Nick Mudge’s Technology and Government Weblog

Some good blogging and comments on length of tenure for CIOs on Wayne Hall's blog.

3:05pm | blogs | Comments Off

Tod Newcombe, the editor of Public CIO magazine, has been writing some good stuff on his new Public CIO blog.

3:04pm | blogs - open government | no comments

This article about how to use a wordpress blog as a content managment system has a good definition that sums up the blog software. From Weblog to CMS with WordPress:

For those who have been living on a different planet, a weblog (or blog) is an online diary that contains a series of posts displayed in date order (newest first). In addition, blogging software usually provides an archive mechanism for filing away old posts, permalinks (human-readable URLs for each post), some means of classifying posts, a search engine, RSS feeds, and other goodies. However, the key factor is ease of use for web novices: allowing the creation of web pages using a WYSIWYG editor and without requiring any knowledge of HTML, CSS, FTP, or other acronyms.

2:37pm | web technology - blogs | no comments

David Fletcher: "Each year, the number of political and government blogs grows at a rate faster than the previous."

2:27pm | government resources - egovernment - blogs - open government | no comments

From Neville Hobson:

Looking for something on one of the British government websites, I came across this - the blog being written by David Miliband, Minister of Communities and Local Government.

Not only a government minister but also a member of the Cabinet, the committee at the center of the British political system and the supreme decision-making body in government.

Just started blogging publicly in March.

Found it through Barbara Haven, a blogger and employee at the California Department of Technology Services.

12:36pm | government resources - egovernment - blogs - open government | no comments

I've been doing some writing on my programming blog, been really enjoying having it. Also, the comments on this blog are now fixed. I broke them awhile ago because I kept getting spam comments. But now fixed again, and getting spam again.

11:43am | blogs | no comments

I like this definition of social software from Wikipedia:

Social software lets people rendezvous, connect or collaborate by use of a computer network. The term came into more common usage in 2002, largely credited to Clay Shirky who organized a "Social Software Summit" in November of that year. Shirky defines social software as "stuff that gets spammed."

5:04pm | web technology - egovernment - blogs | no comments

Matt McAlister:

Washingtonpost.com and CJRDaily both added "Bookmark with del.icio.us" buttons on their article templates today. At the bottom of every article is a link that spawns a popup for users to save this article with del.icio.us and to add tags to help them find this article later.

Steve Rubel comments.

PR Newswire also plans to put del.cio.us on its pages.

3:43pm | web technology - blogs | no comments

Has anybody seen David Fletcher on the web recently? He hasn't blogged on his blog for awhile but I know he sometimes starts other blogs other places. His del.icio.us account also hasn't been active since January 13, which is kind of odd.

I check his blog about 5 days a week. It occurred to me that I'd probably keep checking his blog for about 6 months before I gave up.

11:49am | web technology - egovernment - blogs | no comments

There's a state blog about rural Utah.

Here's part of the description:

The primary purpose of "What's Happening in Rural Utah" is to share good news about economic development across rural Utah. In addition, we will share information about important economic development issues impacting rural Utah.

2:15pm | web technology - government resources - egovernment - blogs | no comments

About 3 weeks ago I went to the 2005 California Best of the Web.

I was standing in the hall and a lady got my attention. She told me she does the Experimental Space blog. I instantly knew who she was. I often check over at that blog because it has some good tech and egov news there sometimes and I like it. Recently I decided to post the New Oxford American Dictionary: 'Podcast' Is the Word of the Year story in GT News after seeing her mention it in her blog.

This is the first time I've met in person another blogger I knew about through the web, and who knew me through my blog (and we never directly communicated or address each other before, through email or anything. Just read each other's blogs.) It was exciting and I really enjoyed it, and I'm amazed by how similar our knowledge and action is. I asked her if she uses del.icio.us. She said yes, and said she reads David Fletcher's bookmarks. That's awesome. I told her I read his bookmarks too. (For a Govtech News editor, a Gov IT director's travels around the Web is an amazing resource.) I asked her how she knew it was me that does this blog that you're seeing right now. She said she read my name tag I was wearing; it said Nick Mudge.

I've read about other bloggers and people meeting in person. It's nice to experience it.

Afterwards I realized that one of the person's bookmarks I have within my del.icio.us account is bhaven, and I realized that those are Barbara Haven's bookmarks. I had been looking at her bookmarks without knowing who she was. I recently blogged about Tim Berners-Lee starting a blog, which I found through her bookmarks, though I knew it was her by then.

9:35pm | web technology - government resources - egovernment - blogs | no comments

The guy who invented the Web, Tim Berners-Lee started a blog last week. He got 455 comments on his first post before he turned comments off.

Here's one of the things he said in his first post:

In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

And then:

Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space.

5:07pm | web technology - blogs | no comments

Legal blogs are Blawgs: 'Blawg' use in law firms is on the rise

11:06am | web technology - blogs | no comments

U.S. Congressman John Conyers recently wrote a very interesting post about why he blogs. Check it out.

You have to read the full post, but one of the things he says is this:

Universally speaking, the experts -- the people who had used the internet so successfully in the Dean campaign -- had one word of caution. So many politicians who were intrigued by the Dean campaign saw the internet as a cash machine and little else. Not only is such a view shortsighted, it is ineffective, as many politicians have seen the internet activists tune them out after the third fund-raising appeal in one week. I decided to follow a different model and became the first Member of Congress to start his own blog with reader comments.

9:29pm | web technology - blogs | no comments

I just added three new blogs to Govfeed.com:

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue blog

Utah Senate Site blog

The First Response Coalition blog

They are now in the Gov. Blog Directory and in the Gov. Blog Aggregator.

9:19pm | web technology - government resources - blogs | no comments