Note from Bob Gourley: The following article was written by enterprise technology and mission IT expert Danny Proko and was originally seen on Facebook (you can find Danny there or on LinkedIn). A number of my friends asked me about my new gadget…the Droid…of which I’m the proud owner.  Here’s my assessment after 3 months of...
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Windows 7 is really different.  It has more functionality, a better interface, and, if you keep it configured/managed, much better security than previous Microsoft operating systems. Here is another fact about Windows 7:  It is coming to your enterprise, sooner or later. And, since its functionality/features/security are an improvement over XP and older systems and...
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Information Technology in the federal enterprise does not work like it does in Hollywood.   Although there are plenty of success stories to go around, federal IT is more limited and constrained than we would all want, for lots of reasons. Some of the reasons are just do to complexities and limited budgets.  Some...
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Most enterprise technologists should see a continued payoff of the hard work in planning, architecture, documentation, development and configuration work that has been occurring over the last several years.  Enterprise technologists were building Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) long before SOA was over-hyped.  And most enterprise technologists I know were investigating constructs of scalable, elastic...
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2010 will undoubtedly be a year of technology. In 2009, Twitter revolutionized the way we get news, it brought us closer to those who were a part of the news, almost making traditional media irrelevant. I don’t know who (or what) will be the Twitter of 2010, but below are a few predictions...
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The CTOvision.com Tech Titans list has just been updated with a new snapshot of the globe’s top Information Technology (IT) firms by market cap. The firms on the list are all important for enterprise chief technology officers (CTO) and chief information officers (CIO) to track. Links to financial information and news sources are provided with...
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2010 will bring a load of new gadgets, technology, and advancements for consumers and enterprises alike.  Microsoft is releasing Office 2010, Apple is releasing their new Tablet (iTablet), NVIDIA is releasing their “GeForce 3XX” series of graphics cards, SSD’s will be (hopefully) affordable, and Sprint should have a 4G/3G phone. Office 2010 – with the...
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I recently watched a briefing from Dr. Thomas Cellucci of the DHS Commercialization Office. The office runs programs designed to enable DHS S&T to do its job.  It is supposed to draw on the resources, skills, experience and productivity of the private sector to develop technologies aligned with DHS S&T focus areas.   This office helps...
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Newspapers and blogs around the globe have been carrying an amazing story of technological arrogance and organizational ineptitude regarding security of a key data feed from US intelligence systems.  We read headlines like: “Iraq Insurgents Hack US Drones” (WSJ), “Hacked Drones: How Secure Are US Spy Planes?(ABC)”, “Insurgents Hack Into US Spy Drone Videos“(AP),...
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If you have a few minutes I would really appreciate you checking out an application I wrote. The application automates some actions common to US Military staff planning by building a dynamic, interactive decision-matrix.   I’ll discuss the use case for the application and then end with links to the source code for...
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One of the great resources for tracking trends in Open Government, Gov2.0 and related activities is GovFresh.com, a site I recommend all visit and bookmark and track.  GovFresh founder Luke Fretwell can be found on GovLoop, LinkedIn, Twitter. Luke recently asked several folks who track the Gov2.0 scene for thoughts on the recent Reactions to...
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SpaceCurve is a new database technology.  Their approach was designed to make indexing of geospatial polygon data effortless and so fast it is done in real-time (or “cyber time” as some of my friends have taken to saying).  They do this by use of compute clusters that can scale from small to Internet-scale. The benefit...
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Dear readers, The Federal Trade Commission, a cadre focused on protecting America’s consumers, has issued new guidance governing endorsements and testimonials of products, including comments made by bloggers.  Like most rules, I think the rules in this guidance were devised because some bad apples were doing wrong, and the FTC has created these guidelines with...
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Adobe Flex is a software development approach and environment which enables the production of cross-platform Rich Internet Applications.  Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) is the cross-platform runtime environment used by Flex (as well as Flash, HTML, JavaScript and AJAX) for deployment of desktop applications. I’ve long known the power of Flex and AIR, and have long...
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Yesterday, 23 November 2009, an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance successfully launched the Intelsat 14 satellite (IS-14).  Liftoff of the Atlas V occurred at 1:55am ET.  The satellite separated successfully two hours later.   Today we received word that the satellite’s solar panels have deployed and all is well.  Great launch! There is...
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On Thursday 10 Dec 2009 O’Reilly media will be providing a free, half day, online event, the Gov2 Online Conference. From the organizers: The O’Reilly Gov 2.0 Online Conference is a FREE, half-day event that will show off five examples of Web 2.0 creating greater collaboration, transparency, and efficiencies in government – from solving a budget...
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Thursday, I was fortunate enough to get to walk around Equinix’s DC-4 datacenter in Ashburn, VA. In this 100,000 sq ft data center, they are carrier, equipment, and software agnostic, providing clients with energy, space, and cooling – allowing choice of carrier, equipment, and software.  Their huge facility (just one of 5 at the...
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I found: If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Governmentto be a book I couldn’t put down. This great read is about results and how to get them.  And, as the title implies, it focuses on big results in government.  The government is doing many things to...
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A year and a half ago I pulled together several thoughts on Cyber Deterrence which had come out of years of dialog on the cyber threat.   I wanted to capture some key challenges since in my view many were making foolish assumptions regarding what our nation should do in the domain of cyber.  There...
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If you are an enterprise CTO I’m hoping you already have the site of the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) bookmarked.  It it has been a while since you have seen their site please check it out at http://www.us-cert.gov They provide important resources for any enterprise technologist, not just security professionals. Organizationally they have...
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Yesterday I was on a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) panel at the 2009 Distributed Common Groundstation (DCGS) conference in Virginia Beach VA.  The panel, which was pulled together by JFCOM J2 CTO John Marshall, included Ms. Michele Munson of Aspera, Mr. Lewis Shepherd of Microsoft, Mr. Rudi Ernst of Pixia, Dr. Kari Kelton of...
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