Thursday, March 20, 2003

Broschinsky Starts a Blog Mike Broschinsky with the Utah Division of Administrative Rules has created a weblog using Blosxom.  Here is his RSS feed.  Mike is an excellent thinker which is why I am excited about his contribution to the knowledge share in Utah government.  He also maintains a personal weblog.  Mike looked at several tools before settling on Blosxom, including TkBlog, Movable Type, and BlogMax.  In choosing Blosxom, Mike writes, It can be used to serve a blog that is dynamically generated from underlying text files, or it can be used to generate a collection of static pages that can then be transferred to the site using FTP. Blosxom is in active development, and has a devoted following. One of Blosxom’s strengths is the plugin architecture developed by its principal author; this allows the underlying application to be extended almost infinitely. 4:08:39 PM    comment []

New Jersey's Stance on Level Red We have been having discussions about what a red level alert would mean for homeland security in the state.  New Jersey's counter-terrorism office director says that "If the nation escalates to "red alert," which is the highest in the color-coded readiness against terror, you will be assumed by authorities to be the enemy if you so much as venture outside your home." (as paraphrased in the Courier Post) That sounds pretty severe.  A New Jersey homeland security brochure states "The state will restrict transportation and access to critical locations."   That sounds reasonable.  How well defined are critical locations?  What will determine a red alert?  There are still many unanswered questions.  Al Muhajaba is worried about human rights. Here are Utah's current recommendations should a red alert occur: Expect delays, searches of bags, traffic restrictions and restricted access to public buildings. Avoid crowded public areas and gatherings. Do not travel in areas affected by the attack or is an expected terrorist target. Keep emergency supplies accessible. Be prepared to evacuate your home or shelter in place on order of local authorities. Report suspicious persons taking photographs of critical facilities, asking detailed questions about physical security or dressed inappropriately for weather conditions (suicide bomber). Report these activities immediately to local law enforcement by calling 9- 1- 1. Monitor news and Emergency Alert System radio/ TV stations. Avoid passing unsubstantiated information and rumors. 8:06:59 AM    comment []

XSLT and the Utah Product Management Council Yesterday, during our Utah Product Management Council meeting, Amy Sawyer demonstrated briefly how Utah Interactive is using XSLT to display RSS feeds developed from the Utah press release system.  If you are interested in using XSLT to do as Amy suggested, you may want to review Bob DuCharme's article, "Never Mind the Namespaces: An XSLT RSS Client."  Bob's example stylesheet combines summaries from multiple RSS feeds.  Jon Udell, in an earlier post entitled "An XSLT Tutorial" points to a public XSLT service.  Finally, I would suggest reading CPAN's article on Processing RSS Files with XSLT. Later in the meeting, Kerry Huntington demonstrated several of ITS's web development services, including flash animation, streaming video, graphic design, etc.  Kerry's enterprise development group is involved in the RSS team that is developing enterprise tools for creation and presentation.  He also encouraged agency participation in the shared code library. Two new eGov applications were demonstrated at the meeting: the UCC Certified Search and the Insurance License Renewal. 7:11:40 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 David Fletcher.