- What American Startups Can Learn From the Cutthroat Chinese Software Industry — It follows that the idea of “viral” or “organic” growth doesn’t exist in China. “User acquisition is all about media buys. Platform-to-platform in China is war, and it is fought viciously and bitterly. If you have a Gmail account and send an email to, for example, NetEase163.com, which is the local web dominant player, it will most likely go to spam or junk folders regardless of your settings. Just to get an email to go through to your inbox, the company sending the email needs to have a special partnership.” This entire article is a horror show.
- White House Hangout Maker Movement (Whitehouse) — During the Hangout, Tom Kalil will discuss the elements of an “all hands on deck” effort to promote Making, with participants including: Dale Dougherty, Founder and Publisher of MAKE; Tara Tiger Brown, Los Angeles Makerspace; Super Awesome Sylvia, Super Awesome Maker Show; Saul Griffith, Co-Founder, Otherlab; Venkatesh Prasad, Ford.
- Municipal Codes of DC Freed (BoingBoing) — more good work by Carl Malamud. He’s specifically providing data for apps.
- The Modern Malware Review (PDF) — 90% of fully undetected malware was delivered via web-browsing; It took antivirus vendors 4 times as long to detect malware from web-based applications as opposed to email (20 days for web, 5 days for email); FTP was observed to be exceptionally high-risk.
ENTRIES TAGGED "open government"
Sprinting toward the future of Jamaica
Open data is fundamental to democratic governance and development, say Jamaican officials and academics.
Creating the conditions for startups to form is now a policy imperative for governments around the world, as Julian Jay Robinson, minister of state in Jamaica’s Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, reminded the attendees at the “Developing the Caribbean” conference last week in Kingston, Jamaica.
Robinson said Jamaica…
Four short links: 28 March 2013
Chinese Lessons, White House Embraces Makers, DC Codes Freed, and Malware Numbers
The City of Chicago wants you to fork its data on GitHub
Chicago CIO Brett Goldstein is experimenting with social coding for a different kind of civic engagement.
GitHub has been gaining new prominence as the use of open source software in government grows.
Earlier this month, I included a few thoughts from Chicago’s chief information officer, Brett Goldstein, about the city’s use of GitHub, in a piece exploring GitHub’s role in government.
While Goldstein says that Chicago’s open data portal will remain the primary means…
GitHub gains new prominence as the use of open source within governments grows
The collaborative coding site hired a "government bureaucat."
When it comes to government IT in 2013, GitHub may have surpassed Twitter and Facebook as the most interesting social network.
GitHub’s profile has been rising recently, from a Wired article about open source in government, to its high profile use by the White House and within…
White House moves to increase public access to scientific research online
More federally funded research and data will be made freely available to the public online.
Today, the White House responded to a We The People e-petition that asked for free online access to taxpayer-funded research.
As part of the response, John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, released a memorandum today directing agencies with “more…
Personal data ownership drives market transparency and empowers consumers
The White House added a community for the "smart disclosure" of consumer data to Data.gov.
On Monday morning, the Obama administration launched a new community focused on consumer data at Data.gov. While there was no new data to be found among the 507 datasets listed there, it was the first time that smart disclosure has an official home in federal government.
Four short links: 13 February 2013
Open Regulations, Inside PACER, Hacking Memory, and Pirating Buildings
- CA Assembly Bill No. 292 — This bill would provide that the full text of the California Code of Regulations shall bear an open access creative commons attribution license, allowing any individual, at no cost, to use, distribute, and create derivative works based on the material for either commercial or noncommercial purposes. (via BoingBoing)
- The Inside Story of PACER (Ars Technica) — PACER has become a cash cow for the judicial branch, generating $100 million in profits the court has plowed into non-PACER IT projects. (via BoingBoing)
- Manipulating Memory for Fun and Profit (PDF) — It is a common belief that RAM loses its content as soon as the power is down. This is wrong, RAM is not immediately erased. It may take up to several minutes in a standard environment, even if the RAM is removed from the computer. And it may last much longer if you cool the DRAM chips. With a simple dusty spraying at -50°C, your RAM data can survive more that 10 minutes. If you cool the chips at -196°C with liquid nitrogen, data are held for several hours without any power.
- Pirating Buildings (Spiegel) — putting the “property” back in Intellectual Property.
Investing in the open data economy
Open Data Institute CEO Gavin Starks on how open data's current state is similar to the World Wide Web's early days.
If you had 10 million pounds to spend on open data research, development and startups, what would you do with it? That’s precisely the opportunity that Gavin Starks (@AgentGav) has been given as the first CEO of the Open Data Institute (ODI) in the United Kingdom.
Open data economy: Eight business models for open data and insight from Deloitte UK
Two open data items of note from readers.
When I asked whether the push to free up government data was resulting in economic activity and startup creation, I started to receive emails from people around the United States and Europe. I’ll be publishing more of what I learned in our ongoing series of open data interviews and profiles over the next month, but two responses…
We’re releasing the files for O’Reilly’s Open Government book
A #PDFtribute to Aaron Swartz.
I’ve read many eloquent eulogies from people who knew Aaron Swartz better than I did, but he was also a Foo and contributor to Open Government. So, we’re doing our part at O’Reilly Media to honor Aaron by posting the Open Government book files for free for anyone to download, read and share.
The files are posted…
Radar 
Radar on 
Radar on 
Radar on 
Radar on 