Posts Tagged: terrorism


1
Nov 09

Daily Links for October 30th through November 1st

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).


30
Sep 09

Daily Links for September 29th through September 30th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).


21
Aug 09

Why do politicians only speak the truth when they’re pimping a book?

Tom Ridge finally states the obvious – the Bush White House monkeyed with Terror Alerts to boost the President’s Approval Ratings:

Among the headlines promoted by publisher Thomas Dunne Books: Ridge was never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was “blindsided” by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush’s re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.


13
Jul 09

Daily Links for July 11th through July 13th

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

  • Seth’s Blog: The CPM gap – Here's the thing: advertisers treat prospects online as targets, as victims, as people to subject to interruption. Conferences treat attendees as royalty, as paying customers who invested time and money to be there.

    And that's the difference. As long as your site is about something else and the ads are a distraction, you'll see CPM rates drop. As soon as you (or the advertisers) figure out that creating online communities aligned with the advertising, where attendance is a choice by the consumer, then you're creating genuine value.


10
Jun 09

Daily Links for June 10th

  • What World MPs Really Make – An infographic that details how much money the world's most effective politicians earn.
  • Philly LandStat – The LandStat application supports the analysis and display of aggregated data for land records information based on official documents tracked by the Department of Records through its PhilaDOX system. It includes data on Mortgages, Deeds, Sheriff's Deeds (an indicator of foreclosures), Real Estate Transfer Tax (RTT), Condominium Declarations, and Property types (residential, commercial, mixed use, etc.).

9
Jun 09

Daily Links for June 9th

  • 2008-2009 Food Scare Timeline – GoodEater.org – A timeline of the recent food scares.
  • The CIA’s Interrogation "Menu" – A big factor in people’s thinking was that these techniques were used in the training of U.S. Special Operations Forces,” the former intelligence official told me about SERE training. “If it was something that had been done to U.S. forces… although admittedly very tough… then it couldn’t be considered torture.”

28
Apr 09

Social Networking and the Next 9/11-Scale Crisis

When I think back to September 11th, my thoughts go back to the impact of technology that day.  I previously had written that the major news sites were down and cable news was simply repeating what little they knew.  I tracked the story by listening to Howard Stern and alternating between Metafilter and FarkWired tells more:

When the world changed on Sept. 11, 2001, the web changed with it.

While phone networks and big news sites struggled to cope with heavy traffic, many survivors and spectators turned to online journals to share feelings, get information or detail their whereabouts. It was raw, emotional and new – and many commentators now remember it as a key moment in the birth of the blog.

When four planes were hijacked on a sunny fall morning, easy-to-use blogging services were still few and far between. Yet many who witnessed the horror of the attacks firsthand took to the keyboard to talk with the world.

Horrified Americans used e-mail, instant messages, any available communication tool. But weblogs meant large audiences, not just friends and family, could read those stories from the scene.

“I have a scrap of paper that flew onto my roof,” wrote New Yorker Anthony Hecht. “Typewritten and handwritten numbers in the millions. A symbol of our tragedy. It smells like fire.”

Many bloggers strayed from their normal writing beats to produce a rolling news service comprising links to materials and tidbits gathered by friends.

Unstructured technology, both in terms of organizing a response, search and rescue/recovery, contacting loved ones, breaking news, or providing updates, has consistently proven to be a strength of the open web and technology enthusiasts.

The question remains – what we will do during the next catastrophe?   Microsoft is thinking ahead, releasing a product named Vine which allows the user via web-connected computer send messages to small and large groups, as well as individuals, and to crowd source data during a crisis.  The idea for Microsoft Vine was incubated by Microsoft GM Public Safety Initiatives Tammy Savage during Hurricane Katrina, with development initiated within the last two years.  Techcrunch explains:

Vine is designed to keep family and friends in touch when other communication methods are either broken or not particularly efficient. Times of crisis usually involve a breakdown in mobile phone or other key communication infrastructures, and Vine is designed to be as hardy as possible to keep people connected. Vine can be accessed via a desktop client (Windows only for now), text message or email.

Status updates via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the like are well suited to these short, low bandwidth messages.  I suspect that the infrastructure of those same services (as well as hosted email and webmail) is not sufficiently scaled to handle the millions who will swamp the service in search of news and updates on friends and families.  Also, how well do the mobile offerings suit anticipated needs of users during a crisis?  Further, while I don’t want to be seen as an opportunist, the social capital gained by a site delivering in a crisis could do wonders for registrations, subscriptions, and engagement (and later revenue).

Having a plan is more than smart business, or even shrewd marketing.  In an emergency, we will turn to what is ubiquitous, familiar, and available.  It’s in our national security interest for our social networking sites to be ready.


18
Apr 09

Daily Links for April 18th

  • Revenge of the RINOs – The Daily Beast – Meghan McCain is right – Democrats and Republicans needs to agree on what needs to be done, even if they don't agree on how to do it.
  • Allvoices.com – That’s fine, Gov. Rick Perry, Texas can go ahea… – Gov. Rick Perry of Texas grabbed national attention again this week during the anti-tax teabag ruckus by suggesting that Texas might just at some point get so fed up with federal taxation that they'd want to secede from the United States. He bragged that the Texas economy is in good shape compared with other states, let alone compared to the "federal budget mess," said Fox News. I say we call that bluff. I live in Texas; I know that Texas is, according to State Representative Eliot Shapleigh, "On the Brink." Here's a small sample of Texas's rankings compared to the 50 U.S. states (1=high, 50=low).

26
Feb 09

Daily Links for February 25th through February 26th

  • Pew Research Center: Social Segregation – A 2007 Pew Research survey found that while a large majority of Americans say they have friends of a different race, pluralities of whites (45%), blacks (35%) and Hispanics (39%) say they have "just a few" friends of a different race. About a third of whites and blacks say they have "some" friends of a different race, and very few say that either "all" or "most" are of a different race.
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