Q: What is Today?
A: The square root of 9 – today’s date! And to think, I almost forgot!! HAPPY SQUARE ROOT DAY! http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=square-root-day-3309-is-upon-us-2009-03-03
Tech
Writing, scanning and bananas
As a person who does a lot of writing for work, I have fantasies that the folks who read my work read every single word, hanging on each as if it were more important than the last. But the fact is that most people will miss the turn of a phrase or the pun-intended pun,Read… Read more »
Sometimes it’s not the Technology — Focusing the Human Side
Yesterday’s Washington Post had an article headlined “Web-Savvy Obama Team Hits Unexpected Bumps — Issues of Technology, Security and Privacy Slow the New Administration’s Effort to Foster Instant Communication” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/01/AR2009030101745_pf.html). While highlighting all of the information technology innovations the new “web-savvy Obama Team” has begun to employ, such as a Presidential blog and YouTube channel,Read… Read more »
Gov 5000 – Everything Old is New Again
For my first blog post on this site looking at new concepts of good governance within democracies, I figured I’d start with some old ones first. For Plato, an ideal city could be no larger than about 5000 people — the number that could be addressed by a single orator. For Aristotle, even this numberRead… Read more »
Take-Aways from Transparency Camp 09
Some random thoughts about Transparency Camp 09. Here are my big take-aways from the conference. Excitement: There’s a tremendous amount of enthusiasm among enlightened advocates of government transparency, fueled by the election of Obama and the mainstreaming of Web 2.0 tools like blogging. There’s a real can-do spirit, which is in marked contrast to continuingRead… Read more »
Transparency Camp thoughts: an ode to basic research
Several people have asked me what I took away from Transparency Camp, an “unconference” held this past weekend here in DC (read the Twitter stream to get an idea what it was like). I did get a few concrete facts out of it, but fundamentally to me, it was all about basic research, not applied.Read… Read more »
Quick and Dirty RSS
Note: This post is of my own personal opinion and is not endorsed or supported by any local, state, or federal government agency. I’ve given several presentations on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and shown people just the basics about how to create a simple feed. Nothing fancy. However, during a conversation I was having withRead… Read more »
Are your automatically-generated emails messing up your 2.0 mojo?
This weekend, when I was in dire need of a good scallops recipe, I went onto FoodNetwork.com to see what looked good. Over the past year, they’ve become my website of choice for recipes because their site is so easy to use, and their user comments section helps me decide whether or not to tryRead… Read more »
What is Transparency? More Than Publication – the Role of Citizen Exchange
Fair to say that Title XV of the Economic Recovery Act requiring transparency has unleashed a tidal wave of pent up energy and justified momentum towards a more open government. The “strings attached” funding provisions ensure that there will be a solid attempt at top down enforcement of transparency for state and local jurisdictions. ButRead… Read more »
TransparencyCamp: 97 Tweets from 100 Pages of History
I couldn’t make it to TransparencyCamp, but it sounded fabulous. I did wade through 100 pages of Twitter Search history (as much as it keeps). Here’s what I came up with, for what it’s worth. Unlike my other summaries, while this is in chronological order, more or less, the fact that there were a lotRead… Read more »