The Cost of Government Secrecy, Brainwave Controlled Video Games to Fight PTSD, and More

Here is today’s federal cybersecurity and information technology news: Excluding intelligence agencies, which keep their costs secret, the U.S. Government spent $11 billion last year keeping classified information secret, twice the cost of classification a decade ago. More here. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has built “a prototype for automatically generating and distributing believableRead… Read more »

Do TV Sitcoms give Public Servants a Bad Rap?

Lately I’ve become obsessed with the show Parks and Recreation. I think it’s hysterical — and maybe part of that is because I work around government, and can relate the characters to people I’ve met. But it does make me wonder, is the show reinforcing negative stereotypes about government? For example: 1) Leslie Knope isRead… Read more »

Citizens’ Jury Series on the National Debt in San Francisco

Staring July 9th, and running through the month, members of the Mechanics’ Institute Library in San Francisco can take part in a four-part seminar series about the national debt. The series will be moderated and include a combination of expert speakers, issue study, debate and deliberation. The first seminar, July 9th, 2012, will focus onRead… Read more »

Holding Accountability Accountable

“It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.” ~Sir Josiah Stamp For a long time, I have wanted to examine and write on the subject of accountability as it is such a widely used term that it has arguably become cliche. As I researched the termRead… Read more »

Group Decision Tip: Last Minute Decision Making

In principle, the more information we have about something the better decision we’re likely to make about it. And, we’re likely to have the most information at the last minute. Deciding more than we really need to at any given moment can cause regrets later. Practical Tip: Before you start making decisions, think about theRead… Read more »

Some Quick Lessons Learned From Massive Regional Power Outages

CTOvision, CTOlabs and the tech consultancy behind them Crucial Point LLC are all run out of the Washington DC area. We seek global views of technology but this region is definitely our base and we have a very high percentage of readers in the local ecosystem. For those of you here, you know the biggestRead… Read more »

Google Penguin, Twitter, and Keyword Research

Trendspotter Interactive Marketing Article – by Fulcrum Marketing Group Google Penguin and SEO Google regularly updates and tweaks its algorithms in order to reduce spam and remove weak pages from the first page of its organic search results. Google’s latest update, Penguin, targets Black Hat SEO artists that use aggressive SEO techniques and over-spamming andRead… Read more »

Army Camo Controversy – Endangered Soldiers?

I’ve read a lot lately about recent news that the US Army is contemplating a replacement of the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), also known as digital camo because of it’s pixelated appearance. First, know that I’m not an Army insider, and there are conflicting stories out there about the circumstances around UCP’s adoption in 2004Read… Read more »

Infrastructure, superstructure and not enough sockets

It can be hard to reverse bad decisions. It can be hard to recover from having failed to anticipate the future. It can be hard not having enough power sockets in hotel rooms. There is an old (but sadly discredited) story that the design of Roman chariots constrained the design of the space shuttle. ItRead… Read more »

Twitter transparency report released

Twitter released its first Transparency Report highlighting the number of times they received: government requests for user information, government requests to withhold content, and DMCA takedown notices from copyright holders. The report shows that the U.S. government has asked Twitter 679 times to reveal user information since January 2012, followed by Japan with 98 andRead… Read more »