SAA asks public for 'great ideas'
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Following heavy losses, South African Airways asks the public to send in 'great ideas' on how to turn the business around.
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By Nolle, Tom  The wave of interest in service oriented architectures (SOA) has created, not surprisingly, a wave of speculation about the changes SOA might bring to enterprise networks.
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Advocates for open government are creating search engines and websites to let citizens peek into the inner workings of official agencies. Now more than ever, they say, openness is essential to self-government. By Ryan Singel.
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The world's media is urged to find ways of making the global battle against poverty more engaging.
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Gabe: We did a really awesome project (can I say it"s awesome, is that okay?) for Wired magazine. You can either go pick up the most recent issue and read it there or check it out on their site. They asked us to do a piece for them handicapping all three of the next generation systems. We tried to be as fair as we could and hopefully you"ll get a kick out of it.
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Call it Pandora's inbox. Late last year, Prime Minister Tony Blair invited the public to post petitions directly on his official Web site, hoping a dose of cyber-savvy would attract disenchanted voters.Comment
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Comment is free: Timothy Garton Ash: The appeal of democracy, the media and America has us all hooked. What if we could replicate that for global institutions?
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Don't worry, it's moving slow enough you can jump on Quocirca's changing channels If you're an independent software vendor (ISV) and concerned that you are about to miss the software as a service (SaaS) bandwagon, rest assured there is no shortage of organisations out there ready to lend a hand.â¦
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Dan Farber: "It's not hard to imagine a contextual ad showing up every time you Twitter something. Twitter 'I am drinking beer with friends' and a Budweiser ad shows up. Now imagine the Twitter revolt." Oh yes there would be quite a revolt, a powerless one, unless there was an alternate service we could all switch to and then assuming we could get off our asses and actually switch. Yeah, we're good at screaming, but not too great at acting, here. I'm a bit of a Twit, myself, and I'd find it revolt-worthy if they tried to interrupt or punctuate discourse with product placements, but then Twitter's destiny is, imho, to be acquired by a phone company and sold as a feature that gives users a reason to use one brand of phone over another. Not as a way for advertisers to hitch their "messages" on our discourse. We've seen how well that has (not) worked with advertising on email. Not likely to work much better on Twits. Imagine if Nokia offered a cell phone with Twitter built-in, a checkbox for SMS users (default on?) -- "Do you want to send SMS messages to your buddy list?"  Don't you think the kids would go for that? (Maybe they can already do it, it's likely that I'm that cluelss.)
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By Teresa F. Lindeman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  Feb. 2--Some ideas sound so good in the office. Like the one about  planting lighted signs showing alien life forms around major U.S. cities as a  way to generate buzz for an upcoming Cartoon Network movie.
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A top official with the U.S. White House&#39;s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gave her strongest endorsement yet to SaaS (software as a service), saying Wednesday it can help federal agencies cut development costs.A speech on Wednesday at the SaaS/Gov conference in Washington, D.C., wasn&#39;t the first time Karen Evans, administrator of the OMB&#39;s Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology, endorsed SaaS. Despite Evans&#39; continuing advocacy of the concept, adoption has been slow among government agencies, according to one vendor.Asked whether the OMB should more strongly promote SaaS, Evans said U.S. agencies need to weigh cost, security, and other factors. But the U.S. government needs to move to a more service-oriented software model, she said.&quot;Our track record is clear -- we are not very good at delivering our own software in the time frame set,&quot; Evans said at the conference. &quot;We&#39;re also not very good at managing large projects.&quot;Some agencies haven&#39;t embraced the service approach, often because they want hands-on control of software development, Evans said. But government agencies can&#39;t afford to keep developing their own software without sharing with other agencies, she said.&quot;We can&#39;t continue to maintain all of the things we have,&quot; she added. &quot;We have to start shutting down some of our legacy systems. We really have to move to a ... service-oriented market.&quot;Although there&#39;s been no prohibition against U.S. agencies using SaaS models, many agencies have been reluctant to move to a service-based approach, partly because of concerns about the security of Web-based services, said Dan Burton, senior vice president of global public policy for Salesforce.com.Evans&#39; speech on Wednesday could create a &quot;tipping point&quot; for the use of SaaS models in the U.S. government, Burton said. Many agencies seem to believe that they don&#39;t have the authority to take a chance on the new model, he said.One step that service-based software vendors can take is to seek security certifications and map out how their services meet Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) requirements, Evans said. Some agencies are reluctant to move to SaaS without certifications, she said.However, some agencies are already using SaaS to cut down development times. Rezaur Rahman, enterprise architect and Web services manager for the U.S. Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, said his agency began using Salesforce.com offerings in its information management systems in recent months. Budget constraints helped push the agency toward software as a service, he said.The agency is using services to take care of many functions it would have had to write its own code for in the past, including reading and writing to databases, Rahman said. The agency can often make tweaks to its information management systems in a day or less, he added.
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Blog: The Department of Homeland Security wants to hear the thoughts of science fiction authors about terrorist attacks and responses.
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The Science Horizons project aims to give the public a clear voice on science and technology policy in the UK.
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Industry groups are looking for a way around controversial copyright proposal.
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New York City employee pension  funds are calling on two top Internet companies to do more to  protect free speech in repressive countries, joining a year-old  campaign by human rights groups.
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Police officers are urging ministers to come up with a blueprint for the future direction of policing.
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Concern for loved ones can be a powerful innovation tool.