Yearly Archives: 2012

How Better Design Improved Sexual Health in London

Those of us that are sexually active and somewhat responsible have all shared a common experience – the sterile clinic waiting room sprinkled with fading posters full of prevention messages and health tips. There’s usually a TV displaying a movie or daytime talk shows to drown out the collective nervous energy of the patrons waitingRead… Read more »

I Can’t Share Large Files – Why Poor IT is Killing Productivity

Shrinking budgets especially in the IT world are putting pressure on public organizations to do the same work (if not more work) on aging technology and infrastructure. The government is not the standard setter when it comes to advancing to the latest and greatest technology. The perfect example: I’m using a Pentium 4 single processorRead… Read more »

Citizinvestor: Disrupting How Governments Fund Civic Projects

I am thrilled to be involved with an exciting new project called Citizinvestor (currently a candidate for Code for America’s Accelerator) and I couldn’t think of a better place to gain valuable feedback on the soon-to-launch product than right here at GovLoop. As you well know, there are countless local government projects that are notRead… Read more »

Interesting elsewhere – 11 June 2012

Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web Sorry, Young Man, You’re Not the Most Important Demographic in Tech – The Atlantic So it turns out if you want to find out what the future looks like, you should be asking women. And just before you think that means you should be asking 18-year-oldRead… Read more »

Why Feds Don’t Need Rebranding – Part I

Does the Federal Government need to rebrand itself, as some have recently suggested, due to low public approval, politically-charged rhetoric, and negative stereotypes of Federal employees? I think not. Rather, I stipulate that: 1) Rebranding Feds is unnecessary and inadvisable at this time, and 2) There is no real “crisis” for Feds that warrants aRead… Read more »

SL9B and Community Planning

This month, the community in Second Life celebrates its 9th birthday, otherwise known as SL9B. This seems to be the first year that the celebration is not sponsored or hosted by Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. Instead, this year, Linden Lab announced the theme of the birthday would be community and that theRead… Read more »

Refactoring Success

“I don’t know how much more emphasized step 1 of refactoring could be: don’t touch anything that doesn’t have coverage. Otherwise, you’re not refactoring; you’re just changing shit.” – Hamlet D’Arcy It’s no secret that Agile and Lean methodologies have a lot in common. At Code for America we try to apply them both: inRead… Read more »

Multipurpose Biometric Access Cards for the DoJ, Better Weather Forecasting for the Navy, and More

Here is today’s federal cybersecurity and information technology news: The Department of Justice is developing biometric smartcards that will provide access to buildings, cloud databases, and mobile applications without a password. More here. The Office of Naval Research is pursuing several projects to improve weather forecasting through next-generation weather models. More here. LinkedIn is workingRead… Read more »