GOV IT

Strategic IT for Government

Friday, September 05, 2003

HP Goes Grid Across the Board. Hewlett-Packard Thursday revealed plans to bring open grid standards to all of its consumer and commercial product lines to further enable core enterprise infrastructure technologies for grid computing. [internetnews.com]
7:45:14 AM

Upcoming events
I'll be out and about over the next few weeks: On Thursday, Sept. 11 (!), I'm talking on a panel at Seybold on the effects of blogging on the publishing industry. It's at 4:30 p.m. at the Moscone Center. On Sunday, Sept. 14, I am again getting on stage with my friend Josh Kornbluth, whose wonderfully funny and moving show, "Love and Taxes," is now playing at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Every Sunday during the run of his show Josh has hosted these free conversations about tax policy. (At Berkeley Rep I believe the events are free to anyone who has a ticket stub from any performance of the show.) The last one I did, back in July at the Magic Theatre, with Leo Martinez of the Hastings College of Law, was extremely interesting. Josh's new brainstorm is to start a movement -- relating to his show's insight that the taxes we pay actually support things that we need -- under the banner "I. R. Us!" He's even selling buttons. On Saturday, Oct. 4, I'll be part of a panel at BloggerCon, at Harvard Law School, along with Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds and Ed Cone, talking about blogging and journalism. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment]

7:43:29 AM

Wireless network video camera from Linksys. New wireless network video camera from Linksys which is basically a surveillance camera which can connect to a local area network over 802.11b and stream its video feed to any Internet-connected Web browser anywhere. There are already on few of these on the market from D-Link, Panasonic, Toshiba, and others. The Linksys Wireless-B Internet Video Camera is about the same, but does have a couple of nice extra features, like a Security Mode that will email you whenever it detects motion, so you can be alerted to when to tune into the video stream. Read [Thanks, Alberto]... [Gizmodo]
7:00:03 AM

Museums and Visitor Centre Variation

one pontential twist on the following application would be to translate from English to foreign languages, so that existing museums or visitor centres in english speaking countries could offer visitors who are not fluent in English some options.

Automatic sign translation. HP is working on prototype of an iPAQ Pocket PC that uses a digital camera attachment to automatically translate signs that are in foreign languages. The only catch is that the Pocket PC has to have a high-speed wireless connection at all times for it to work, because the actual translation is being done over the Internet. So you might not want to throw away that phrasebook just yet unless your next vacation happens to take place entirely within range of a WiFi hotspot. Read... [Gizmodo]

6:33:06 AM

Wi-Fi Dog and Beer

OK, not sure I would haul my laptop to a baseball game, but apparently at least one company is testing this idea out. The stadium provides free Wi-Fi connnections for all stadium fans who can use their Wi-Fi devices to order hotdogs and beer from their seats in the stadium, and to check player stats etc during the game.

Not sure I would invest in this company, but it is interesting to see the Wi-Fi edges being pushed, while no one has yet discovered how to make any money with the technology yet!

check this out at the following Wired article:

http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,60296,00.html

6:27:07 AM

Universities Taken Offline to Fight Worms, Viruses. chrismg2003 writes "Nationwide universities are opening their doors to new students but closing off their network services. The Blaster worm has caused ... [Slashdot]
6:03:53 AM

Adobe Q and A. A reader named Kirk Holbrook raised some interesting issues in response to my column on Acrobat and InfoPath. Although he addressed his email to me, Kirk was really hoping for a response from Chuck Myers, the Adobe executive whose conversation with me I reported in the column. Below I have reprinted Kirk's message (with his permission), and Chuck's response, relayed to me by an Adobe PR representative and also reprinted with permission. It's an interesting and useful exchange, but one that wouldn't have come to light without several intermediaries. I was happy to help in this case, but such intermediation clearly won't scale. I continue to believe that thoughtful, articulate, and passionate spokespeople like Chuck would be doing themselves and their companies a favor by establishing weblogs and using them to address these kinds of issues in a proactive -- yet personable -- way. ... [Jon's Radio]
5:55:55 AM