Tech

Send your software requests to the Apps 4 Climate Action contest

Have you heard of B.C.’s Apps 4 Climate Action Contest? The contest challenges Canadian software developers to raise awareness and inspire action to reduce carbon pollution by using data in applications for the web and on mobile devices. But what if you aren’t a software developer? You can still help the cause by sharing yourRead… Read more »

Crowd sourcing artificial life and its ethical issues

Government and the private sector had a famous competion to see who could map the human genome. Now we have social media helping both with runnaway oil in the Gulf area. People are providing observations and also solution ideas for the crisis. For example, Gulfcoastspill.com has been setup to help. The site was developed withRead… Read more »

A Primer on Local Government Mobile Apps

If you take a look at current television commercials or tech blogs, you’ll quickly find a great deal of attention focused on smartphones and the mobile applications (apps for short) that are built on top of them. While traditionally focused on the Blackberry-dominated business user niche, smartphones made the shift to the mainstream after Apple’sRead… Read more »

Brownie points, or results?

Using the Gulf oil spill to get clear about measuring Open Government Measure “Open Government”? Yes, but … I think that the success of the Obama Administration’s Open Government effort is critical, but I’m put off, even bored, by the measurement discussions to date. Imagine that you’ve got good reason to believe that your nephewRead… Read more »

How To Start Blogging

I’m having a rush of wannabe bloggers launch this month. Here’s the process we’ve developed to get people cruising quickly. First we get past, “No you can’t hire someone to blog for you!” Next, start reading blogs. I recommend using a blog aggregator so the blogs you read don’t clutter your email inbox. I recommendRead… Read more »

A brief chat with Microsoft about Government 2.0

Kristin Bockius, the SLG Relationship Marketing Manager in Microsoft’s Public Sector group was nice enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions about Microsoft’s Gov2Social platform and other Government 2.0 initiatives taking place at Microsoft. Q. Microsoft has taken many positive steps on the Government 2.0 front, what isRead… Read more »

Video Available for Berkeley/SOMA Workshop Law.gov Workshop

Video is now available for the Berkeley/SOMA Law.gov Workshop held 12 May 2010 at The Mitchell Kapor Foundation in San Francisco, California, USA. Click here for the conference program. Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the workshop (scroll down to tweets from May 12, 2010). Click here for information about the Law.gov legal openRead… Read more »