News, analysis and context on enterprise technology for the CTO
On January 19, Carahsoft hosted a webinar on Big Data success in government with Bob Gourley and Omer Trajman of Cloudera. Bob began by explaining the current state of Big Data in the government. There are 4 areas of significant activity in Big Data. Federal integrators are making large investments in research and development of solutions. Large firms like Lockhead Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, QinetiQ, SAIC as well as smaller "boutique" … [Read more...]
The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) was founded in 1990 as a donor funded non-profit with a focus on fighting for internet freedoms. They frequently bring those fights to the courts by bringing lawsuits against large corporations and the government. They also work to provide information to inform legislators and the public at large. The EFF is cool, but of course you don't have to agree with every position they have ever taken. That said, all in … [Read more...]
Ryan Kamauff introduced Google Currents to our readers, calling it "one of the best designed apps I have ever seen." I have to agree, they have done a good job with this, producing something that works on Android and iOS and works well for both those communities. Currents also works well for producers of content. Producers can easily configure the backend of the app to distribute content in ways that are easy for readers to find what interests … [Read more...]
Digital Reasoning defines Big Data as too large, accumulating too fast, and too diverse in format and location to handle with conventional software and infrastructure. Big Data leads to information overload in government and industry, such as when logs and audits gather information that a business can't track, when an influx of human, signals, satellite, and drone video intelligence cause an analyst in the IC to lose or miss important security … [Read more...]
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is a government-wide program established in December 2011 to speed the adoption of cloud computing. FedRAMP includes a set of requirements for federal cloud computing and universal procedures for approving services and providers to work with the government. When contractors feel that they have met FedRAMP requirements, they must have their security control implementations independently … [Read more...]
2011 was a watershed year for cybersecurity, but it was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Political hacking, industrial skullduggery, drones gone wild, and mobile malware all made 2011 a year, to borrow CrucialPoint amigo Matt Devost's phrase (since I'm already borrowing his image for the post graphic, why not?), to live cyberdangerously. The Rise of the Political Hacker Anonymous was, in many ways, the biggest cybersecurity story of 2011. … [Read more...]
Since @BobGourley won't send me to CES, I have to constantly monitor my Twitter feed and all of the technology sites. But, we have curated what we believe are the top stories (and will keep updating) to provide you with what you need to know about CES 2012. CES is getting smaller and less important - but that does not mean I'm going to ignore it. The absence of Apple's real presence is (not their 250 skulking ninja scouts) means that Android … [Read more...]
CTOs , CIOs, and technology reporters are very familiar with the idea of the network. Think of networks and tech and the terms network-centric warfare, netwar, social networks, the wealth of networks, and a host of other terms and ideas immediately roll off the tongue. The network is the defining metaphor of the information age. But while the network is important, so is the swarm. Swarming in warfare has been fairly well analyzed by David Ronfeldt and … [Read more...]
I recently purchased the Logitech Revue with Google TV. I absolutely love it. It's one of the coolest ways to interact with TV to date, and offers the best overall interface for digesting internet streams as well. It is not as simple and intuitive as the Roku boxes, nor as pretty as the Apple TV, yet it is more powerful and capable than both. The Google TV comes with a crazy remote - it's a full sized wireless keyboard with touchpad, yet that's not the … [Read more...]
Editor's note: The tips Bryan Halfpap provides below really work. I stood up a working Hadoop Cluster in under 20 minutes, from cold iron to production ready, using just his guidance and a Rackspace account. bg I've been working with Apache Hadoop in my lab, spending much of that with CDH3 (the Cloudera Distribution including Apache Hadoop). As part of my examination of the best way to move from test/evaluation/prototyping to production systems I've … [Read more...]