Rainmaker 19 – Foam Ball

Have you ever looked at electrical conduit (pipe) inside the walls of a building? Do you know how electricians snake the wires through it? They can’t push it. The wires bend and kink. What they do is take a foam ball, the same size as the pipe, tie some fishing line to it, put aRead… Read more »

DHS CIO Spires put ‘on leave’, Enterprises running Java versions that are months out of date, analysis finds and more

By Ryan Kamauff Here are the top cyber news and stories of the day. DHS CIO Spires put ‘on leave’ – “FedScoop has learned that Department of Homeland Security’s Chief Information Officer Richard Spires has been put on immediate ‘on leave’ status with no further explanation as to why. Inquiries made to DHS officials aboutRead… Read more »

An MPA From My Apt: Short & Sour

I was finishing up my dinner and watching an episode of what may or may not have been South Park when I checked the clock on my cell phone. It read 6:30 on the dot; time for class to start. Slightly upset that my schedule did not allow me to finish a half hour episode,Read… Read more »

Open or closed – does anything online ever last?

It’s only now, a couple of weeks after the announcement, that I feel I can talk about the demise of Google Reader. Up til now, the whole thing has just been too upsetting. Reader is the site I turn to first in the day, before email or Twitter, and the one I check last asRead… Read more »

Customers Don’t Want Ads, They Want a Conversation…Just Not the Conversations You Want to Have

Fast Company just published another article discussing how customers are no longer satisfied just with good products and services or low prices – they want collaboration and conversation from brands. In another Fast Company article from January, they state that “brands, marketers believe, ought to start acting less like things and more like people, andRead… Read more »

Activities or Analytics?

“If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Like a mantra, it’s chanted over and over – but you must be measuring the right IT or you are just burning time. For an artist, which is more important – the tack hammer or the paint brush? The brush is used to create the masterpiece;Read… Read more »

Breaking news: Australian Government to appoint Government 2.0 Minister

I’ve just learnt from an inside source that the Australian Government has decided to go several steps further than the Queensland Government (who appointed an Assistant Minister for eGovernment last year), by appointing Australia’s first Government 2.0 Minister. The new Minister, who will be announced later today, will be responsible for taking forward the government’sRead… Read more »

The dream is fading fast

John Naughton: Because we’ve all bought into the techno-utopianism of the early Internet, we tend to assume that it’s always going to be open to everyone. But as more and more of the world goes online, it’s clear that we’re heading in a very different direction — towards an online world dominated by huge, primarilyRead… Read more »