Sunday, February 13, 2005

eGovernment News. China's Zhejiang province is cracking down on civil servants who chat using instant messaging services during work hours. I'm not sure how that differs much from chatting on the phone, except that it's a little easier to multi-task. Speaking of China, 65% of all households in Hong Kong are now connected to the internet. Almost 29% now use government online services. The state of Jigawa is extending broadband services into rural Nigeria to support egovernment initiatives. [David Fletcher: eGovernment] 10:10:51 PM

Taiwan the best at e-government. According to Darrell West of Brown University, Taiwan is now the top ranked e-government. The Brown Center for Public Policy surveyed almost two thousand websites in 198 countries. This year's report is not yet available on the Center's website, but Singapore was ranked 2nd and the U.S. 3rd. I'm wondering about the the Scandinavian countries who traditionally place very high. The small town of Keizer, Oregon has a new website. A Louisiana columnist complains about that state's failure to use technology to more effectively communicate prior to and during the hurricane evacuation. Time for a self-evaluation. And state CIOs will be meeting in New Orleans in a couple of days. San Diego is the most connected via Broadband according to Nielsen ratings. Salt Lake City makes the top ten for narrowband connections. And former California CIO John Thomas Flynn has joined the Center for Digital Government. [David Fletcher: eGovernment] 10:00:52 PM

FlickrGraph shows relationships in your photos online. Speaking of photos, FlickrGraph has gotten mentioned by several bloggers in the past few days. Trend alert! Mr. Brown is the latest to point it out. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger] 9:17:10 PM

Web Services. Business Week has a special report on Web services: "Web services refer to a set of programming standards used to make different types of software talk to each other over the Internet, without human intervention...Unlike the ASPs, which were building out massive data centers and basically running rental services for other people's software, today's Web-service companies design their software from the ground up to be delivered over the Internet as a service. That's a big difference. It means their business model can scale, and the bigger they get, the more profitable they become because they're building on that initial research and development investment." [E M E R G I C . o r g] 9:13:45 PM

VoIP Turn-Key Business Opportunities that Work!. Why Use Turnkey VoIP Services? Choosing an IP telephony solution provider in today's market, you need to know what they can bring to the table in terms of providing a solution either you have the knowledge to handle, or it... [PBX] 9:12:09 PM

hittest feed. The Hit-test podcast feed [Adam Curry's Weblog] 9:09:51 PM

Podcastamatic 1.0. Podcastamatic: "Automates the creation of a webpage and a RSS feed for your podcast, based on MP3 tags." [Adam Curry's Weblog] 9:06:44 PM

Aluminum iPod shuffle Case. When the cost of creating your own iPod shuffle hard case to "protect it" exceeds the total cost of the shuffle itself, we tend to think a primer in cost/benefit analysis isn't too bad an idea. Either way, iPodlounge has a forum thread wherein an intrepid lounger did just that. It's sexy, brushed aluminium—for a do it yourself project, he did an excellent job. Said forum thread also hints at the possibility that he'll begin selling the cases. Gorgeous and pointless, a combo of which we are fans. Machined Aluminum Hard Case For My Shuffle [iPodlounge] [Gizmodo] 9:05:53 PM

Dates and deets on the hw6500. As much as we’d rather not drop yet another post on the HP hw6500 iPAQ Mobile Messenger so soon, details are slowly spilling out—now we have preliminary reports that the device will be announced March 17th, and will be carrier-available by Q2. It will come as no surprise that being an EDGE-enabled phone, Cingular will probably be its carrier in the states, but it wouldn’t be unheard of for T-Mobile to pick it up anyway. Oh, and those measurements we did? Well, they weren’t perfect (we quoted 4.75 x 2.86 x 0.77-0.9), but we came close enough: it should be 4.5 x 2.8 x 0.63-inches. We’ll keep you in the know! [Engadget] 9:05:09 PM

Mitsubishi PocketProjector. I am confident that portable front-projection is going to be one of the break-out products this year. Look at this new Mitsubishi PocketProjector: weighing only 14 ounces, it can project an 800 by 600 pixel image that is 20 inches across from only one foot away (the 'throw'). It's a DLP system, which is arguably the best technology for projection (although there's much to recommend LCD in certain scenarios), and uses an LED for its backlight. That means it won't have a terribly bright lamp, but the LEDs will not only last ten times as long as a normal projector bulb, they'll also be a lot more sturdy (good for something so easy to toss in a bag). So think about it: while right now there isn't a good interface between, say, a smartphone or PDA and the projector (it accepts VGA and s-video in), you'll be able to roll into a coffee shop or something, pull out your PDA and battery-powered projector, and work with a 20-inch screen shining off the back of every passing barrista. I'm willing to haul around 14 extra ounces (and shell out $700) for that. Press Release [ChaitGear] [Gizmodo] 9:04:25 PM

Melodeo offers "safe" P2P on cellphones. You know we’re hyped on the idea of peer-to-peer file sharing coming to cellphones and other mobile devices, but Melodeo’s new Mobile Music Solution is not how we wanted things to go down. It’s an application for cellphones that lets you share songs with other people (who also have Mobile Music Solution installed), but the catch is that there is loads of DRM involved, so if you send someone a song over Bluetooth (which given Bluetooth’s bandwidth, could take a while), unless they want to pay they can only listen to a 30 second clip. They’re launching the service in Europe soon, but it sounds like the only major label they have on board is Warner Music Group. If restrictive, DRM-laden P2P didn’t rocket to success on the PC, why is it that it’ll be a success on cellphones, where the experience is bound to be even less satisfying? We understand that Lil Jon gots to get paid, but if we had to guess, we’d suspect that most people would just want to get their music on to their phone the old-fashioned way: by transferring it over from their computer. Downloading directly to the phone is going to be a distant 2nd (at least until connections speeds go up and data tariffs go way down), and some complicated system for wirelessly buying music from your friend’s phone is probably going to be even less popular than that. [Via TechDirt] [Engadget] 8:55:23 PM

Infocus: Apache 2 with SSL/TLS: Step-by-Step, Part 1. This article begins a series of three articles dedicated to configuring Apache 2.0 with SSL/TLS support, in order to ensure maximum security and optimal performance of secure web communication. This part introduces key aspects of SSL/TLS and then shows how to compile and configure Apache 2.0 with support for these protocols. [SecurityFocus News] 8:54:46 PM

Infocus: Penetration Testing IPsec VPNs. This article discusses a methodology to assess the security posture of an organization's IPsec based VPN architecture. [SecurityFocus News] 8:54:08 PM