted protocols? Boycott them all. Sure, you might say that we need to support these protocols for backwards compatibility. While that makes sense for now, we need to set some future date when we will phase these out, otherwise they will never leave us. Who wants to be backwards compatible with insecurity anyway?

While I'm on the subject of encryption, I say it's time everyone stopped coding their own homegrown encryption algorithms and just use well-accepted encryption standards. If you think that your custom triple-rot13-xor-encoded encryption function is unbreakable, think again. Why even bother with your own encryption when there is plenty of freely available code already out there? Why are programmers so compelled to reinvent the wheel? Obviously the public humiliation of endless security advisories isn't enough of a deterrent from people using ROT-13, XOR, or some other lame encryption. What do we have to do, pass a law or something? ...

How about responsible programming? Sure we have heard a lot about stack overflows and SQL injection, but if you write software, you should let people have a few security options rather than you making all the decisions for them. For example, give people the option to simply not record recently-opened documents, store personal information, or completely shut off unused services such as an embedded web server. When you configure the installer, it would help if you could also set the file permissions automatically so that others don't have to go back later to research and test for the most secure permissions.

Programmers, system administrators, what do you think?

GJXDM Information Exchange Package Documentation Guidelines

V1.1 - Final

Many justice and public safety organizations have been working to define information exchanges, conformant with the Global Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM), to be used within their information sharing enterprise. Recently, a number of justice practitioner and industry organizations have been working to define “reference” information exchanges, intended as models for information exchanges that meet specific business needs. The Global XML Structure Task Force (XSTF) recognized the need to identify and describe a common set of artifacts to document the structure and content of a GJXDM-conformant XML instance used in an information exchange to meet a specific business purpose. This set of artifacts is referred to as “GJXDM Information Exchange Package Documentation.”

The products of these efforts have also been known as “Exchange Documents” and “Reference Exchange Documents” (or simply “Reference Documents”). This paper uses new terminology described in the Definitions section.

Version 1.1 incorporates comments from the XML Advisory Committee, GTTAC, and the XSTF. "Description" was changed to "Documentation", "GJXDM" was dropped while leaving it optional, and a few other minor suggestions by XML Advisory Committee, GTTAC, and XSTF members were incorporated.

The date of the "draft" version 1.1 (although not marked as a draft) was March 1, 2005. This is a "final" version 1.1 dated March 2, 2005 with a change to the file name from "...Description" to "...Documentation" and a few minor changes from comments on the draft version 1.1. No further changes are anticipated in the near future.

National Information Exchange Model

What Is NIEM?
NIEM stands for the National Information Exchange Model. NIEM is an interagency initiative to provide the foundation and building blocks for national-level interoperable information sharing and data exchange. The NIEM project was formally announced at the Global Justice XML Data Model (Global JXDM) Executive Briefing on February 28, 2005. It is initiated as a joint venture between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) with outreach to other departments and agencies. The base technology for the NIEM is the Global JXDM. The NIEM will leverage both the extensive Global JXDM reference model and the comprehensive Global JXDM XML-based framework and support infrastructure.

Background
DOJ created the Global JXDM by gathering approximately 16,000 data elements from 35 data dictionaries comprised of DOJ agencies as well as various local and state government sources. The developers removed the redundancies and duplications and resolved semantic differences. Currently, Global JXDM consists of a well-defined and organized vocabulary of 2,754 reusable components out of which there are 400 Complex Types, 150 Simple Types, and 2,209 Properties that facilitate the exchange and reuse of information from multiple sources and multiple applications. The Global JXDM has effective governance mechanism and widespread recognition and is rich, flexible, extensible, and used by local and state agencies.

Why you should read that boring press release

There is a good reason editors do not allow reporters to write rants about the boring press release they receive. Unless you can write with extraordinary skill, such rants are boring. BL Ochman has some terse words for this ill-natured post from Russell Beattie. Beattie:

You know, now that people in Public Relations have "discovered" blogging, I'm seeing a notable downward trend in the quality of the discussions online. These are the people who think they understand communication and people in general, yet seem to be the last ones to be arriving to the blogosphere...

Actually we’ve been here a while; but apparently poor Mr. Beattie just got the memo.

Blogging isn't my "job" - I do this for fun. I'm not looking to fill column inches or dead airtime with your crap, I'm looking to provide real information and opinion to my readers who in turn return the favor and educate me.

News flash, reporters are looking for real information to inform and entertain readers. Moreover it is a job for them and most have shareholders to answer to. That is why they cannot afford to write rants about the horrible press release they receive.

Every new product announcement is a concrete example of where companies think the market is going. Only by consistently scanning press releases can you get a feel for an industry. This is a very time consuming process; that is why you need professional journalists. Moreover only an expert can separate the wheat from the chaff. Yes, it would be nice to only receive the wheat and none of the chaff; but life is filled with little disappointments.

Bloggers would be well advised to get over themselves. If you are going to keep finding interesting items for your readers you have to remain open to new things. That means scanning through material that wasn’t designed for your personally. The issue is not whether some flack is familiar with your work and sent you a perfectly crafted story pitch, the issue is whether they have sent you something that might interest your readers.

The reason flacks pitch bloggers is that bloggers are another part of the press. Frequently they are interested in our clients’ products.

Steve Rubel shows a lot of class.

Worker bees blog comments.

Firewalls

The Death Of A Firewall

Tear Down the Firewall

NJCA National Forum 2005

National Criminal Justice Association

National Forum 2005
Policy, Programs and Technology
Changing Models, Directions and Priorities — Old Issues/New Realities
August 1-3, 2005
Dana Point, California

Overview

The American justice system is experiencing profound changes as the nation’s attention continues to focus on terrorist threats, foreign and domestic. Many challenges confronting state, tribal, and local justice decision-makers and practitioners have been confronted before, but today’s public safety environment is different. The 2005 National Forum on Policy, Programs, and Technology – “Changing Models, Directions & Priorities – Old Issues/New Realities” will examine the effects of the new environment in areas such as crimes against the elderly, cyber-crime, criminal intelligence, and gang violence.

What not to do

From Managing Product Development:

What’s on Your Not-to-do List?

There is always more work you could do. And there will never be enough time to do it all. The key to successful work is to pick and choose which work to do and when.
When you're planning your work, ask yourself these questions:

1. What does the organization pay me to do?
2. What work helps me fulfill that mission?
3. What work is important to the organization, but should not be done by me?
4. What work is not needed by the organization?

The phish market

Forget Phishing Just Buy Personal Info

If you need information about a person in Moscow, just go to the market and buy it. The Globe and Mail reports that along with the usual pirated software, cd's etc. you can find out information such as the bank records of your competitors, motor vehicle information and tax returns.

Patrick Fitzgerald, a hero for our time

It’s been said that no one ever won a war with the press. That is why it takes nerves of steel to do what Patrick Fitzgerald has done, jail a journalist for contempt of court. You can be sure he will pay for this for the rest of his career. But it was the right thing to have done. Judy Miller’s defenders would have us believe that anonymous sources are an essential part of journalism. The myth is that anonymous sources are brave whistle blowers providing essential information. The truth is that they are more likely to be character assasins and vectors of misinformation.The decision jail Miller for contempt of court demonstrates that no one is above the law and that national security is more important that the narrow privileges of any group.

Others comment:
Steve Chapman On Why Miller Should Give Up Her Source
Bob Somerby: Masterworks of self interest.
Joshua Micah Marshall (not related) provides some context.

Dissenters:
Dan Gillmor: Shameful and scary
BL Ochman: a sad day for democracy.
Fred Wilson: I totally respect what she is doing.
Jay Rosen: Time for Robert Novak to Feel Some Chill

London

Terror blasts rock London

At least 33 people have been killed in a series of explosions that ripped through London's transport system this morning, and more fatalities are expected to be announced later today.

Where the bombs exploded.

A terrible loss. Their lives were so much bigger than any idea.

Expressions of sympathy can be sent to the British Embassy.

Congratulations CXO

BUSINESS EDITORS HEAP PRAISE ON CIO, CMO AND CSO MAGAZINES FOR EDITORIAL EXCELLENCE

Cleveland, Ohio—June 22, 2005—The American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE) heaped high praise upon CXO Media Inc. and its CIO, CMO, and CSO magazines last night at a national awards ceremony. CMO magazine, just 10 months in print, won the highly sought after Magazine of the Year prize plus three gold awards, including New Web Publication. Sister magazines CIO and CSO each took home two gold awards as well as several other distinctions. All three magazines from IDG business unit CXO Media are now ASBPE Magazine of the Year award winners, a distinction they have collectively earned four times in the past six years. Last night’s awards were conferred at a ceremony held at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland where the country’s leading editors, publishers and designers gathered to celebrate the best of the best in business-to-business publishing.

A new business model for industry analysts?

About CMS Watch

CMS Watchtm is an independent source of analysis and advice on content management and enterprise search. In addition to the freely-available articles on this website, we publish technology reports that provide independent analysis and practical advice regarding web content management, records management, and enterprise search solutions.

Our reports help sort out the complex landscape of potential solutions so that project teams can minimize the time and effort to identify and evaluate technologies suited to their particular requirements.

To retain our independence as a vendor-neutral analyst firm, CMS Watch works solely for solutions buyers and never for the vendors we cover.

If this catches on it will shake up the industry.

A simple act of kindness

Apple Executive Calls Family of Teenager Killed for Ipod

As Errol Rose made preparations on Monday to bury his 15-year-old son, Christopher, who was killed last week in Brooklyn during a fight over an iPod, he received a telephone call from a stranger. The man spoke in tones that the grieving father said had momentarily quieted his anguish.

The stranger, Mr. Rose soon learned, was Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, the company that makes the iPod.

"I didn't know who he was," Mr. Rose said yesterday. "He called me on my cellphone, at 4 maybe. Or maybe it was 5." Mr. Rose said he had stopped noticing the passage of time since his son was killed.

The men spoke for a few minutes.

Calling him by his first name, Mr. Jobs asked how Mr. Rose was doing, he said, and conveyed his sympathies. "He told me that he understood my pain," Mr. Rose said. "He told me if there is anything - anything - anything he could do, to not be afraid to call him. It really lightened me a bit."

This simple act of kindness, I almost hesitate to post this in a PR Blog, sets a great example for all public figures. The public respects such gestures.

The News Blog

And with that one act, Jobs proved he was far more decent than either Michael Jordan or Phil Knight. When kids were being shot over sneakers, they remained mute or acted like it wasn't their problem.

Clearly Cupertino cannot be happy with the increased rate of iPod thefts, but a murder? Over an iPod?

Message broads, email discussion lists and how to use them

Like most of us I participate in several email discussion lists. Participants ask for recommendations for software, lawyers, furniture, every imaginable aspect of running a business. This kind of referral is likely to result in a sale and quite possibly a lasting business relationship. So how can you cultivate this?

Ask your customers what email discussion groups they participate in. Do a search on Yahoo Groups for discussion groups that include your industry. Monitor these lists and get a feel for the discussion before you post anything.

Tell your best customers about such lists.

Let’s say you are an independent PR Practitioner who specializes in technology companies. You could link to the PRSA NCC discussion site. But it is unlikely that small system integrators would be interested in such a group. Better to link to the Netpreneur AdMarketing list. If you link sufficient number of such groups it is only a question of time before one of your happy customers gives you a recommendation.

Nobody knows what we are doing with blogs

Blogs are new and we are still figuring them out. We know enough to write blogging guidelines about how to keep out of trouble. But we are still learning how to use blogs effectively. That is why it is necessary to keep an open mind.

Tom Murphy has some excellent advice, including:

As the number of corporate blogs grow there needs to be some clear planning in what you are hoping the blog will achieve - and part of that is some realism regarding how many readers you will attract and how long it will take.

Murphy points to some sage advice from Morgan McClintock that predictable posting is more important than daily posting. BL Ochman has some terrific tips for writing better blog posts.

My advice is to keep an open mind and trust your instincts.

Penguins

While everyone else was watching fireworks I was watching March of the Penguins. It is a fascinating documentary about Emperor Penguins and their struggle to live in the harshest place on our planet.

It is a beautiful, compelling, and highly recommended.

In honor of the glorious fourth

The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refuted his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. --And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

--John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Canada Day

Celebrate Canada.

A day late, but greetings to my Canadian readers.

Disaster recovery

How do you plan for a situation like this?

In April of this year, Health Market Science of King of Prussia, PA, told police that they feared I was misappropriating trade secrets. That very afternoon, police raided my house with a search warrant to seize every computer in the house, paper files, CDs, and DVDs... even my wireless router and cable modem!

Congratulations Science Magazine

Carl Zimmer tell us that Science Magazine is celebrating its 125th year.

Podcasting

Podcasting is making audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) available online in a way that allows software to automatically download the files for listening at the user's convenience.

New resource for business podcasts

BusinessPodcastList

This is very helpful for those of us still trying to learn about podcasting.

Whither IPv6?

Roy Mark, InternetNews

WASHINGTON -- Without more government leadership on the transition to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), U.S. commerce could potentially face "devastating" competition from Europe and Asia.

According to testimony before a House panel Wednesday, Europe and Asia have invested more than $800 million in the next generation IP protocol designed for more address space, mobility and security in peer-to-peer networking. Japan's NTT has more IPv6 customers than all American companies combined.

United States IPv6 Summit

Security, Privacy and PR

Have You Been Stolen?

IN FEBRUARY, Bank of America Corp. acknowledged that computer tapes with personal information on federal employees had been put on an airplane in December and then lost, putting 1.2 million people at risk of identity theft. In May, Time Warner Inc. announced that it had shipped similar information by truck and lost it, too, compromising data on 600,000 employees. The next month it emerged that a unit of Citigroup Inc. entrusted computer tapes with information on fully 3.9 million customers to United Parcel Service Inc.; the tapes never showed up at their destination. What's more, losing tapes in transit is only one way that companies can compromise personal data. In the most recent security failure, credit card companies admitted that hackers had penetrated the database of a payment-processing firm. As many as 40 million credit card numbers may have fallen into the hands of criminals.

Security breaches and violations of privacy are going to be the next speciality in crisis communications.

Edit-
CardSystems Hit With Class Action Lawsuit
Adam Shostack concurs.

What happened to Technorati?

Since it was redesigned it is either painfully slow or does not work at all.

First draft of revised Data Reference Model released

Joab Jackson, Government Computer News

The federal Data Reference Model working group released the first draft of the DRM Specification today. The working group is now soliciting feedback from government agencies before it submits the DRM to the Office of Management and Budget this fall.

The release of the DRM draft is an “important milestone” in the federal government’s efforts to better share information, said OMB chief architect Richard Burke. He spoke at the Data Reference Model Public Forum held today in Washington in conjunction with the federal CIO Council’s quarterly Emerging Technology Components conference.

Mark my words, this standard will drive the industry. Such is the power of the federal purse.

Data Reference Model Public Forum

Press releases in the age of the Internet

The Evolution of the Press Release

But you need to think differently about writing your releases in this new age. You can extend the power of your press releases beyond the media by positioning them for search engines. In effect, your press releases become a long-lasting, online, searchable database about your organization.

Of course your online media room can’t work this way if your press releases are in PDF format. Put them in HTML.

The enterprise architecture framework blues

EA creating new stovepipes

Enterprise architecture is supposed to make cross-agency collaboration possible, but it’s also creating a new set of barriers, said Mary McCaffery, senior adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency chief information officer.

Agencies are taking their own framework approaches in developing enterprise architecture, she said, speaking today at a breakfast panel sponsored by the Bethesda chapter of AFCEA Internationa.

“They have their favorite tools, they have their favorite approaches,” she added. In the case of agencies with which the EPA needs to share data, “our approach is to get those people in a room and see if they can’t design across agency enterprise architecture.”

A victory for national security

Supreme Court Won't Hear CIA Leak Case

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday increased the likelihood of jail time for two reporters, refusing to take up a case that pits the news media's promise to protect confidential sources against a grand jury's demand for information.

The justices' decision not to intervene leaves reporters Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine in contempt of court for refusing to reveal their sources in a leak probe involving CIA officer Valerie Plame. Each reporter faces up to 18 months in jail.

Tom Hilton put it very well:

This isn't your run-of-the-mill story about reporters protecting their sources; in all probability, the communications with Cooper and Miller either were criminal acts in their own right or establish definitively that criminal acts were committed. (Obviously, there is a speculative element to this--everything substantive is sealed--but it's based on such information as we do have at this point.) That crosses the line between protecting a source and complicity in a crime.

(And yes, Novak should be doing time. But that doesn't mean Cooper and (especially) Miller shouldn't.)

Edit-
Rodney Graves comments.
A veteran of the U.S. Navy submarine force explains why Plame, Cooper, and Miller matter.
Why Fitzgerald needs their testimony.
Why Miller's testimony may be crucial.

E-gov faces budget cuts

David Perera, Federal Computer Week

It's not officially summer until Congress cuts the Office of Management and Budget's e-government funding request. The House Appropriations Committee called the initiative fundamentally flawed and reduced OMB's e-government fiscal 2006 budget from $5 million in directly appropriated funds to $3 million, just $24,000 more than was appropriated for fiscal 2005.

The committee voted June 21 for the cuts as part of the Treasury, Transportation and independent agencies fiscal 2006 bill. It now faces a vote by the full House and a markup of a similar version by a Senate appropriations subcommittee.

In addition, the committee rejected an OMB request to use $40 million in excess funds generated by the General Services Administration for e-government projects in fiscal 2006.

In a report accompanying the bill, committee members chastised OMB for wanting to spend GSA's money. "If OMB seeks funding for an initiative under its direction, OMB should request those funds under its own appropriations complete with a comprehensive budget justification," the report states.

The committee also directed GSA in cases where it is running a surplus of at least $40 million to "evaluate the pricing structure of its services" to determine if GSA is overcharging agencies.

Our elected representatives have effectively told GSA to never run surpluses.

This was not a good decision. Whether it is a question of convenient and responsive government or interagency cooperation we need e-Government.

In praise of the humble press release

Tom Murphy asks a question, "Why is it that proponents of blogging believe that blogs must rape and pillage everything that has gone before?"

A press release can do what no other tool can do. It can alert a reporter to story he has never heard about. Whether the story is a new product announcement or an interesting case study, no other tool is so well suited to communicating the essentials in a time efficient manner. No other single tool is as effective in placing a story.

What is the difference between different between EDMS and ERMS?

EDMS

(Electronic Document Management System). Term to describe the storage and management (including retrieval) of documents which are input to a computer system via a variety of mechanisms (including scanning device, conventional software products such as Word Processors, faxes, email)..

ERMS, Electronic Records Management System

An automated system used to manage the creation, use, maintenance and disposal of electronically created records for the purposes of providing evidence of business activities. These systems maintain appropriate contextual information (metadata) and links between records to support their value as evidence.

Now you know.

Program Management Summit Call for Participation

Program Management Summit

November 17-18, 2005
Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

Deadline for Abstract Submission is Tuesday, July 19, 2005.

The FCW Media Group, producer of E-Gov Institute events and publisher of Federal Computer Week, is pleased to announce a Call for Participation for the 3rd Annual Program Management Summit, to be held November 17-18, 2005 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. This is your opportunity to participate in the Summit as a member of the faculty.

The annual Summit will bring together government program managers to discuss their experiences and share strategies for success. The program is designed to address the current needs of government management professionals in their efforts to meet program objectives, manage risk, measure performance, and deliver results.

Voices from the front, the soldier blogs

All the Kings Horses

A heightened sense of mortality lends to a particular brand of introspective soul-searching that has become a trademark of wartime writing. The difference today, of course, is that technology makes idle ramblings instantly available to everyone.

For some of us, we have discovered that we can instigate knowledge and awareness among the American public, galvanizing political action.

Knowledge is power, but I imagine some would prefer that neither belong to the public. That having been said, however, it isn't for the Army or the government to curb the creative impulses of those under the knife. It is very un-American.

Violating operations security aside, there have been numerous blogs snuffed out because they have been deemed "bad for morale". Suffice it to say that my own could easily be the next. I will not give up my soap box easily, though. It's all I have in this miserable place.

The soldier blogs are excellent PR for America’s armed forces. Reading these journals gives you a good opinion about those defending us and what they are trying to do under extremely difficult circumstances. Americans have learned some deeply disturbing things about what is being done in our name. It is likely we will shortly discover things that are even more disturbing. The greatest antidote to this are the soldier’s themselves. Shutting down these journals would be a colossal blunder in a war that has seen too many colossal blunders.

Edit my press release

Open Source Press Releases

Open source press releases. James Governor at MonkChip’s discusses Ian Skerrat’s press release at the Eclipse Foundation. Ian is releasing two press releases to the public for comment before he issues three press releases to the wire.

Ian is looking for feedback on the press releases. He also wrote an earlier post, and has already collected some comments. Gaining feedback from customers for products is a good way to gain ideas about your products. The purpose of public relations is to get other people talking about your product or idea.

This strikes me as ingeneous; but very difficult to sell to clients.

Network World’s All Star Awards

CALL FOR ENTRIES: 2005 ENTERPRISE ALL-STAR AWARDS

Network World is looking for entries for its inaugural Enterprise All-Star Awards program. The Enterprise All-Star Awards will honor user organizations that demonstrate exceptional use of network technology to further business objectives.

Enter here

The case for bouncers: freedom requires rules and a way to enforce them

Elizabeth Albrycht has a great post on the problem of enforcing good conduct on wikis and other open media –

As we look at the costs of blogs and wikis, in particular, we must build into that some measure of what it is going to cost to make sure that spam, pornography and other unwanted content is kept out. Today, there are technical tools to help you, but none of them are truly foolproof. You will need a person, or team of people, to keep an eye on things. By building the cost of this into the budget for the entire endeavor, you will rapidly come to a decision as to whether it is feasible or not.

Call for Entries: 2005 CMP Business Technology Optimization (BTO) Awards

From Elizabeth Albrycht

Business technology optimization (BTO) maximizes the business value of IT. Leading companies across the globe are implementing BTO initiatives and improving business results, controlling costs and minimizing risks.

CMP BTO Excellence Awards

Compare and Contrast

TSA Defies Congress; Collects Personal Information on 15 Million Passengers.

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.

About Copyright

A brief introduction to copyright

10 Big Myths about copyright explained

ISO 18629

Peter Coffee, EWeek

I found myself thinking along these lines when I saw last week's bulletin from the National Institute of Standards and Technology concerning an emerging process specification language called ISO 18629 -- if it has a more euphonious name, I haven't uncovered it yet -- which purportedly "uses artificial intelligence (AI) and mathematical logic to represent computer commands." Oh, my aching head. Imagine: a language that doesn't just let you demonstrate how smart you are, but that adds its own intelligence to yours.

A few deep breaths later, I'm willing to be persuaded that ISO 18629 is a good idea burdened by an over-hyped description. There's nothing wrong, in principle, with a language that's designed to work with a sophisticated run-time environment -- one that's capable, for example, of inferring specifics of ideas like duration and sequence from the context of what's going on. In fact, this seems like a pretty natural extension of the polymorphism that we've seen in object-oriented languages for years.

Telling an object to print itself, for example, can result in any number of different behaviors depending on whether it's a piece of text or a color graphic -- or even a turtle-graphics script that drives a robot around on a piece of paper on a classroom floor. I can likewise imagine telling one process to begin "after" another process, relying on metadata of the latter process to tell the former whether that means "after I'm up and running in a stable mode" or "after I've run to completion without errors."

Is that an example of artificial intelligence? No, but it's a style of programming that makes it natural to think about systems as if they were built from individually intelligent elements, instead of trying to put all the intelligence in top-level executive code while dealing with all of the lower-level modules as if they were mindless idiots.

Programmers, what do you think of this?

Hosting freedom

Adopt a Chinese blog

"Here's a great way for bloggers and others with decent web hosting to help fight internet censorship in China and other restrictive countries. Adopt a Chinese Blog aims to match up censored bloggers with volunteer hosts."

Adopt a Chinese blog wiki

Cosmos-1

Solar sail gets ready for launch

A solar sail spacecraft launches on Tuesday, to demonstrate an elegant new way to power interplanetary probes.

The Cosmos-1 mission is privately funded - half the money will come from a TV studio - and lift-off will be from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea.

The sail reflects particles of light, or photons, from the Sun, gaining momentum in the opposite direction and driving the spacecraft forward.

Some think solar sails offer a cheaper, faster form of spacecraft propulsion.

Hard to believe this could be profitable in the foreseeable future; but it is too cool for words.

The case for transparency in pricing

It's Suspiciously Cozy In the Cybermarket

In September 2000, Amazon.com got headlines when customers found that the same DVDs were being offered to different buyers at discounts of 30, 35 or 40 percent. Amazon insisted the discounts were part of a random "price test," but critics suggested they were based on customer profiling. After weeks of bad press, the firm offered to refund the difference to buyers who had paid the higher prices. The company vowed it wouldn't happen again.

Frequent computer users I've talked to -- like my fairly hip students -- don't really believe such assurances. Frankly, it's hard for any dispassionate observer to believe there's no "price customization" when associates from the influential McKinsey consulting firm write in a 2004 Harvard Business Review article that online companies are missing out on a "big opportunity" if they are not tracking customers and adjusting prices accordingly -- either to attract new buyers or get more of their money.

Secret police market research is ghastly PR. No one likes to be spied on.

Your customers talk to each other; if you treat them differently they will find out. Post your prices openly, put them on your marketing literature. Systems Integrators tell me they can’t do that because every installation is different. Perhaps, but in most cases 80% of their installations will consist of the same configuration with the same installation, training and maintenance package. Nothing inspires more confidence than transparent pricing.

Re-branding

Hard-liner, moderate compete in Iran Field narrowed to Tehran mayor, millionaire cleric

Tehran -- The hard-line, working-class mayor of Tehran will face former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate millionaire cleric, in a runoff election for Iran's presidency this week, according to first-round results announced Saturday.

Since when is Rafsanjani a moderate?

Product placement

This afternoon I saw The Deal. It is a political thriller involving oil.

Eschaton described it as liberal porn. My friend described it as a DVD movie. I suspect the gentlemen in the audience will identify with the comic relief elements. The ending has a cynical twist.

During the film I counted no less that four prominent camera shots of the Financial Times. A little heavy handed in my judgment. Apple also had a great camera shot. I am not a purist about these things, but a movie should never look like a commercial.

Community development of Java specifications

Java Community Process

Archiving all your e-mail is not records management

TrendWatch blog

Just attended the INBOX Messaging Conference a couple of weeks ago and I have e-mail archiving on the brain. Quite a few vendors and some lawyers having been espousing the practice of saving all e-mails, just in case, and I see quite a few frustrated, confused users buying into the concept that if you save everything you don’t have to worry about your users or employees “screwing things up.”

I thought the whole point of a records management policy was to insure that everything necessary to comply with regulations was saved and almost everything else discarded to avert fishing expeditions.

FDIC Alerts Employees of Data Breach

Jonathan Krim, The Washington Post

Thousands of current and former employees at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are being warned that their sensitive personal information was breached, leading to an unspecified number of fraud cases.

In letters dated last Friday, the agency told roughly 6,000 people to be "vigilant over the next 12 to 24 months" in monitoring their financial accounts and credit reports. The data that may have been improperly accessed included names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and salary information on anyone employed at the agency as of July 2002.

The agency said that in a "small number of cases," the data was used to obtain fraudulent loans from a credit union, but declined to specify how many or the credit union involved.

According to the letter, the breach occurred early last year, and it remains unclear why employees were not notified for nearly 18 months. The agency wrote that it learned of the breach only "recently," but did not explain how the breach surfaced or why it took so long to learn about it.

Nor did the letter say how the breach occurred, aside from stating that it was not the result of a computer security failure. In June 2003, the Government Accountability Office concluded that security weaknesses at the agency left some of its data vulnerable, though the report cited some improvements.

One trusts this will motivate our government to do something about this.

Prices data fail to halt Treasury sell-off

By Jennifer Hughes in New York, Joanna Chung in London and David Turner in Tokyo for the Financial Times

US Treasury prices extended their sell-off on Wednesday as the recent negative market tone continued in spite of the second benign set of inflation data in two days. ...

The report showed a slight dip in net foreign buying of Treasuries in April to $24.7bn from $27.8bn. Total net inflows into the US reached only $47.4bn – failing to cover the monthly current account deficit for a second month running and raising concerns about future demand for US assets.

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

When good people give bad advice, the inappropriate use of technology in marketing

Chris Doran has some dubious advice on Marketing Profs.

Five Ways Technology Can Boost Profitability

1. Identify anonymous Web site visitors

Currently, Web site registration is the leading tool for gathering information about potential customers and generating leads through your Web site. As long as every potential customer completes the registration process, it's a great tool. But many of your potential customers never register, or don't finish registering because they get the jitters for one reason or another. …

First of all, if you are asking users to register to retrieve information from your corporate web site, you urgently need to get over yourself. The only reason to ask visitors to register is for the purpose of conducting secure transactions.

Today, there are powerful tools that can identify visitors to your Web site even if they do not register while they are visiting your Web site. These tools automatically lookup visitors IP addresses so you have are presented with a compiled list of identities of the anonymous companies--and thus potential customers--who are visiting your Web site.

While some IP addresses cannot be linked to an individual company, our research shows that you can identify the company affiliations of more than 50% of the anonymous visitors to your site. And once you know the names of the companies, you can follow up and nurture their interest. …

Tracking visitors makes sense if you use that information to indentify your primary vertical markets. If you are sending prospects email on the basis of their visiting your website, you are pushing your luck.

With new technology recently introduced into the marketplace, you can get to know your customers through their online behavior. You can know what Web pages they have viewed on your site. You can know how long they stayed on each one. You can know what emails they've read and which ones they've forwarded. And you can know what product information they've downloaded.

Markets are about conversations, not surveillance. Avoid secret police market research.

Edit-
Adriana has a related comment

What is Event Driven Architecture?

Tarak Modi, TechWeb

Event-based systems are systems in which the constituent modules (or components) have no direct connection to each other. I agree that this statement by itself is quite vague. So, let's explore it further using a typical service-oriented, N-tiered Web application.

An end user submits an order form using a Web browser, which results in a boundary service on the server side being invoked. This boundary service then finds and invokes the appropriate business components, which in turn may invoke a series of other business and data components, and so on. Each component in this system, including those on the client side, knows exactly which component (or set of components) it needs to invoke next, and furthermore, this logic is built into the application itself rather rigidly. Changing this logic in most cases entails a developer making a change to the application code.

The reason for this is simple: components in such a system are directly connected (or coupled) to each other. There are two generally accepted ways of establishing this connection between the two components. The more common approach is through the use of a factory pattern. The "caller" component uses the factory to locate or obtain a reference to the "callee" component. The other way, which is a more recent development, uses a pattern called "dependency injection," in which the "caller" component provides a way for the container to inject (i.e. provide) a reference to the "callee" component during startup (or whenever the "caller" component is created/initialized).

(There is actually a third way to establish the connection. The "caller" component could simply create the "callee" component itself. This is the least desirable way of the three and should be avoided in all except the simplest of systems.)

Now you know.

On flag day

The Stars and Stripes Forever

A dangerous precedent

Microsoft Censors Blogs at Chinese Portal

SHANGHAI, China - Chinese bloggers, even on foreign-sponsored sites, better chose their words carefully — the censors are watching.

Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities — such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

"Prohibited language in text, please delete," the message says.

Dan Gillmor comments.

Edit-
Communist Chinese astroturf.

Trevor Cook on corporate blogging

Sydney Morning Herald

Companies could overcome their fears by creating guidelines for employees. But, as Cook says: "If you can't trust your employees to blog honestly about the company, then you better have a hard look at the company."

Employees naturally identify with their company and like to brag on its achievements.

Congratulations Joseph Bermudez

Jane’s Defence Weekly wins at Paris Air Show

Jane’s Defence Weekly last night scooped the Northrop Grumman Award for the Best Breaking News Submission at the 2005 Aerospace Journalist of the Year Awards.

The article, entitled ‘ North Korea deploys new missiles’, was authored by Joseph Bermudez on 30 July 2004.

Peter Felstead , editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, said: “We are honoured to receive this prestigious award. There was extremely stiff competition as, unlike Jane’s Defence Weekly, the focus of the other publications is solely on aviation and ours is tri-service.”

Two other articles were shortlisted at last night’s awards ceremony: Rob Hewson for ‘ China aids Iran's tactical missile programme’ (11 November 2004) and Michael Sirak ‘The end game’ (8 September 2004).

The effective use of AdSense

Generating Low Cost Terms for Google Campaigns

What's the difference between "Primary" and "Secondary" terms?

"Primary Terms" are those terms that most simply describe your industry or offering, whereas Secondary Terms" have some additional term or word attached to it that makes it longer - and therefore less competitive. Generally, the longer the phrase the less they cost per click because there is less of a chance that someone will click that exact phrase. The upside though, is that less clicks per phrase on a less competitive term usually means a lower cost per click overall.

These tools are very new and we are still learning how to use them effectively.

Al Gore, thank you for the Internet

The Webby Lifetime Achievement Award: Former Vice President Al Gore

Setting the record straight on one of recent history's most persistent political myths, The Webby Awards will present Former Vice President Al Gore with The Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of the pivotal role he has played in the development of the internet over the past three decades. Vint Cerf, widely credited as one of the "fathers of the internet," will present Vice President Gore with the award.

If it were not for Al Gore we would still be in the walled off gardens of Compuserve, AOL, Prodigy, etc.

Al Gore and the Internet

Why are data reference models news?

Chris Dorobek has a fascinating piece about site traffic and story selection.

Each week, Federal Computer Week covers stories that can be seen as dense. We always try to do it in a way that makes these subjects accessible and perhaps occasionally even fun. But there also going to be stories about some new data reference model of the enterprise architecture that are just so important, they just have to be covered. Our goal is always to make those stories accessible as well.

I think the way to make data reference model stories box office is to communicate its impact on interoperability. A good data reference model is the difference between applications working with each other and bottle necks. A good data reference model is the difference between divisions within an agency communicating with one another or not.

I understand it is difficult to make clear the impact of such arcane developments; but readers must be given the opportunity to read these stories if they are to understand technology’s impact on their lives.

Setting a poor example

Public Relations Tactics has a disappointing article about Video News Releases(VNR). The article characterizes the controversy surrounding VNRs as hysteria.

Part of our job as PR professionals is to explain to clients the necessity of showing what Jefferson called "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind". To simply describe the opposition to VNRs as hysteria is to fail to do this.

Another look at message boards

Recently I have rediscovered message boards. One of my clients has a service peculiarly suited to message board buzz. I think we take message boards for granted precisely because they are so important. Comments on a message board have tremendous authenticity within their limited milieu.

I think the best way to use message boards is to simply link them on your corporate web site and hope your happy customers are the ones who post.

Media Guerrilla

Common Craft

'Newsday' Snubs Google, Introduces Its Own Version of AdSense

Graham Webster, Editor and Publisher

NEW YORK As more and more newspapers are embracing Google AdSense and other third-party context-based advertising, Newsday Monday announced its in-house answer.

The Newsday program, called Pay-Per-Click, allows advertisers to place ads on the Newsday Web site associated with specific sections, subject matter, or geographical areas. Unlike classic banner ads -- which are usually paid by "impression," or the number of times the ad is displayed -- Pay-Per-Click ads are free unless someone clicks on them.

I wondered when this would start happening. It is a great idea. Media companies with multiple properties, such as CMP. Ziff Daivs, IDG, etc., would do very well to follow suit.

Something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear

Violence Against the Truth

On Saturday night Hook went to a Santa Fe bar to meet a person claiming to be a fellow Los Alamos whistleblower that called that night. When the person did not show, Hook left the bar after two drinks. In the parking lot he was pulled out of his car and beaten so badly by 3 or 4 men that he had to be taken to intensive care. Hook did not provoke these men. The men concentrated on kicking his head, and Hook's family thinks the men would have killed him if it hadn’t been for the witness who had just walked out of the bar.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Blog

The civil service wiki

Aliya Sternstein, Federal Computer Week:

Public Web logs that can be modified by anyone with a browser could give citizens more power to affect policy, an Ohio State University expert says.

Philosophy lecturer Larry Sanger, who spoke June 2 at the FCW Events' Web-Enabled Government Conference, said he believes that government agencies should consider using so-called wiki collaboration tools, which are rapidly growing in popularity. Sanger co-founded one of the most widely known applications of wiki technology, the online Wikipedia. The free and popular encyclopedia is updated by its community of users.

Federal XML Community of Practice Wiki

What is i2010?

i2010 promotes a unified strategy for the information society and media services within the EU.

i2010 website.

Now you know.

Find David Koch

This is a Weblog intended to provide a central location for information about the search for David Koch, a Hartland, Wisc., resident who is lost on Grouse Mountain near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Find David Koch website.

Sad news.

Great moments in Photoshop®

Or why you should never lie on the web.

New 7-dBi, 2.4 GHz Antenna Can Triple WLAN Coverage

ANTENNA SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGY, e-Report

Now there is a solution to the poor signal quality of wireless networks that is as economical as it is flexible, the Nearson 7-dBi high gain rubber duck antenna. Blind spots and patchy signals can be replaced by high quality reception without the cost or power consumption of high-powered radios.

The Nearson 7-dBi antenna brings the performance of an infrastructure antenna to a portable antenna that is small, lightweight and very cost-effective. It attaches directly to standard connectors found on industrial radios or 802.11 b&g Access Points. Range of reception in many environments is effectively tripled, reducing the need for extra Access Points, amplifiers or repeaters, thereby saving both the cost of installation and its associated aggravation. Link quality is improved, reducing packet loss and increasing effective throughput.

Specifications
Nearson's 7-dBi antennas are 11 inches tall, thin, flexible and articulating. They come with industry standard SMA & TNC connectors as well as Reverse Polarity versions for FCC Part 15 compliance.

There are models available with flying leads (a Nearson innovation in 1999) for OEM adoption with U.FL compatible and MMCX connectors. These flying lead models eliminate costly patch cables and offer a variety of methods to attach to an OEM's enclosure. The 7-dBi antennas are available immediately for volume production.

For more information visit www.nearson.com.

From gaming enthusiasts to large warehouse distribution systems, my client's flexible, economic antenna is going to have a big impact on wireless systems.

What is a political blog?

It is a little like p0rnography, you know it when you see it. But if you have ever mentioned a candidate’s name on your blog you could be sucked into this.

Do you think bloggers should have to fill out forms every time they link to a candidate’s web site? Should they disclose links to campaigns in ways Frank Luntz does not?

The Online Coalition has written an excellent letter:

The electorate is best served when the Commission crafts rules that remove actual corruption while encouraging more participation, opinions and choices to permeate the democratic process.

It is in this spirit and for the reasons stated below that the Commission should move forward with its proposal to include the term “paid advertisements on the Internet” under the definition of “public communication,” to extend the protections afforded to volunteers to include individuals and groups of individuals, and to treat certain online publications as falling under the “media exemption” rule.

Send your own statement to the Federal Election Commission at internet@fec.gov. You don’t have much time; Friday, June 3 is the deadline.

The changing model for Venture Capital firms

Burnham’s Beat has a fascinating post about the changing world of Venture Capital investing. Shorter version, there used to be a handful of firms that did venture investing, so they could afford to wait for entrepreneurs to find them. Now there are many venture firms competing for deals, so to win the best ones you can no longer wait for startups to find you. More firms are specializing in certain areas and actively looking for startups that fit their investment outlook.

I would be real interested in hearing from the entrepreneur’s side of this.

Nothing for Granted: A Marine’s Journey

Wednesday, June 1 at 8:30PM on MHz

A young man signs up for the Marines, knowing without question that he will serve a tour of duty in Iraq. "Nothing for Granted: A Marine's Journey" follows the coming of age story of Christopher Perkins. Through the eyes of his family and fellow Marine brothers, we come to see how the war changes this one young man.

One of the advantages of living in Fairfax is access to MHz Networks.

How not to launch a new product

Drug groups look at software to ‘spy' on blogs

Several of the world's leading pharmaceutical groups and at least one regulator are in talks about hiring a computer consultancy company that has devised software to “spy” on internet conversations about medicines.

Netrank, a UK-based consultancy, has been discussing its i-reputation service with GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, all existing clients. The service scans web logs (known as blogs), news groups and forums for exchanges of information between patients. The system can seek out, classify and identify thousands of internet messages a day making references to drugs in an attempt to warn companies of potential side effects or gauge positive or negative opinions that could affect their image.

Here is how this product should have been presented:

Pharmaceutical groups are planning to join the conversation in blogosphere. They are looking at software that monitors online sites such as discussion groups and blogs for mentions of their industry or products. Companies hope to use this information for developing communications practices that would be more responsive to public opinion.

So who is handling Netrank’s publicity? Former Stasi officers?

Aiming to shoot the messenger but hitting the foot

BP INSTITUTES 'AD-PULL' POLICY FOR PRINT PUBLICATIONS

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Days after financial services giant Morgan Stanley informed print publications that its ads must be automatically pulled from any edition containing "objectionable editorial coverage," global energy giant BP has adopted a similar press strategy.

Zero tolerance
According to a copy of a memo on the letterhead of BP's media-buying agency, WPP Group's MindShare, the global marketer has adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward editorial coverage it is not informed about in advance, "regardless of whether editorial is deemed positive or negative."

I guess BP stands for Bad Publicity. Morgan Stanley has taken a similar move.

Their actions preclude the possibility of good publicity, for any editor who ran a positive piece under these conditions would lose credibility. I’m with Andy Lark; it is one thing to pull advertising after a hatchet job, quite another to ask for advance notice of any coverage of any kind. Public relations is meaningless without an independent press.

Phil Gomes

Bob LeDrew

John Wagner

Silicon Valley Watcher

The abuse of Real-Time Blackhole lists

Shel Holtz

Neville and I were copied on an email from Steve O’Keefe over at the IAOC in which he said he tried sending out the association’s newsletter but it kept bouncing back. The reason, he learned, was the URL for our podcast, “For Immediate Release.” The URL was in the body of the message, but the mail server at the IAOC’s Internet Service Provider wouldn’t let the email go through as long as our URL was included. We were, it turns out, on a couple of blacklists. ...

In both instances, the owner of the SURBL site suggested he’d feel better about whitelisting us if we had spam policies on our sites. It was the combination of the vigilante approach to spam coupled with the requirement to publish an email policy that raised my eyebrows. At their core, of course, blogs are web sites. But they are part of what I have taken to calling the “collaborative” or “social web,” not the “reference web” with which most people are most familiar. How many blogs distribute email of any kind? Damn few, I suspect. Should bloggers be forced to post email policies just to comply with individuals creating blacklists that ISPs use to keep spam out of their customers’ in-boxes? How many bloggers have given any thought to posting email policies? How many bloggers have even figured out whether their blogs’ URLs are on a blacklist?

A former client of mine had a similar problem. There are many innocent bystanders in the spam wars. We need some protection from a company arbitrarily assigning you Blackhole status.

David Koch Missing in Vancouver

Shel Israel

David Koch, is missing on a mountain in Canada, and we need to publicize his situation so the search effort continues. I don't know if this process will work, but perhaps the blogosphere can help. Dave's the associate publisher on DMReview, a Thomson/SourceMedia publication. He drove north from Seattle last Wednesday 5/25, stopping in the late afternoon to take a tram up a mountain near Vancouver that he and his wife had visited years before. Apparently he missed the tram back, and attempted to hike down. He hasn't been heard from since.

All our prayers for the safe deliverance of David Koch.

On Memorial Day

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal"

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground -- The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, delivered at Gettysburg November 19, 1863.

The armor scandal:

12-21-2004 Steel Production Shortages Complicate Armor Cure

12-21-2004 Soldier Says He Asked Rumsfeld Armor Question Without Aid of Embed

12-16-2004 Special Feedback: Readers on Armor Scandal

12-15-2004 Guest Column: Pentagon Still Spins on Humvee Armor

12-15-2004 Guest Column: The Humvee’s Fatal Design

12-13-2004 Steel Plates, Sandbags and ‘Trojan Horse’ Trucks

12-13-2004 Posing the Right Question

12-13-2004 Armor Priority? What Priority?

12-11-2004 Humvee Flap Is Not the Real Iraq Problem

12-09-2004 How the System Shorted Armored Humvees

12-09-2004 Rumsfeld Should Have Known – and Acted

12-09-2004 Editor’s Note: Discovering a Crisis

12-09-2004 Transcripts

12-09-2004 CBS Video

A Soldier’s Thoughts

All the king’s horses

Mike Crichton's Journal

Griffin's Random Ramblings

Nameless Soldier

Armed Forces Relief Trust

USO

Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

The Iraq Body Count

Have a question about grammar?

Check HyperGrammer from the university of Ottowa.

Why it is important to understand user requirements

Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when using Excel in bioinformatics

MatchMiner [1] and GoMiner [2] are two bioinformatics program packages we published recently in another Biomed Central Journal, Genome Biology. When we were beta-testing those programs on microarray data, a frustrating problem occurred repeatedly: Some gene names kept bouncing back as "unknown." A little detective work revealed the reason: Use of one of the research community's most valuable and extensively applied tools for manipulation of genomic data can introduce erroneous names. A default date conversion feature in Excel (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA) was altering gene names that it considered to look like dates. For example, the tumor suppressor DEC1 [Deleted in Esophageal Cancer 1] [3] was being converted to '1-DEC.' Figure 1 lists 30 gene names that suffer an analogous fate.

PR disaster in progress, slow drip edition

Identity Theft, James Kasprzak of the National Defense University at the NCC AIIM Educational Seminar

Kasprzak characterized the current debate over identity theft as the “perfect storm” of technological change, citizen perception and criminal activity. Throughout his presentation Kasprzak stressed the connection between privacy and identity security.

He talked about his own experience of ID theft. He noticed that for eighteen months a mysterious 37¢ had been added to his VISA bill. It turned out that someone in Eastern Europe had a scam where he was charging 37¢ on millions of VISA cards. VISA knew but took no action. Kasprzak’s response was to change to MasterCard. (This is an excellent example of how poor security and poor customer service can combine to create a public relations disaster. The Identity Theft expert at the National Defense University is telling every audience he talks to that VISA does not take security seriously.)

Consumers can report ID theft to the Federal Trade Commission.

The Future of IT, Where Do We Go From Here?

NCC-AIIM June Social
Friday, June 10, 2005

George Newstrom, former Secretary of Technology of Virginia
CEO WiSPER Technologies

Please join NCC-AIIM for our annual Black Tie Optional June Social. Torpedo Factory Street ViewThe June Social is our chance to recognize the efforts of our executive board and have some fun. Our venue, the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, is one of Alexandria’s landmarks and is right on the waterfront at the bottom of King Street. Last year’s event was talked about for months afterwards (Austin Powers and the Spy Museum), so who knows what can happen this year?

We are excited to have Mr. George Newstrom as our featured speaker. Mr. Newstrom will speak about some of the technology advances we should expect over the coming years, and how that will affect our daily lives and our business.

America needs privacy protection

Data Protection Act 1998, United Kingdom

From a comment on Slashdot.

How the United States is alienating international opinion

From the USMC website, check out the barrel on the tank.

Scope of bank data theft grows to 676,000 customer

Todd R. Weiss, Computerworld

MAY 20, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - What is thought to be the largest U.S. banking security breach in history has gotten even bigger.

The number of bank accounts accessed illegally by a New Jersey cybercrime ring has grown to 676,000, according to police investigators. That's up from the initial estimate of 500,000 accounts police said last month had been breached. ...

Lomia today said that the suspects manually built a database of the 676,000 accounts using names and Social Security numbers obtained by the bank employees while they were at work. The information was then allegedly sold to more than 40 collection agencies and law firms, police said.

My advice to those collection agencies and law firms is go out and hire yourself some crisis communications experts, because you are going to need them.

Blogs come to Federal Computer Week

Federal Computer Week launches its blogs this week.

But Circuit, Intercepts, blogs and comment pages are different. They are a hybrid — they are not news stories and they are not opinion. They are something different that enables us to write about subjects that may not make the news pages.

Despite the dangers, we believe blogs can be both interesting and useful for our readers. Most of all, we hope FCW.com's blogs are a place where you can find a niche and communicate with us or with others. Our inboxes are always available at cdorobek@fcw.com or jsmonroe@fcw.com. We will address your comments wherever and whenever possible. (Please put "Blog: ..." in the subject line because it will help ensure that messages don't get mistaken for spam.)

So ... let's give it a try and see how it works ... www.fcw.com/blogs.

The FCW Insider

Culture & Context, People and ideas driving government innovation.

Welcome to blogosphere.

Testify brother Gillmor

Is there really a shortage of engineers? I don't begin to believe this, not when the bursting of the technology bubble left so many workers unemployed.

Banking Regulators to Launch XBRL-Powered Call Report Database

Ivan Schneider, Bank Systems & Technology

The Federal Financial Institution Examination Council (FFIEC) will soon launch a project that will enable federal banking regulators and the public to access a common pool of information about the banks under their supervision.

The initiative, known as the "Call Report Modernization Project," revolves around a Central Data Repository containing the quarterly regulatory filings of over 8,400 financial institutions. All of the information within will be "tagged" using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a cross-industry standard for representing financial data.

The project will launch on or about October 1st, 2005, following a final end-to-end test of the system at the end of May. "This will be the first mandatory electronic filing system for financial data in the United States," said Mike Bartell, chief information officer, FDIC. Bartell spoke at a recent XBRL conference in Boston.

Mojtaba Saminejad

Mojtaba Saminejad is on a hunger strike. He was imprisoned for reporting that three other Iranian bloggers were jailed and reported being tortured during their incarceration.

Useful links for researching trade shows

Trade Show Central

EventWeb

World Trade Search Trade Shows

Huntingen - a no-charge resource for event planning & trade shows

Skyline Exhibits, knowledge resources

Thanks to Andy Russell and Marc Snyder for the tips.

Bugs are sons of glitches

No More Bugs

I am convinced one of the reasons we have so many defects is that we call them bugs. When we call problems bugs, we avoid taking responsibility for the problems (defects or faults) that we have caused. The bugs didn't just fly in and land on the hard drive. As the developers create the code, they also create the defects.

Definitions

Data transformation: The process of redefining data based on some predefined rules. The values are redefined based on a specific formula or technique.

Data conversion: The process of changing an electronic file of content from one format to another (ie, changing a word processing document to an XML-tagged document).

It’s easy to confuse the two.

Second annual PR Opinions survey

Tom Murphy has published the results of his PR opinions survey. This item caught my eye -

The vast majority of the sample believe that the Internet is having a positive effect on PR and that it has improved their relationships with the media - however 43% believe that the Internet is making PR harder

These two opinions are in no way contradictory. The Internet and blogs have opened up many new opportunities for PR and story placement. On the other hand story tracking and measurement are vastly more complicated. So you have to work harder; but you have more opportunities.

A step forward

Kuwait grants women right to vote

Kuwait's parliament has passed a law granting women the right to vote and run in elections for the first time. Parliament speaker Jassim al-Khorafi said the legislation had been passed by a majority of the all-male parliament. But women activists said the law was not passed in time for them to vote and run in upcoming municipal elections set for June 2.

Presto Vivace Blog

BL Ochman is doing a series of interviews with marketing and PR bloggers, including an interview with yours truly. She has managed to describe the purpose of this blog perfectly.

One point I would like to emphasize the the role of my copy editor.

Marshall selected a copy editor, who is highly intelligent, intellectually curious. The editor has no tech background whatsoever. "My feeling is that if my copy editor can't understand it then I need to re-write it. "

Much of the bad writing in technology comes from press releases written by flacks who are only vaguely aware of the meaning of the terminology, jargon, and buzzwords that they use. They throw down the words in the innocent belief that their technical audience will understand releases that they themselves do not understand. I make a point of learning the terminology, so that I can put it into simple English whenever possible. I also use a copy editor who, while highly educated, has no technical background. Your copy should almost always be simple enough that an educated layman can understand it.

The difference between records and non-records

From Owen Ambur’s presentation to the NCC AIIM Educational Seminar:

Records have authenticity, reliability, integrity and usability (ISO 115489). Databases are not good record-keeping systems because they lack integrity: every database has an administrator, insiders have motives, and manipulation of data is built into databases.

What is XPSF?

XPSF, which when spoken sounds like spiff, is the XML Shareable Playlist Format.

Now you know.

Ageism

In Steve Hall’s interview with BL Ochman about how he built Adrants into a commercially successful blog, Hall talks about how he fell into blogging:

Hall was unemployed "just like every other blogger" and was between ad agency jobs. "I followed the old adage," he says, "write about what you know."

"I'm 43. I always wondered what I would do when I turned 40. Advertising is very ageistic. There are not many people with gray hair in ad agencies. I never really had a conscious though that I better start a business. I just fell into this. And I love it."

In a country that is becoming grayer this has got to stop. Ageism is holding the whole country back by denying older people the opportunity to contribute to society.

It has long been my opinion that many of the quality and security problems in software and technology come from the pernicious practice of age discrimination. Institutional knowledge and experience with dealing with customers is at least as valuable as mastering the latest technology. It is only by living through an installation and implementation that you begin to understand the gulf between theory and practice. To discard workers with this knowledge is a grave error.