administrator

Obama may be able to keep his BlackBerry after all

Forget the important task of opening up government. Never mind a recession that seems to be trying hard to be promoted to a full-scale depression. In geekish circles, the question of the week has been: Will President Obama manage to hang on to his BlackBerry?

Obama told us more than a year ago that it was his favorite gadget, and he was rarely without it during the 2008 campaign. In 2001, George Bush famously gave up e-mail, and there was plenty of speculation that Obama would too, either for privacy or open-government reasons. Last week, we suggested the Sectera Edge … Read more

Obama's Whitehouse.gov: Frozen in time?

President Obama signed an order on Wednesday proclaiming that the entire federal government should be more open, transparent, and Internet-friendly. It said that agencies must "put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public."

That memorandum, along with a few other executive orders and statements from White House officials, were sent to reporters throughout the day. But in an ironic twist, the transparency and a slew of other first-day-in-office documents were still absent from the official Whitehouse.gov site as of Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET.

The Web site still says: "… Read more

Obama to .gov agencies: More Internet openness

In one of his first official acts as president, Barack Obama ordered more government openness, marking an abrupt end to his predecessor's policy of extraordinary secrecy.

Obama's still-be-named chief information officer -- some speculation has centered on Washington, D.C., CTO Vivek Kundra -- is required to come up with ways within 120 days to make the administration more Internet-friendly. (The memorandum says agencies must "harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public.")

The second memorandum overrules the Bush administration's controversial policy, issued a few … Read more

Homeland Security: The reality show

Queue the music: the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is about to get its own reality show.

On Thursday, ABC announced a mid-season replacement show called "Homeland Security USA." From Arnold Shapiro, the Emmy-winning producer of such documentaries as Scared Straight," the network said the series will give viewers an unprecedented look at the work of the men and women at the DHS "while they use the newest technology to safeguard our country and enforce our law."

The 13 hour-long episodes were shot entirely on location throughout the United States.

ABC says the producers … Read more

New 'Halo'-esque look for Korea's troops

Things may be getting a little more stylish up on the DMZ (the Korean Demilitarized Zone) when Republic of Korea troops don their new high-tech battle uniforms. Accessories could include bulletproof helmets and a new assault rifle.

The Agency for Defense Development will begin the two-phase development on a new combat uniform beginning next year, according to The Korea Times.

"The agency has completed studies on the concept of the future combatant uniform and equipment,'" an unnamed official told the newspaper. "From next year, we plan to begin developing related technology and equipment after getting approval from … Read more

US Small Business Administration wins award for innovative, open source-based website

Who says government can't innovate? As the US Small Business Administration recently demonstrated, government can innovate, and increasingly does so with open source.

The US Small Business Administration just won the prestigious 2008 GCN Technology Leadership Award for its innovative Business.gov website, a site that had formerly been bogged down by proprietary BEA software. No more. The site, which coordinates some 9,000 resources throughout the US federal government for 21 different agencies, has seen a 30 percent increase in traffic since it was resurrected through open-source technologies, including Alfresco.… Read more

Open source 'reduces risk,' federal agency's CIO says

Casey Coleman, chief information officer for the U.S. General Services Administration, said in a speech this week that the GSA heavily relies on open source to drive down costs, increase flexibility of IT dollars, and reduce risk.

The GSA, by the way, is no small fry. It manages more than one-fourth of the federal government's total procurement dollars and influences the management of $500 billion in federal assets.

The agency uses a laundry list of great open-source software--initially for its information systems but also increasingly for transactional mission-critical systems--such as JBoss, Linux (Red Hat), Bugzilla (bug tracking), JUnit (… Read more

Report: Open-source developers command up to 40 percent premium

Want to make more money as an enterprise application developer? You're in luck--if you know open source.

According to a recent report from Bluewolf Consulting, enterprises increasingly deploy open-source software, and look to specialized application development on top of it, to drive business value:

The rise of open-source software in application development puts developers with a specialization in those technologies in a position to ask for a 30 (percent) or 40 percent pay increase, Kirven says. "We've gotten more requests from our permanent-placement division for open-source developers in the last six months than in the last five … Read more

Enable Vista's hidden administrator, and password-protect its XP equivalent

You probably know about the "hidden" administrator account in Windows XP. It's the only account on XP systems on which no other accounts have been created.

Until you add a new account, you zip right to the desktop when you boot the OS, with no stop at the Welcome screen. Once you set up one or more new accounts, the default administrator disappears, though you can bring it back in both XP Home and Pro. (More on this below.)

Vista ships with this account disabled, which is not such a bad thing because every user on the … Read more

TSA launches blog, passengers scream in comments

Over on Boing Boing this morning, I read about the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's brand new blog, called Evolution of Security.

The idea behind the blog, according to TSA administrator Kip Hawley, is "to provide here a forum for a lively, open discussion of TSA issues. While I and senior leadership of TSA will participate in the discussion, we are turning the keyboard over to several hosts who represent what's best about TSA (its people). Our hosts aren't responsible for TSA's policies, nor will they have to defend them--their job is to engage with … Read more