Washington, DC Sustainability / Energy Calendar

Global Climate Change Coalition maintains a Washington, DC Sustainability / Energy Calendar; it is a Whitaker Associates project.

What would you do if you witnessed a crime?

Confidential Twitter documents

If someone gets hold of private documents and sends them to you, and you’re an online publisher, what do you do?

Say you’re not interested and tell them to phk off? Publish and be damned, if not possibly sued, whatever the content? Publish bits and pieces according to your lights and sensitivities?

TechCrunch seems to have chosen the latter course.

If someone shows you stolen material the proper thing to do is return the stolen items, and report the incident to the police. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this amongst journalists, but it is really very simple. A citizen should report criminal activity to the police.

If the stolen items are themselves evidence of criminal conduct, then the case is different. But if the material is just the information connected to a normal business, then its theft is a criminal matter.

I will be writing more about this when I have a chance, but once again the news business seems to be losing their moral compass and taking the rest of us with them.

Small Business Investment Company program

Recovery Act boosts venture capital

Small businesses having difficulty securing private equity or venture capital may find it easier to get funding as a result of changes made through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The changes, which were implemented Friday, will affect the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Investment Company program.

Excellent news.

Dirty tricks under color of journalism

Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

It is all there, breaking and entry, illegal surveillance, more like secret police than a news organization. So what do you do when your client is on the receiving end of this sort of pressure.

New to me local public affairs blog

BLACK VECTOR – Ideas For A New Direction For Public Affairs

In honor of the Glorious Fourth

The CIA recruting investment bankers

Spy low, sell high

EHR blogging

Health Care Informatics has assembled a group of blogs.

Alice Marshall's email

If you are trying to reach me, be sure to address it to:

marshall AT prestovivace.biz

or

prestovivace AT prestovivace.biz

New to me local writers blogs

Editorial Inspirations; A place to explore grammar quirks as well as discuss the world of publishing.


Narrative Nonfiction; Telling Stories That Are True

GreenListDC Blog, Information and commentary about green living, green events and green issues in the Washington, DC area.


Debbi Mack: My Life on the Mid-List, a few reflections on the writing life

Let's not listen

Jeff Porro: Tough Talk in Hard Times

Word Kitchen, where copy cooks

Rebellion, at the intersection of design and activism

Kinetics, From lab to park bench

One Tomato at a Time

Nominate your customer

Government Computer News Awards Call for Nominations

The GCN Awards recognize extraordinary work by governmental agency IT teams whose accomplishments or innovative use of technology over the past 12 months have made significant contributions to the performance of their agencies or the services they provide.

Nomination Deadline is June 29, 2009

Congratulations David Silverberg!

ASBPE names finalists for magazine of the year

The association also said HSToday Editor David Silverberg will be honored with ASBPE’s first Journalism That Matters Award at the event.

Does the FTC have double standards for bloggers and big shot pundits?

FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments

Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all.

The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

Bill Kristol was on retainer with Enron and never disclosed it. George Will accepted a large honoranium right before he wrote a glowing review of Conrad Black's biography of FDR. So why would a blogger with a free laptop be different?

Why journalism matters: David Rohde

Times Reporter Escapes Taliban After 7 Months

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, escaped Friday night and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Welcome home David Rohde. I love happy endings.

New to me local tech blogs

Something Important To Say :-)

enterprise 2.0 the bdg way

The Caffeinated Blog, Social Media & Content Marketing... Straight Up

WolfTrust.com - Online Marketing Blog

ClioWeb, Jeremy Boggs blog.

Regina Hopper

Women Grow Business

Coming next week, Alice Marshall, live, in concert!

I will be presenting at next week's Social Media for DoD and Government conference:

Workshop B: Make Your Friends Online Before You Need Them

New media offers more opportunities than ever to place stories. Your public is probably constantly talking about your office or service on email discussion lists, blogs, wikis, social tagging sites and the like. On the other hand, the online world can be a brutal place, and controversies can bubble up from nowhere. Rumor control can often depend on establishing credibility before a controversy erupts. Learn how your employees and partners can be your best ambassadors in these situations, how to develop guidelines, and how to turn blogging pitfalls or challenges to your advantage.

I am very nervous, the other speakers are top in their fields.

e-Discovery miscellany

Gabe says that you should probably do what the judge orders.

DiscoverReady first to announce recession over, in North Carolina

Social Media: Electronic Discovery’s New New Thing?

Legal staffing firm ads e-Discovery to its services.

Untimely objections doom motions to compel

Analysis of Zubulake v. UBS Warburg.

The crushing burden of e-Discovery; it is an IT responsibility.

Presentation to the Arkansas Bar Association.

Why you need a lawyer who will tell you unpleasant truths.

E-Discovery is Low Tech

A lot of the work we do is low tech in nature. It's funny because the college graduates we hire have been raised in a Web 2.0 world and are shocked to find their time copying & counting files, tying out exceptions, recovering passwords, converting files from one format to another, etc. What's worse is that we'll hire experienced technologists who end up doing similar low grade work. The lucky ones get to run SQL queries. Whoopee! That's considered advanced.

Electronic Evidence and Discovery; What Every Lawyer Should Know Now

Analytics and e-Discovery

ITLA white paper on best practices for legal holds

Recovering data from a corrupt hard drive

Wireless access in Washington, DC

DC Public Schools offer access to their wireless systems.


This weekend has been pleasantly spent sitting at a picnic table, under the shade, doing client work. All this is possible because the DC government keeps their wireless system open. It is a very nice amenity.

Unfortunately, the DC Public School system blocks access to all sites defined as social networks. This includes Twitter and most blogs, but not Slashdot or LinkedIn. Still, I was able to get a great deal of work done while enjoying the spectacular weather we are having.

Kazuo Kawasaki's Peace Keeping Design Project

Last night I went to see Kazuo Kawasaki's lecture on his Peace Keeping Design Project, which was put on the the Japan Information and Culture Center (part of the Embassy of Japan).

Kawasaki has designed some very clever vaccination packets that make it impossible to reuse the needle. He is also working on some powdered vaccinations that would be inhaled, thus making needles unnecessary. It was a fascinating presentation.

The future of the Internet

I wonder if the Web 2.0 entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists who back them understand how much their business model is dependent upon a neutral web and how easily it could slip away from us.