Usability key to online success

ACS President Anthony Wong’s column in the Austrlaian newspaper today ends with the line: “ACS fellow and digital media expert Tom Worthington said usability was a key issue for using mobile commerce.” (from: “Online key to business success”, 3 May 2011). Usability can be improved with web standards and guidelines.My point was that mobile devicesRead… Read more »

Muslim reaction to Bin Laden

The Islamic world’s reaction to Bin Laden’s death has been mixed accurately reflecting a Kew Poll several years ago (2009) that measured the attitudes of Muslims to the Al Qaeda leader. In keeping with his own claims that his view was the only view possible for a Muslim, Bin Laden had a great number ofRead… Read more »

Storybook Lane ordered to refund shoppers — again

Storybook Lane, an online company previously sued by the Washington Attorney General’s Office, must once again refund consumers nationwide. The Kennewick-based company, which sells home décor for children’s bedrooms, violated the terms of a 2008 settlement by failing to deliver orders, issue refunds and respond to customer inquiries. Original post

Open Data for Public Health: Bring DontEat.At to San Francisco

In a powerfully argued post at GovLoop back in January, Canadian open data advisor David Eaves offered a solution for saving millions in public health costs: create data standards around restaurant healthfulness inspection scores and incorporate them into consumer-oriented websites like Yelp and OpenTable. Last night on Gov 2.0 Radio, Allison Hornery of CivicTEC inRead… Read more »

Heierbacher: Dialogue and Deliberation as the Basis Sustainable Decision Making

Sandy Heierbacher, Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD), gives a nice two-paragraph summary this morning of what her organization’s work is all about: […] Our most urgent problems seem even more unsolvable because of our inability to come together civilly and discuss issues and potential solutions in depth with all “sides.”Read… Read more »

Storm Clouds on the Horizon?

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP. The recent Amazon cloud outage at its Northern Virginia data center will raise concerns among CIO’s looking to the “public cloud” to improve IT service delivery and reduce day-to-day operating costs. Industry claims of superior “up-time” performance, reliability and massive redundancy must now be revisitedRead… Read more »

U.S. Kills Osama Bin Laden

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration used DNA testing and other means to confirm that elite American forces in Pakistan had in fact killed Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, officials said Monday, as the world absorbed the stunning news. GO TROOPS!