Ross Notes, a journal of technology, media, and culture in and around DC
Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
New to me local tech blog
sixtwothree, personal website of Jason Garber — web developer, musician, photographer, and ne'er-do-well operating out of the Washington, DC metro area.
Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.
Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Regulatory Compliance and data security
Study: Frequency of Data Loss Connected To Compliance Efforts
There have calls for changes to Sarbanes-Oxley. This is evidence that it is working.
As the credit implosion continues there will be calls for more regulation. The best thing investor relations pros can do in this situation is impress upon management the necessity of telling the truth, even if that means bankruptcy. Now is the time for accountants, lawyers, and PR pros to work together to salvage what they can.
For companies that continue to look for the business and financial value of regulatory compliance initiatives, listen up. There is a direct correlation between a company's compliance record and its ability to protect sensitive data, according to a new report.
Companies that perform well in compliance audits also excel at protecting their data, according to the study, released today by the IT Policy Compliance Group, a Cleveland-based research firm. By contrast, companies that performed poorly on regulatory audits tend to have the worst data protection records.
There have calls for changes to Sarbanes-Oxley. This is evidence that it is working.
As the credit implosion continues there will be calls for more regulation. The best thing investor relations pros can do in this situation is impress upon management the necessity of telling the truth, even if that means bankruptcy. Now is the time for accountants, lawyers, and PR pros to work together to salvage what they can.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Judge upholds Presidential Records Act
Government Declines to Appeal Ruling Opening Up Presidential Records
The records management systems developed to comply with federal requirements drive the rest of the industry.
This week, the Bush administration decided not to appeal a federal district court judge’s decision that invalidated a crucial section of Executive Order (EO) 13233, which broadened the rights of presidents and former-presidents to withhold federal records from the public for indefinite periods of time.
On October 1, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly gave historians and researchers a partial, but significant victory in a lawsuit questioning the legality of the Executive Order. The judge struck down the section of the EO that allows a former president to indefinitely delay the release of their records.
The records management systems developed to comply with federal requirements drive the rest of the industry.
Today! Live debate over Open Office XML
Office Open XML
Not to be confused with OpenOffice.org (an unrelated office suite) or "Open Office XML" (a colloquial synonym for OpenOffice.org XML).
Weigh In On the OOXML Issue During Live Debate
Not to be confused with OpenOffice.org (an unrelated office suite) or "Open Office XML" (a colloquial synonym for OpenOffice.org XML).
Office Open XML (commonly referred to as OOXML or OpenXML) is an XML-based file format specification for electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents.
Weigh In On the OOXML Issue During Live Debate
Linux.com's Robin 'Roblimo' Miller will moderate a live debate today, Wednesday, December 5 at 1pm US EST (GMT -5), between the GNOME Foundation's press officer Jeff Waugh and fair competition advocate Roy Schestowitz.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Do you have a policy on code reuse?
How Mainstream Can Code Scavenging Go?
How to Deal With Stolen Code?
Have a policy, communicate your policy in a clear, but low key way. Deal with violations in a low profile way.
How to Deal With Stolen Code?
Have a policy, communicate your policy in a clear, but low key way. Deal with violations in a low profile way.
Call for speakers, Flex developers
We want you! Speak at the 360Flex Europe
360Flex Europe (7 to 9 April 2008) is one of the coolest european event of 2008 dedicated to Flex.
With Tom and John we're moving forward trying to find speakers, in the Flex community.
We'd like to have as many community speakers as possible.
So if you are a Flex developers and you want to share your Flex development experiences this is your momentum.
Monday, December 03, 2007
It's a great time to be in e-Discovery!
Watchdog: White House Lost A Lot More Than 5 Million E-mails
The chief counsel for a private watchdog group which recently scored a legal victory over the Bush administration on its improper records archiving said that the number of e-mails missing from the White House archives was far greater than previously reported.
The credit crash and our times
Krugman
Many innocent players are going to get caught up in this. Banks which made stupid loans will panic and refuse to make good ones, or won't be in a position to. During the in the aftermath of the junk bond collapse in 1991 a business associate of mine had his line of credit cancelled. My friend was a VAR selling almost entirely to the federal government. His receivables were in the form of federal purchase orders, as safe as you can get short of currency. He could not bid on business without the ability to buy inventory on credit, so he had to turn away millions of dollars in business. There were many situations like this in 1991 and there will be even more in 2008.
What is truly sickening about this is that so many saw it coming and tried to raise the alarm. It does not speak well of our national discourse and political culture that we allowed it to happen.
Credit — lending between market players — is to the financial markets what motor oil is to car engines. The ability to raise cash on short notice, which is what people mean when they talk about “liquidity,” is an essential lubricant for the markets, and for the economy as a whole.
But liquidity has been drying up. Some credit markets have effectively closed up shop. Interest rates in other markets — like the London market, in which banks lend to each other — have risen even as interest rates on U.S. government debt, which is still considered safe, have plunged.
Many innocent players are going to get caught up in this. Banks which made stupid loans will panic and refuse to make good ones, or won't be in a position to. During the in the aftermath of the junk bond collapse in 1991 a business associate of mine had his line of credit cancelled. My friend was a VAR selling almost entirely to the federal government. His receivables were in the form of federal purchase orders, as safe as you can get short of currency. He could not bid on business without the ability to buy inventory on credit, so he had to turn away millions of dollars in business. There were many situations like this in 1991 and there will be even more in 2008.
What is truly sickening about this is that so many saw it coming and tried to raise the alarm. It does not speak well of our national discourse and political culture that we allowed it to happen.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Creating tutorials for how to use software
Review: Wink 2.0
Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.
Friday, November 30, 2007
All good press is good press
Geoff Livingston has a graphic that perfectly illustrates the public relations long tail, with the red part illustrating that which clients will pay for, and the longer yellow tail showing that which is valuable, but not billable. I don’t think that is quite how he would describe it; but currently, that is how clients view social media.
I asked a friend of mine which blogs he reads and he just looked at me as if I were a fool. My friend doesn’t read blogs unless someone sends him a link. He gets his information by doing searches on subjects which interest him. If you want to reach him, you need to be on that first page of results, which brings us back to blogs. One of the blogs my friend has stumbled across is John Boyer’s, which he likes very much. As of this posting, Boyer’s blog has all of four inbound posts. Clearly you do not have to have a highly linked blog to emerge at the top of search results, only relevant content.
Which brings us to the question of what is a credible blog. Clearly that is in the eye of the reader. A blog with many inbound links might be regarded as credible or not, depending upon the reader. A blog with few inbound links might be regarded as deservedly obscure or an undiscovered gem. Several months ago I received an inbound link from Agile CMMI blog, which has a grand total of ten inbound links. Even so, this blog clearly has a regular following as directly I received the link my hit count began to climb. No client would pay for a link from either of these blogs, but clearly such a link, provided the context was favorable, would be valuable for a client.
Those of us who understand social media have much work to do in explaining its role in increasing search engine visibility and brand equity.
I asked a friend of mine which blogs he reads and he just looked at me as if I were a fool. My friend doesn’t read blogs unless someone sends him a link. He gets his information by doing searches on subjects which interest him. If you want to reach him, you need to be on that first page of results, which brings us back to blogs. One of the blogs my friend has stumbled across is John Boyer’s, which he likes very much. As of this posting, Boyer’s blog has all of four inbound posts. Clearly you do not have to have a highly linked blog to emerge at the top of search results, only relevant content.
Which brings us to the question of what is a credible blog. Clearly that is in the eye of the reader. A blog with many inbound links might be regarded as credible or not, depending upon the reader. A blog with few inbound links might be regarded as deservedly obscure or an undiscovered gem. Several months ago I received an inbound link from Agile CMMI blog, which has a grand total of ten inbound links. Even so, this blog clearly has a regular following as directly I received the link my hit count began to climb. No client would pay for a link from either of these blogs, but clearly such a link, provided the context was favorable, would be valuable for a client.
Those of us who understand social media have much work to do in explaining its role in increasing search engine visibility and brand equity.
One Laptop Per Child vs Classmate
What OLPC Offers That Classmate Doesn't
The key difference to my way of thinking is that One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was created for the sake of children and to make technology accessible. Classmate was created merely to compete with OLPC, child welfare was a secondary consideration.
My concern is the lack of ergonomic design. Will the next generation be nearsighted with carpal tunnel syndrome?
First, the OLPC is great for classroom use, but that isn't all it offers by a mile. You already know about the amazing tech advances, like the innovative screen that you can use in sunlight. But there is more than that. Classmate actually misses the fundamental point of the OLPC, as far as I'm concerned, which is essentially that kids invariably grasp the tech before the parents and the teachers do, so why hold them back? OLPC is a way to educate kids who have inadequate school resources, in areas where there may not even be any adequate schools or teachers, maybe not any at all, let alone any that know anything about computers.
The key difference to my way of thinking is that One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) was created for the sake of children and to make technology accessible. Classmate was created merely to compete with OLPC, child welfare was a secondary consideration.
My concern is the lack of ergonomic design. Will the next generation be nearsighted with carpal tunnel syndrome?
Thursday, November 29, 2007
New to me local PR blog
The PR Guy: Straight to the Point, A Collection of Thoughts on B2B and B2G Public Relations, Marketing and Other Incredibly Exciting Stuff
Like your humble servant, he flacks government contractors. But don't tell him I used the word flack.
Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.
Like your humble servant, he flacks government contractors. But don't tell him I used the word flack.
Added to the Tech on the Potomac RSS reader.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)