governance

Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming "feed" technology, more specifically "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network," complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved.

The implications for this, as AllFacebook.com pointed out earlier on Thursday, are far-flung: Facebook may choose to pursue action against other social-media sites that potentially violate this patent. Twitter, as AllFacebook points out, is effectively one giant news feed, to the extent that it clearly has influenced some of the changes that Facebook made to its own feed technology.… Read more

Microsoft on Wednesday launched a new cloud-computing service targeting the federal government.

Business Productivity Online Suite Federal offers higher security standards than the company's regular cloud-computing service, including fingerprinting as part of background checks and biometric access control, said Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Online Services.

Additional security mechanisms are required for agencies like the Defense Department and NASA, but the standard suite has obtained a number of security and privacy certifications that make it attractive to local and state governments as well, he said in an interview after announcing the offering at the Microsoft U.S. … Read more

Computer-based network attacks are slowly bleeding U.S. businesses of revenue and market advantage, while the government faces the prospect of losing in an all-out cyberwar, experts told Senators in a hearing on Tuesday.

"If the nation went to war today in a cyberwar, we would lose," said Michael McConnell, executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton's national security business and a former director of national security and national intelligence. "We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose."

The U.S. will not be able to mitigate … Read more

It's time for the United Kingdom government to scrap Internet Explorer 6, upgrading away from the browser introduced in 2001 and the problems it brings now, according to a petition submitted Monday.

"We the undersigned petition the prime minister to encourage government departments to upgrade away from Internet Explorer 6," according to the petition, submitted by Dan Frydman, a managing director of online publishing contractor Inigo. As of Monday afternoon PST, a few others had signed it; only British citizens or residents may.

"The German and French governments have started to encourage people to upgrade away from the browser Internet Explorer 6. IE 6 has some security flaws that leave users vulnerable. These two governments have let their populations know that an upgrade will keep them safer online," the petition said. "We should follow them. When the U.K. government does this, most of Europe will follow. That will create some pressure on the US to do so, too."

In an interview, Frydman said the chief difficulty with supporting IE 6 is one of extra work--making sure additions needed to make a site work with later versions of IE or other browsers don't break the IE 6 support, for example. In addition, it's not up to modern graphical Ajax interfaces that require faster JavaScript performance.

Plenty of tech companies, most notably Microsoft itself, are urging an upgrade from IE 6. The browser was introduced in 2001, just as Microsoft had definitively won the first browser wars and just before Windows XP was introduced. Since then, IE 6 has been succeeded by IE 7 and IE 8, with IE 9 in the works. In the meantime, Firefox has grown to account for nearly a quarter of Web usage, and Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome account for nearly another 10 percent. … Read more

The U.S. General Services Administration announced on Tuesday a new tool designed to help federal departments and agencies solicit ideas from the public as mandated by the Obama Administration's recent Open Government Directive.

The tool, which will be made available free of charge to any federal department or agency, will allow members of the public to submit ideas and vote or comment on others' ideas. The tools will go live on the Web site of each participating agency or department on February 6, and will be active for five weeks.

The hope, at least among participating departments and … Read more

Privacy advocates opposed to new privacy regulations at Facebook are attempting to get the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to a complaint filed Thursday on behalf of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and several allied groups.

"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," the complaint says of Facebook's new regulations, which push more content public, and make even more data available to third-party applications and advertisers. EPIC's goal is to force Facebook to restore the old settings and add additional controls for members.

"We'… Read more

Editor's note: This is the second in a series of articles discussing how people in the tech industry are working with or around federal and state governments.

Can you chart a logical path from a 2003 academic conference on the legal issues surrounding virtual worlds and online games to Barack Obama's first executive action as president?

Beth Noveck can.

If you're not familiar with her--and few outside her specific professional and social circles would be--Noveck, a 38-year-old lawyer originally from Toms River, N.J., is Obama's deputy chief technology officer for open government.

Precisely what &… Read more

On Tuesday morning, the Obama administration formally unveiled its Open Government directive, an effort aimed at weaving the philosophies of openness, transparency and participation into the DNA of the federal government and its agencies.

That directive comes as a direct result of President Barack Obama's first executive action, on January 21, only hours after the hoopla from his inaugural parade and parties had died down, when the new chief executive issued the so-called Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government.

That document, which began, "My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government," was … Read more

The Obama administration on Tuesday officially unveiled its Open Government directive, a document that charges each federal agency with making high value data publicly available and with quickly coming up with formal open government plans.

The announcement follows up on President Obama's first executive act--the issuing on January 21 of his Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government. That document set forth, among other things, that, "We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." … Read more