Why enterprise search is differnet from Web search

Gerry McGovern, CMS Wire

A major reason why Google is so successful on the Web is that websites really, really want to be found.

Almost every search result in the first page of search results for practically every important search has worked really hard to get into that first page. The owners of these websites have worked hard to make their content search friendly. They have worked hard to make their metadata search friendly. They have worked hard to get as many links as possible, knowing that every link increases their search rankings.

Having good search does not mean you shouldn’t have a good classification and navigation. In fact, a good classification will make for even better search results. Search and navigation are interdependent in many ways. People often use search to jump a couple of levels down into a website. Then, they like to navigate.

Technology is an essential driver of innovation and modernity. But the capabilities of a particular technology are nearly always oversold. And within many organizations there are those only too willing to believe that the latest cool technology will magically transform everything.

A great many organizations do not take search management seriously. They do not invest the necessary human and technical resources to increase findability. But at the other extreme, some managers think that all they need to do is choose the right search engine.

Technology on its own will transform nothing. Without human-designed and managed processes that focus on harnessing the technology, no improvements in efficiency and productivity can be made.

Blogger relations check list

Cory Doctorow has a check list for good blogger relations. It could be summed up in one word, link. Use a permanent link that goes to the item in question.

DC PHP Conference 2008

Via Keith Casey:
2008 DC PHP Conference & Expo, June 2-4, 2008

Call for Papers
Submission Deadline: March 31, 2008

New to me local venture captialist blog

LaunchBox Blog

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

Washington Post Co. Sponsors LaunchBox08 Startup Competition

Collaboration Supports Washington, DC-Based Investment Firm’s Call for Entries in Cutting Edge Innovation

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) announced today that it will sponsor a global competition for digital startups from LaunchBox Digital, a Washington, DC-based investment firm focused on cutting edge mobile and Web technologies. Called “LaunchBox08,” the competition encourages applicants to submit innovative ideas in order to receive seed funding and participate in a 12-week business building program with access to first-rate mentors and advisors.

LaunchBox Digital offers funding to entrepreneurs at an early stage, providing advice and technical support along the way. The LaunchBox08 competition will select six to 10 entrepreneurs from a pool of applicants to receive funding of $15,000 to $30,000.

There was a marked lack of enthusiasm about this on Twitter today, to put it mildly. There seems to be a feeling that they are not seriously interested in local entrepreneurs. $30,000 dollars is not very much money. On the other hand the winners are sure to be featured in the Washington Post and/or Newsweek.

For St. Patrick's Day

New local exchange forum

East Coast Blogging has created the DC Tech Community Exchange Forum.

New to me local venture captialist blog

WashingtonVC, discovered from a link on 2pluss11.

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

The problem with terminology

Web Service

A Web Service is a software component that is described via WSDL and is capable of being accessed via standard network protocols such as but not limited to SOAP over HTTP.

A web service is a software component that does one very specific thing, such as retrieve a customers account number, and is used in combination with other web services to perform certain functions. Web services can be reused, thus are very handy.

Clearly Steve Rubel is talking about something entirely different:

The leading players on the web all see the train coming. They are wisely creating APIs and turning themselves into plug-and-play services, not just big destinations. YouTube is just the latest to do so today. Amazon has S3. Google has OpenSocial and an extensive library of APIs. As does Microsoft. Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site. Twitter is an API first and (eventually) a business model second. Finally, the booming widget economy shows the promise of small content that can go anywhere.

These are the leaders. But everyone - including marketers - will need to think of their online brands not as sites but as portable services that can go anywhere and everywhere the consumer wants. Without such appendages, no brand will ever be able to break through the online clutter such unlimited choice offers.

In this context the term web services is clear enough. We just need to be careful when we do presentations of what is meant by a term. The context is not always as clear as we assume.

New to me local tech blogs

Development Seed Blog

appropriate it

Allman

HACKADAISICAL!COM

All from The DC Technology Network, all added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

The Anonymice Protection Act redux

We traffic in rumor, innuendo, and character assassination. That is why we prefer to be off the record.




Media Coalition Letter Urges Shield Law Approval

NEW YORK A group of 50 media companies and organizations, as varied as News Corporation and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, have penned a letter urging Congress to take up a pair of federal shield law bills and enact them as soon as possible.

Almost every scandal in journalism in my lifetime has involved the abuse of anonymous sources. Either reporters are simply making stuff up, or they are serving as a laundromat for false allegations.

The use of anonymous sources makes journalists power brokers, a role that is very sweet to them, if ruinous to their profession. This is not the free flow of information, this is the protection of the news organization as gate keeper of information.

What would really promote the free flow of information would be to enact tough laws protecting whistle blowers.

Bad news for hacks is bad news for flacks

Exclusive: Charting 4-Year Circ Plunge at Major Papers

NEW YORK In just four years the top newspapers in the U.S. have collectively lost about 1.4 million copies in daily circulation, E&P has found. But since the reported numbers come out every six months, the overall decline for individual papers may not hit home for many. Each fall off is usually in the low- to mid-single digits -- but it sure adds up.

In an atmosphere like this editors and reporters will take fewer chances on less than box office stories. It will become harder and harder to place clients.

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

The New School of Informaiton Security

The New School of Information Security (Hardcover) by Adam Shostack and Andrew Stewart

Adam Shostack

The New School is a systemic look at dysfunction within information security, and a look at some of the ways people are looking to make things better. We think there's an emerging way of approaching the world, which we call the New School.

I look foward to hearing what other security specialists think of their approach. So much of what is labeled as security has nothing to do with protecting data.

The coming controversy over federal contractors

The Spy Who Billed Me

Just as Blackwater had finally fallen from the headlines and the boys in Moyock thought their State Department contract would be quietly renewed, their worst nightmare has hit: Blackwater is a campaign issue.

There is going to be a lot more scrutiny of federal contractors in general and security contractors in particular. As Guy Kawasaki said in a completely different context, the time to make friends online is before you need them.

In observance of International Women's Day

(source)

Via Servant of Chaos

And in honour of International Women's Day, I thought it worth remembering that there are some fantastic blogs by women -- and what better place to start than with the W-list. If your blog/name is not on the list, then join up here to add your blog to the W Magical List of Women Bloggers. Also check out Wowowow.

Here are a couple of my local favourites that don't seem to be listed -- Dipping into the Blogpond by Meg Tsiamis, Laurel Papworth and Our Great Southern Land by Jayne.

2020 Hindsight by Susan Kitchens
21st Century Collaborative by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
4-women-in-insurance by Dina A. Privitera
45 Things by Anita Bruzzese
Abide | Living with chronic illness by Sharon Brogan
A Girl Must Shop by Megan Garnhum
A Little Pregnant by Julie
A Look at Art & Design by Lisa Mikulski
A Lucid Spoonful by Paula Crossfield
Aerophant by Tai Moses
Affirmagy Blog by Kristen Schuerlein
Aide-Memoire by Kate Carruthers
All for Women by Leigh, Naom, Patricia, and Barbara
Alkamae by Susan Reid
Allied by Jeneane Sessum[[http://www.artlook.typepad.com/|]]
Ample Sanity by Anne Matthews
andHow To Reach Women by Tami Anderson
angiemckaig.com: still a great pair of legs by Angie McKaig
A n n a r c h y by Ann Handley
Ask Dr. Kirk by Dr. Delaney Kirk
Average Jane by Average Jane
Babylune by Kate Baggott
Back in Skinny Jeans by Stephanie Quilao
Bag and Baggage by Denise Howell
Balanced Life Center-Spirituality applied to Life by Nneka
be Conscious now by Kara-Leah Masina
Be Relevant! by Tamara Gielen
Becoming a Woman of Purpose by Carolyn D. Townes
Becoming your StellarSelf by Mary Kearns
Be the One. Find the One: Advertising and Marketing Recruiting by DFBryant&Co (Jenny Meade)
Big Window by Robin Reagler
Biz Growth News by Krishna De
Blog Fabulous by Tracee Sioux
Blogging Blog | Tips, Tools & Toys for the Personal Blogger by Sharon Brogan
Blogging Sueblimely by Sue Bride
BlogWrite for CEOs by Debbie Weil
Blogaholics by Arienna Foley
Blog Til You Drop by Laurence-Hélène Borel
Brain Based Biz by Dr. Robyn McMaster
Brain Based Business by Dr. Ellen Weber
Brains On Purpose by Stephanie West Allen
Brand Sizzle by Anne Simons
Branding & Marketing by Chris Brown
Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk
Bread Coffee Chocolate Yoga by Fortune Elkins
Breastfeeding 1-2-3 by Angela
Build A Better Blog by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff
Build a Solo Practice, LLC by Susan Cartier Liebel
Burningbird by Shelley Powers
Cafe30 by Towanda Long (The Cafe Lady)
Career Goddess by Susan Guarnieri
Change Therapy by Isabella Mori
Chasing Daisy by Daisy
Chatting to my Generation by Anja Merret
Cheap Thrills by Ryan Barrett
CherylMillerVille by Cheryl Miller
Child-Centered Divorce by Rosalind Sedacca
Christine Kane by Christine Kane
Church of the Customer by Jackie Huba
CK’s Blog by CK (Christina Kerley)
Cocktail Party Physics by Jennifer Ouiellette
Colloquium by JHSEsq
Communication Overtones by Kami Huyse
Conflict coaching and resolution for the workplace by Dr Tammy Lenski
Confession of a Marketing Addict by Sunny Cervantes
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman by Ree
Confident Writing by Joanna Young
Conscious Business by Anne Libby
Contentious by Amy Gahran
Conversation Agent by Valeria Maltoni
Conversations With Dina by Dina Mehta
Corporate PR by Elizabeth Albrycht
Cottontimer by Hsien-Hsien Lei
Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra
Creative Curio by Lauren Marie
Crossroads by Evelyn Rodriguez
Cruel To Be Kind by Nicole Simon
Customer Experience Crossroads by Susan Abbott
Customers Are Always by Maria Palma
Customers Rock! by Becky Carroll
CustServ by Meikah David
DailyAffirm by Jeanie Marshall
Debbie Millman by Debbie Millman
Deborah Schultz by Deborah Schultz
Decent Marketing by Katherine Stone
Defining Spiritual Presence by Greenwoman
Designers Who Blog by Cat Morley
Design Your Life by Ellen and Julia Lupton
Design Your Writing Life by Lisa Gates
Diary of Claudine Hellmuth by Claudine Hellmuth
Diva Marketing Blog by Toby Bloomberg
Do It Myself Blog by Glenda Watson Hyatt
Dooce by Heather B. Armstrong
Downshifting by Anne Howe
Driving Traffic by Carol Krishner
Echidne of the Snakes by Echidne
EdithYeung.com by Edith Yeung
Eie Flud by Heather
Elise.com by Elise Bauer
Email Marketing Best Practices by Tamara Gielen
Emerging Customer by Michelle Lamar
Emily Chang - Strategic Designer by Emily Chang
Emily in France Emily
eMoms at Home by Wendy Piersall
EmpowerWomenNow.com by Ponn Sabra
Enter the Laughter by Marti Lawrence
Equip and Empower! by Carolyn D. Townes
Escape Blog by Melissa Petri
Escape From Corporate America by Laurel Delaney
Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim
eSoup by Sharon Sarmiento
Essential Keystrokes by Char
Every Dot Connectsby Connie Reece
EvilHRLady by Evil HR Lady
Expansion Plus by Sally Falkow
Experienceology by Stephanie Weaver
Fabulous Geezersisters by Ruth Pennebaker
Fetch Me My Axef
Finding Blanche by Wendy Scherer
Fish Creek House by GP
First Light by Julie Keyser-Squires
Flash and Accessibility by Niqui Merret
Flooring The Consumer by CB Whittemore
Forrester’s Marketing Blog by Shar, Charlene, Chloe, Christine Elana, Laura and Lisa
Forward Steps by Thea Westra
Franke James by Franke James
frizzyLogic by frizzyLogic
Full Circle by Nancy White
Funny Business by Elena Centor
Fusion View by Yang-Amy Ooi
Garden Variety Family by Karin Marlett-Choi
GenPink by Elysa
Get Fresh Minds by Katie Konrath
Get Shouty by Katie Chatfield
Getting Granular by Aimee Kessler Evans
GGs Swedish WOTD by GG
Giant Jeans Parlour by Anjali
Girl With Pen by Deborah Siegel
Golden Practices by Michelle Golden
Goodness Gracious by Jennifer
GourmetStation Delicious Destinations by Donna Lynes-Miller
Great Presentations Mean Business by Laura Athavale Fitton
Hartsock Communications by Nettie Hartsock
Health Observances by JC Jones and Ijeoma Eleazu
Healthline Connects by JC Jones and Ijeoma Eleazu
Hey Marci by Marci Alboher
Hiring Technical People by Johanna Rothman
¡Hola! Oi! Hi! by katia adams
Holly’s Corner Blog by Holly Schwendiman
Horse Pig Cow by Tara Hunt
idealawg by Stephanie West Allen
ifelse by Phu Ly
Illustration Friday by Penelope Dullaghan
Indigo Ocean by Indigo Ocean
Infomaniac by Liz Donovan
Inspirationbit by Vivien
Inspired Business Growth by Wendy Piersall
Internet Geek Girl by Stephanie Agesta
In Women We Trust by Mary Clare Hunt
Jane Geneva by Jane Geneva
J.T. O’Donnell Career Insights by J.T. O’Donnell
Jemima Kiss by Jemima Kiss
Joyful, Jubilant Learning by Rosa Say
Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog by Katya Andresen
KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog by Katie Delahaye Paine
Kinetic Ideas by Wendy Maynard
Kristy T’s Home Business Blog by Kristy T
Kung Foodie by Kat
Lawgarithms by Denise Howell
Learned on Women by Andrea Learned
Life at the Bar by Julie Fleming-Brown
Lifeblog by anina
Lifecruiser
Lifehacker by Gina Trapani
Lindsey Pollak Career Blog by Lindsey Pollak
Lip-sticking by Yvonne DeVita
Little Red Suit by Tiffany Monhollon
Live The Power by Karen Lynch
Liz Strauss at Successful Blog by Liz Strauss
Lorelle on WordPress by Lorelle VanFossen
Mad Techie Woman by Shelley Powers
Making Life Work for You by April Groves
Marketer Blog by Leslie Jump
Marketing To Women by Holly Buchanan
Manage to Change by Ann Michael
Management Craft by Lisa Haneberg
Managing Product Development by Johanna Rothman
Managing With Aloha Coaching by Rosa Say
Mandarin Design Daily:The MEG Blog by Michelle Goodrich
Marketing Roadmaps by Susan Getgood
Mary’s Blog by Mary Schmidt
MediaBlog by Daria Rasmussen
Media Influencer by Adriana Lukas
Mediation Marketing Tips by Kristina Haymes
Mediation Mensch by Dina Beach Lynch
Misbehaving by Dana Boyd, Hilde Corneliussen, Caterina Fake, Meg Hourihan, Liz Lawley, Fiona Romeo, Dorothea Salo, Halley Suitt, Gina Trapani, Jill Walker
Mkgmd - le mag du marketing multidimentionnel by Christelle Alexandre
Moda di Magno by Lori Magno
Modite by Rebecca Thorman
Mogulettes in the Making by Carmina Perez
molly.com by Molly E. Holzschlag
More Than WE Know by Liz Fuller
Muddy Boots
My Beautiful Chaos by April Groves
My Shingle by Carolyn Elefant
Narrative Assets by Karen Hegman
Newbie NYC by Mary Hilton
Netdiver by Carole Guevin
one coloured world by Anjolie
On My Desk by Linzie Hunter
Online Guide to Mediation by Diane Levin
Orlando Avenue by Colleen Kulikowski
Passion Meets Purpose by Kammie Kobyleski
Peggy Payne’s Boldness by Peggy Payne
Personal PR by Tiffany Monhollon
Poultry Discussion by Louise Manning
Power Energy Leadership by Michelle Kunz
Presto Vivace Blog by Alice Marshall
Productivity Goal by Carolyn Manning
Purple Wren by Sandy Renshaw
Purse Lip Square Jaw by Anne Galloway
Quality Service Marketing by Sybil Stershic
re:Invention by Kristen Osolind
Rebecca’s Pocket by Rebecca Blood
Resonance Partnership by Marianne Richmond
Sacred Ingredients by Nicole Hanley
Sanctuary for Change by Susan Hanshaw
Scattered Light by Cheryl and Janet Snell
Sent From My Dell Desktop by Alejandra Ramos
Settle It Now Negotiation Blog by Victoria Pynchon
Shiva’s Arms by Cheryl Snell
Small Biz Survival by Becky McCray
Small Business Trends by Anita Campbell
Small Failures: Sustainability for the Rest of Us by Jess Sand
So Close by Tertia
Solomother by Christina Zola
Spare Change by Nedra Kline Weinreich
Spirit in Gear by Debbie Call
Spirit Women by Carolyn D. Townes
Subterranean Homepage News by Sheila Lennon
::Surroundings:: by Linda Merrill
Susan Mernit’s Blog by Susan Mernit
Sweet|Salty by Kate Inglis
swissmiss by Tina Roth Eisenberg
Talk It Up by Heidi Miller
Talking Coaching by Krishna De
TechForward by Lena West
Tech Kitten by Trisha Miller
TechMamas by Beth Blecherman
Teen Health 411 by Dr. Nancy Brown
That’s What She Said by Julie Elgar
The Artsy Asylum by Susan Reynolds
The Blog Angel by Claire Raikes
The Brand Dame by Lyn Chamberlin
The Budgeting Babe by Nicole Mladic
the Constant Observer by Tish Grier
The Copywriting Maven by Roberta Rosenberg
The Curious Shopper by Sara Cantor
The Diet Dish by Tara Gidus
The Engaging Brand by Anna Farmery
The Entrepreneurial MD by Philippa Kennealy
The Family Fork by Andrea Giancolli
The Fitness Fixer by Dr. Jolie Bookspan
The Floozy Blog by Kate Coote
The Global Small Business Blog by Laurel Delaney
The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing by Sharon Lippincott
The Kiss Business Tooby Karin H.
The Krafty Librarian by Michelle A. Kraft
The Kristasphere by Krista Summit
The Lawyer Coach Blog by Allison Wolf
The Marketing Mix Blog by Ilse Benun
The New Charm School by Jennifer Warwick
The Parody by Sasha Manuel
The Podcast Sisters by Krishna De, Anna Farmery and Heather Gorringe
The Qualitative Research Blog by Reshma Anand
The Shifted Librarian by Jenny Levine
The What If…? Women by Randee, Lori, Anne, Lynn and Norka (Pink Collar Club)
Think Simple. Be Decisive. by Tina Su
Think Positive! by Kristen Harrell
this is rachelandrew.co.uk by Rachel Andrew
Tiny Starfish in a Great Big Sea by Carol Toscano
Toddler Planet by WhyMommy
unstruc chitchat about information by Daniela Barbosa
Veerle’s blog 2.0 by Veerle
Virtual Woman's Day by Heidi Richards, The WECAI Network™
Vivid by Erin Noteboom
VoIP by Association by Suzanne Bowen
Water Cooler Wisdom by Alexandra Levit
Watermark | A Poet's Notebook by Sharon Brogan
Wealth Strategy Secrets by Nicola Cairncross
WE Magazine for Women by Heidi Richards & Co. The Women's eCommerce Association
We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. by Jenny Meade
What A Concept! by Sherry Heyl
What’s Next Blog by B L Ochman
White Trash Mom by Michelle Lamar
Wiggly Wigglers by Heather Gorringe
Women Presidents' Organization Chicago by Laurel Delaney
WomensDISH by Diane K. Danielson and Friends
Women's Media Summit by Heidi Richards, et al
Wonder Branding by Michele Miller
Woolgathering by Elizabeth Perry
Worker Bees Blog by Elisa Camahort
Working with Wisdom by Tricia Molloy
Write Ideas Marketing by Andrea Morris
You Already Know This Stuff by Jodee Bock
Ypulse by Anastasia Goodstein
Zenslaw by Karen Turner

Special thanks to Kami Huyse and Roberta Rosenberg for getting this all started.

New to me local communications blog

Information Squid, Better communication through technology

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

The Washington Post discovers information sharing

National Dragnet Is a Click Away

Those network efforts will begin expanding further this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to automatically examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time.

Government Technology had this story two years ago. Considering that the Pentagon was attacked on 9/11, that the Brentwood Post Office was the one the places affected by the anthrax attacks, that the solving the Beltway Sniper case required unprecedented multi-jurisdictional coordination, you would think that the local editors would take more than academic interest in information sharing.

Well, at least they are beginning to write about it. Maybe in a few years they will discover the importance of Computer Aided Dispatch systems capable of exchanging informaiton.

White House email follies

The White House email controversy: hearings spotlight disturbing IT practices

Some of that technical detail, though, confirmed my worst fears: IT operations at the White House are terrible. The archiving system currently in use is a bad joke. In a big PR problem for IBM Lotus, Congress is also badly miscategorizing Lotus Notes as an obsolete technology, providing a misleading justification for an unfounded migration during a time of war. The cost to manage data recovery is being misrepresented by at least an order of magnitude. And Congress behaves like an old married couple, constantly bickering. That last, at least, is no surprise to anyone.

Like Gilligan's ill-fated three hour tour, this three hour hearing ended badly, with no real resolution. A good hour of the hearing was wasted on a debate between the members about whether an "Interrogatory" of one Steven McDevitt was acceptable to the members.

McDevitt, it turns out, is one of us. He was the IT guy in the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer who was responsible for setting up the new archiving system -- and he was pissed. Apparently, all of his best practices recommendations were ignored.

If the White House PR plan is to stone wall this and hope everyone loses interest, then they are going about it the right way. But I don't think this will work. I think that we are going to be hearing much more about this.

Via Pensieri di un lunatico minore.

Great moments in content management; US Air Force Edition

Air Force Emails Sensitive Information to Tourism Site

"The US Air Force has been sending sensitive information, including flight plans for Air Force One, to a website promoting the town of Mildenhall in Suffolk.

Do you suppose it is something in the water?

Human astroturf

Comcast Accused of Falsely Taking Hearing Seats

The organizer of a federal hearing Monday at Harvard Law School on Comcast's treatment of subscriber Internet traffic said yesterday that "seat-warmers" hired by the company prevented other people from attending.

Comcast acknowledged that it hired an unspecified number of people to fill seats, but said those people gave up their spots when Comcast employees arrived to take their places.

Catherine Bracy, administrative manager of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, disputed that assertion, saying most of the three dozen seat-warmers who arrived hours before the Federal Communications Commission hearing remained during the event's opening hours, as many other people were turned away.

Whatever the benefits of preventing critics from filling the FCC hearing has been more than lost by the use of human astroturf. Real public relations communicates your message in such a way that your company has actual public support.

The PR of WikiLeaks

Bank Julius Baer emerges from hibernation, issues official statement
This just landed in my inbox. Bank Julius Baer would like to clear up some “misconceptions” regarding the WikiLeaks debacle. Here’s their statement, with commentary to follow. — D. T.

ZURICH / NEW YORK, February 28, 2008 — Julius Baer wishes to address certain misconceptions relating to a recent court decision to take the Wikileaks.org website off line.

This decision was arrived at only after a month long effort on the part of Julius Baer and its advisors had failed to identify and engage the operators of Wikileaks in a dialogue regarding the unlawful posting of stolen and forged bank records. This matter has nothing whatsoever to do with censorship or The First Amendment. Instead, Julius Baer’s sole objective has always been limited to the removal of these private and legally protected documents from the website.

The way to handle this is to strip WikiLeaks of its whistle-blower hero image. Who would send a company memo to WikiLeaks? A heroic whistle-blower motivated by public good? Or a disgruntled Linda Tripp stabbing her employer in the back? Or an industrial sabateur secretly working for a rival company?

Living in freedom means acting in the open; otherwise we are just a pack of Stalinist secret denunciators.

The importance of an easy install

First impressions count most with open source; make it easy to install and the rest follows

Open source is very different. Users hear about the software, they research it, download it and then try it - nearly always unattended and nearly always solo. The key thing here is the first impression is much more about how easy it is to get the software and use it successfully the first time. Otherwise the user is free to go somewhere else.

This goes double for reporters who are reviewing software.

Overhauling Website–Traffic Measurement

Interactive Advertising Bureau Requests Audits of ComScore and Neilsen to "Get on the Same Page"

Content publishers and tracking agencies aren't always on the same page when it comes to Web metrics, which are key to a site's appeal to advertisers. In 2004, upstart MySpace was watching its user traffic rise fast. But executives were having a tough time luring new advertisers to the social network because it didn't show up in the lists of top websites compiled by Internet audience trackers ComScore and Nielsen Online, CNET News.com reports.

"We had a hard case telling people how big we were and how many unique visitors we had. They didn't believe us. We didn't show up on people's radars," said Jason Feffer, former vice president of operations at MySpace who is now president and chief executive at opinion–forums site SodaHead.com. "It was frustrating that advertisers wanting to advertise to that demographic would go to Friendster when we were 10 times bigger than them," he told CNET writer Elinor Mills.

That changed fairly quickly for MySpace. But the problem persists for many other websites competing for advertising dollars in an environment where the difference between being ranked fourth or fifth in a category can directly impact the bottom line. Being undercounted by the audience measurement firms costs publishers advertising deals and threatens their ad–based businesses.

The entire new business model is dependent on getting this right.

Potomac area technology culture

On this week’s edition of District of Corruption Geoff and Aaron discussed AOL’s closing it’s Virginia HQ and Sprint moving to Kansas City. They thought these were not good signs for the local tech scene and indeed it is very bad news.

However, in my view the Potomac area’s role in tech has never lied with the business side of technology and never will. Too often we forget that is was the Dept. of Census that funded the development of the first Univac computer. The miniaturization necessary for all current electronics came out of the space program and the Internet grew out of the Dept. of Defense Arpanet. Advanced technology is inherently buggy and there are very few customers who can cope with the problems of implementing early stage technology. The federal government is one of the very few that is willing to do so. The most advanced leaders in technology are not working for our largest companies, neither are they teaching at our universities, rather they hold obscure positions within the federal civil service, where they work on projects so advanced that it is difficult to explain them to the general public.

The Potomac area also leads in standards development and process improvement. Because of the colossal influence of the federal market, the Federal Enterprise Architecture Data Reference Model is the de facto industry standard.

The largest chapters of AIIM and the Software Process Improvement Network are located in our area. The work of these organizations shapes the entire tech industry. I have tried, with only limited success, to interest the local press in the unique role our area plays in technology.

Online visibility

Whenever I want to research a company, I begin with a search on their name. I continue to be surprised on the number of times I cannot find their corporate website from a search on their name. This is a serious problem, reporters, prospective customers, job applicants, and everyone else expects to find you on the Internet.

It is one thing not to be in the first page of returns on your industry. I hate to think how far back Presto Vivace is in a search on Public Relations or even Technology and Public Relations. But it should be possible to find your website on the first page on a search on your company’s name. This is so basic.

The quick fix on this is to use social tagging sites to raise your visibility. But that is just a quick & dirty fix to tide you over for a proper solution. I can’t advise on the details on web design, but I would advise encouraging employee blogging as a way to raise online visibility, as well as the other well known benefits of corporate blogging.

Catbert doesn’t get it

Need a New Situation? Check the Internet, WSJ February 12, 2008

Digital Dirt, Digital Attraction
Scanning the Web for information that might derail a job hunter’s candidacy is now routine procedure for recruiters at many firms says Cynthia Shapiro, author of “What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here.” Many recruiters even engage in the practice even before extending interview invitations.

“If what pops up is a ranting blog about the evils of corporate America or a picture of you topless in Cancun with a beer in your hand, you’re in trouble” she warns. “Your resumé will land in the trash, and you won’t even know what happened.”

I have no doubt this is true. It is just one of the many ways search is being misused.

Whatever happened to judging a candidate on job related criteria?

The individual who rants about the evils of corporate America under their own name is not the one you need to worry about. That is not the individual who is going to anonymously forward internal company memo’s to websites. The anonymice who leak information do not have the courage to speak under their own names.

More over, how do you know that the person who rants on the Internet and your job applicant are the same person? Is it Alice Marshall, Alice Marshall, Alice Marshall, or a different Alice Marshall all together?

As for the topless lady in Cancun, well, all I can say is God forbid you hire Vanessa Williams.

How would you like it if prospective customers, to say nothing of investors and government regulators, made judgments about your company based on what they saw on the Internet? What goes around comes around. Don’t be part of creating a culture you don’t want to live in.

The Internet which can be such a force for freedom is in danger of being perverted into an instrument of conformity and intimidation. It does not have to be that way, all we need to do is learn to concentrate on the issue at hand.

Edit -
Perfect example of a heavy handed employer.

Great moments in records management

Hired through WorkforceLogic USA, he claims to have come up with the idea and presented it on an internal Google Groups e-mail discussion group.

In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Atlanta's Northern District Court of Georgia, a former Google (NSDQ: GOOG) contract worker claims that Google stole his idea for Google Sky.

Google Sky is a feature that was added to the Google Earth application last August that lets users navigate through stars and galaxies.

Plaintiff Jonathan Cobb claims that starting in 2006, as a contractor hired through WorkforceLogic USA, he convened an internal Google Groups e-mail discussion group wherein he "presented, advanced, and refined the Google Sky concept and idea."

Obviously I have no opinion on the merits of the case; it depends on the terms of his contract. Clearly we will see more of this sort of litigation until the legal status of contract workers is better defined. I would just note the crucial role email will clearly play in this case.

Looking towards the 2010 Census

Over-Budget Contract Could Stall 2010 Census

A $600 million program to buy handheld devices and create an automated network to collect data for the 2010 Census faces major cost overruns and could cause delays in preparing for the nationwide head count.

Mitre's independent evaluation warns that numerators may need paper

Oh dear.

A bad sign. A very bad sign.

Media Jobs Sink as Marketing Services Jobs Rise

Content Is Not King

President's day

How PR uses Slashdot

After my latest survey on where Washington’s favorite sources for tech news, I began to spend more time on Slashdot. After a few of my submissions made it on to the front page, I acquired sufficient positive Karma to gain access to the firehose. The firehose is Slashdot’s term for the queue of stories readers have submitted for consideration for the front page. Readers with Slashdot journals can automatically submit their entries for the front page if they so choose.

The firehouse has a color bar to indicate how popular a story is. Blue is neutral, which can change to green, yellow, orange, and ultimately red. Stories with a red rating are usually placed on the front page. When the blue changes to purple, that is a indication that Slashdot users are not interested in the story.

Watching the firehose offers great insight into the editorial process. Stories you think will catch on will frequently fall flat. Others which seem so-so will catch fire. It takes a while to get a feel for the community.

Then there are times when a story seems to be catching fire, soon after submission the color change to yellow, than orange, and then it starts to cool off, meaning Slashdot users are rating the story down. Why? The most obvious explanation is that readers of the firehose consider the story to be overrated and not suitable. But in at least some cases it appears that negative stories that are hot are suddenly rated down. Is that because readers spontaneously decided the stories were “not the best,” or were corporate flacks down rating the story as a form of damage control?

Of course, who could afford to continuously monitor the firehose? So far as I know, there is no way to subscribe to it.

Slashdot is a valuable public square, and it is inevitable to flacks will be attracted ot it. Somehow Slashdot’s proprietors will have to find ways to prevent us from taking over.

New to me compliance blog

HIPAA Blog

Text analytics in the legal space

IBM on Text Technologies for the Legal Sector

My last blog article relayed key points about e-discovery and potential knowledge-discovery (KDD) applications in the legal sector that were reinforced by my participation in the recent LegalTech conference. A LegalTech exhibitor I spoke to mentioned his company's discussions with IBM, so I dropped IBM text-technologies researcher Aaron Brown a note to learn his company's side of the story.

Aaron is program director, Content Discovery and Search, IBM Information Management Software. His thoughts on legal-sector KDD were very much in line with mine.

The next decade will produce and explosion of prosecutions and civil litigation, which will provide the incentive for major advances in legal technology.

For Valentines Day, Roses from the South

Social media and analyst relations

Jeremiah Owyang, Sr Analyst at Forrester Research

I can’t imagine ever advising a client to deal with an advertising, PR, or interactive team that doesn’t get social media. Of course, I’m biased as I’m sitting right smack in the middle of the social media space. But with the power shifting to the participants, agencies must demonstrate they can participate before they can ever help clients with it.

Sadly, most agencies still don’t get the new space, or if they do, they lightly gloss it over by saying “Oh yeah, we’ve a blog” and when I look, it’s a bunch of self-serving posts written by a variety of different folks with little strategy and few comments.

Online communications is an indispensable part of tech PR, make sure you hire someone who knows what they are doing.

Email, every case seems to come down to email

The murky world of pay TV pirates

If few remarked on Adams’s departure in May 2002 during the hullabaloo, no one noticed a minor incident involving his vehicle. According to NDS, someone broke into the family car that month and stole the hard drive from his laptop. The hard drive contained some 26,000 pages of confidential NDS documents, including hundreds of pages of internal NDS emails detailing the activities of its covert operations group.

In a global hunt to retrieve the documents, NDS lawyers appeared in a Vancouver court last September, where they claimed the hard drive had been obtained by Plamen Donev, a Bulgarian hacker who had been on the NDS payroll. He had passed copies of the documents to Canadian satellite pirates on two CDs.

The Vancouver hearing was just an outlying skirmish related to a much larger case due to go to trial in April in the California District Court, where EchoStar (and its smartcard provider, NagraStar Corp) is claiming $US1 billion damages against NDS for industrial espionage in a trial.

The EchoStar lawsuit quotes extensively from an explosive series of NDS emails that NDS says came from the missing hard drive. EchoStar says it obtained the emails from a range of sources.

The issue of source seems beside the point. The bottom line is that on NDS’s own account, the innermost secrets of its undercover ops are on CDs being hawked around the world in a boxed set.

Blogs: honey bees or hornets?

Social Media Marketing for Government Contractors
DATE: Friday, February 22, 2008

Blogs can establish your company as a thought leader, they can reinforce your relationship with customers and introduce you to prospects. They can pollinate your business, but they can also sting.

Now, just in time for FOSE, Presto Vivace, Inc. offers an audio conference which will teach you how to increase search engine visibility in a positive way, generate buzz, and drive traffic to your website and show booth.

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

CUOMO ANNOUNCES INDUSTRY-WIDE INVESTIGATION INTO HEALTH INSURERS’ FRAUDULENT REIMBURSEMENT SCHEME
~

Database Company Ingenix – Used by Dozens of Insurers – at Center of Scheme
~
Cuomo Notifies Ingenix and its Parent, UnitedHealth Group, of Intent to File Suit; Subpoenas 16 Other Companies

NEW YORK, NY (February 13, 2008) – Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that he is conducting an industry-wide investigation into a scheme by health insurers to defraud consumers by manipulating reimbursement rates. At the center of the scheme is Ingenix, Inc., the nation’s largest provider of healthcare billing information, which serves as a conduit for rigged data to the largest insurers in the country.

Cuomo also announced that he has issued 16 subpoenas to the nation’s largest health insurance companies including Aetna (NYSE: AET), CIGNA (NYSE: CI), and Empire BlueCross BlueShield (NYSE: WLP), and that he intends to file suit against Ingenix, Inc, its parent UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), and three additional subsidiaries.

The insurance industry, finance, real estate, White House email, torture tapes, the list goes on. E-discovery, evidence recovery, records management, and content management, are all going to enjoy boom development. The misconduct of the last eight years has brought a great deal of misery and stands to bring even more, but for those charged with investigating it, there will be fortunes to be made.

New to me local career blog

40plusdc blog, 40Plus of Greater Washington offers a proven system of hands-on training, peer support, and networking for professionals in job and career transition.

Added to Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

Using social media for networking

Notes from the presentation to the Greater Baltimore Technology Council

Alice Marshall, founder and owner of Presto Vivace, Inc., launch Presto Vivace Blog in February of 2004

Blogs and social media are an economical and time efficient way to network.

I started the blog to record local tech events, which I could send out to the event's participants. It was a way to build goodwill and position my agency.

Technorati search led to Media Culpa's list of top PR blogs. Soon received a email from Trevor Cook of Corporate Engagement to participate in an online conference. This led to Global PR Blog Week 1.0 and spread my reputation all over the world.

Linking is the currency of blogs. Use linking to reinforce existing relationship and establish new ones. Link to the reporters who cover your industry, to your fellow bloggers, to partners and competitors, and anything that would interest your readers.

After reading my article on spam, Owen Ambur, then chair of the Federal XML Work Group, asked me to participate in their proceedings. I began to blog the meetings and Owen was kind enough to link back to my notes from the official website. This is visibility that cannot be bought for any price and a perfect example of how blogs can be used to build goodwill.

Originally I used my sidebar to list local tech organizations, now I have moved that list to my corporate website. The Greater Baltimore Technology Council would be an obvious addition to your corporate blog's sidebar.

I wrote a post linking to The Spy Who Billed Me. She subsequently offered to send me a review copy of her book Outsourced (highly recommended). She also subsequently referred a few prospective clients to me. This is an example of how blogs create relationships that would otherwise never exist.

Blogs and social media are an economical and time efficient way to build relationships. A blog works for you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, all over the world, limited only by language.

A cautionary note - blogs and all social media are dependent upon net neutrality. This is something we can no longer take for granted and a subject for further discussion.

Edit - Jared Goralnick has posted all the presentations.

Note - On February 22, Presto Vivace will be giving and audio conference on Social Media for Government Contractors.

New to me IT governance blog

Information Governance Engagement Area: The Information Governance Engagement Area has been established with the goal of aggregating key compliance, electronic discovery, and storage news for further review, study, and consideration by legal and corporate professionals. Welcome to the Information Governance Engagement Area.

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

Durbin Calls for Inspector General Investigation of Torture Memos

But Durbin says the emphasis should be on those who authorized the activity. He explains: "Under U.S. law, command responsibility is a well-established theory of liability that covers those who authorize violations of law."

And accordingly, Durbin writes that he will ask the Justice Department’s Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility "to investigate the conduct of Justice Department officials who advised the CIA that waterboarding is lawful."

Entire firms will be built on investigating the actions of the last eight years. We could be treated to the spectacle of government contractors investigating each other, or at least supplying the consulting and litigation support services to do so.

I look foward to new technologies in evidence recovery, search, and content management.

The next decade will be a great time for government IT reporters, as they will have the best insight and ability to explain all this to the general public.

Presto Vivace! Live in Concert! Feb. 12

Greater Baltimore Technology Council

The ROI of Social Media

February 12, 2008
7:30 a.m. - 8:15 a.m. Networking & Continental Breakfast
8:15 a.m. -9:30 a.m. Panel Discussion
BWI Airport Marriott
1743 Nursery Road
Linthicum Hts, MD 21090

Register Today!*
(This event is FREE for GBTC members, $30 for non-members)

You have a Facebook and MySpace account, over 100 connections in LinkedIn and even started a Blog…now what? You’ve joined the Social Media frenzy, but have no idea how to leverage the time spent into dollars earned. How do you justify the resources committed to Social Media? And in the end how do you measure its success?

Join us on February 12th to hear our five panelists answer these questions and more. In a new Meet the Members format, each panelist will present their Best Practices when it comes to Social Media. Be on hand to listen, learn and ask questions. This is an event you can’t afford to miss!

Panelists:

Greg Cangialosi, President, Blue Sky Factory

Jared Goralnick, President, SET Consulting

Alice Marshall, Owner, Presto Vivace

Brian Ocheltree, CEO, PartnerPoint

Catherine Pancake, Director of Account Services,Web Ad.vantage

Financial blogging

source



Bonddad Blog

Calculated Risk

The Housing Bubble

Angry Bear

Security Companies Agree To Testing Standards

IBM, Microsoft, McAfee, Symantec, Trend Micro, and Panda Security are among those in Spain this week hammering out details of the anti-malware group.

Despite their business differences, computer security companies are coming together to standardize testing for anti-malware products and services.

In Bilbao, Spain, on Monday, more than 40 security researchers and anti-malware testers convened to formalize the charter of a new Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization.

Ultimately this is not a technical problem, it is a legal problem. We will have to do a better job of sending these crooks to jail.

New to me local tech blawgs

From Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice: Unfair Business Practices

This blog focuses on unfair business and trade practices such as business conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty, misappropriation of proprietary information, fraud, tortious interference with contracts and other unfair business practices that are not neatly defined. Since we are located in Tysons Corner, Virginia, many of the cases discussed will come from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia courts. We hope the reader finds this blog instructive.

Commlaw - Mass Media, Following the Broadcasting Industry

Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.

ITAA, GEIA to merge

Gautham Nagesh, Government Executive

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) and the Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) announced yesterday that their merger had been approved by both organizations’ boards of directors. The merger is expected to close on April 1.

April fools :)

Why journalism matters, Jerry Bledsoe

Via Ed Cone, Jerry Bledsoe's chilling account of what it is like to live under a death threat, I was particularly struck by the part about the database:

Barrett and Gardner were not big on small talk. They got right down to business. The threat against me had arisen during the course of an investigation, I was told.

"A drug case?" I asked.

It was.

"Well, I probably can tell you who's involved," I said. I gave them names of three people who have been known as long-time drug bosses in Greensboro.

They looked at each other.

"How do you know that?" Gardner asked. "Do you talk to officers, or what?"

I said that I did talk to officers among other things. As it turned out I was right on one of the three people I'd named, but I wouldn't know that for a while.

I was offered no details about the investigation. Nobody said that somebody wanted me dead. That was understood.

Instead, I was told what to look for. If they came, the killers likely would be young black males. I should be watchful for cars with out-of-state tags, particularly from New York.

"I assume it will be a home invasion or a drive-by," I said, and they agreed.

I asked if Rhinoceros Times Editor John Hammer or former Police Chief David Wray were considered to be in danger. Not that Barrett and Gardner were aware of, I was told.

"Is there any connection to Greensboro police officers?" I asked. None that they knew about was the answer.

They had flagged my name in databases so that no law enforcement officers could access information such as my home address, vehicles that were registered in my name or my driver's license bearing my age, height and weight, along with my photo. All of that would be helpful to killers.

I asked Barrett and Gardner if they knew whether anybody already had retrieved information about me, particularly anybody from the Greensboro Police Department. They would check, Barrett said, and let me know.

Federal Acquisition Summit

March 19 - 21 2008
Understanding the latest trends in performance based acquisition.

DC Design Talks 2008

February 29, 2008

Just a great one-day web design conference in DC.

DC Tech Events

DC Tech Events has been redesigned, very cool.

The case for social media for Government Contractors

This is a response to Andrew Wright’s Tweet:

@GeoffLiving the gov't contractors I know get so bogged down in RFPs, Soup vehicles, GSA schedules. Until someone demonstrates SM value.....

Government contracting, even more the most sales, is all about relationships. Social media, blogs, microblogging, etc., is an economical way to reinforce existing relationships and establish new ones.

Moreover, as Debbie Weil put it during our appearance on Federal News Radio, it’s all about search. Blogs, even obscure ones, are search engine friendly. Blogging, and linking to partners in your industry, will help build organic search results that are friendly to your company.

Presto Vivace, Inc. will be giving an audio conference on Social Media for Government Contractors on February 22. We look forward to speaking to this blog’s readers.

Technology and activisim

For Peru's Indians, Lawsuit Against Big Oil Reflects a New Era

Environmental groups are going beyond word of mouth and lawsuits to assist indigenous groups.

One day last fall, Guevara Sandi Chimboras was bouncing a pickup truck along a remote oil road near the Achuar community of Jose Olaya. Carrying a digital camera, notepad and a Global Positioning System transceiver donated by the civic group Shinai, Sandi walked through a grassy field to a pool of stagnant water. With a stick, he dug up a clump of glistening, pungent mud, and sniffed.

"The companies say these sites are clean," he said. "They won't believe us without documented photos. With words, they don't believe us."

There are no mass media in the rain forest. But Shinai has translated a U.S.-made documentary about the Achuar's problems into Machiguenga, the language spoken by Indians in southeastern Peru, where a U.S.-backed natural gas project is underway. The group uses DVD players powered by solar panels and generators to show the film to Indians considering agreements with oil companies.

Meanwhile, Google Earth is proving to be an omniscient eye. Peter Kostishack, a Colorado-based rights activist, uses the application to record coordinates and satellite images of rain forest erosion and post them on his blog. With help from the U.S.-based Amazon Conservation Team, Indians in Brazil's Amazon Basin have used Google Earth imagery to spot river discoloration caused by illegal mining operations.

"Many times a company claims natives don't have the technical knowledge to understand that it is doing the best it can, when in fact it may be doing as little as possible," said Bill Powers, chief engineer of E-Tech International, a nonprofit engineering firm based in California that provides Indians with technical expertise.

Technology has drastically lowered the barriers of entry. The implications of this are still being realized.

Unsolicted commercial email blues

The End of Spam Research

One leader in the field declares that the basic parameters of spam fighting are all set and real research is over.

Anti-spam research isn't really all that old, as security research fields go, but it may have hit the end of the line. A thread in the mailing list of the Internet Engineering Task Force's Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) argues that all the basic questions have been answered.

Phillip Hallam-Baker, CTO of VeriSign, argues that, "It is now accepted that there are two approaches to stopping spam, filtering out the bad stuff, making it easier to identify the good stuff."

There is a third way

Nothing in this writer’s research has explained why VISA, Mastercard, et al, tolerate spammers. Without credit cards spamming would not be possible. So why do these companies traffic with such operators? We need to make this a customer relations issue.

The importance of flacking with pride

Rupert Murdoch's newspaper caught spamming social media

The News Corp.-owned Times of London has been paying a search-engine optimizer to do the dirty work of shilling Times Online stories to social media sites like Mahalo, StumbleUpon, and MetaFilter. We can't believe it either -- that The Times is actually paying an outside firm to submit stories. My boss makes me do it the hard way.

Everybody does this, tag their own material, submit to Slashdot, Digg their clients; but most of us have enough pride to do it openly. Flacking is honorable work, never apologize for it.

Why journalism matters, Parwiz Kambakhsh

RAWA

Imprisonment of Parwiz Kambakhsh is not only for his enlightening articles in a local newspaper, Jahan-e-Now (The New World), but also because of his brother Yaqub Ibrahimi, who is a well-known, brave and realistic reporter and exposed many criminal faces from Jehadi mafia in Northern Afghanistan to the world public.

ISO and OOXML

Microsoft: IBM masterminded OOXML failure

Microsoft executives have accused IBM of single-handedly leading an effort to block the software giant from having its Office Open XML standard approved by the International Organization for Standardization.

After initially being rejected by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in September 2007, Microsoft has a second chance for its next-generation document format to become an international standard in February at a ballot resolution meeting in Geneva.

While criticism of Microsoft's efforts to promote the standard have come from a variety of quarters, Microsoft senior director of XML technology, Jean Paoli, accused IBM of masterminding the attack.

"Let's be very clear," Paoli said. "It has been fostered by a single company — IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."

Would business as usual be a good or bad thing?