Open and transparent is the theme surrounding our administration to the tune of one federally-run one-stop-resource of all data involving the management and governing of our nation: Data.gov. (Well…maybe not ALL data.) In an effort to right past wrongs, the Obama Administration is seeking to make the government’s information available to the public in an organized, easy-to-consume package. The web development community been sold on a beautiful idea. Five months later, we can see how the data is stacking up.
Tag Archive for 'technology'
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Was just referred a service online which generates sequence diagrams for modeling communication between components. You type in the interactions in text and it generates the image for you on the fly!
This is a great find and will try it out in my next project.
http://websequencediagrams.com
Edit: And if quick sequence diagrams didn’t do it for you, here’s a program that makes almost every other type of diagram Visio-style. There is a one-diagram limit if you don’t want to pony up the monthly cash, but it’s great for one-off diagrams!
Font creation is something only the geekiest might bother with, but what could possibly be greater than having a font which mimics your actual handwriting!? I know, I know, I had you at “font creation,” but in all seriousness, there are swaths of fun applications to be had! For instance, you could add a personal touch to your own website using sIFR techniques. Maybe you could add a “personal” note to any of the documents which need your review. Or even “write” your Christmas cards to your family and friends and print them en masse instead of grinding through them once a year. Okay, so maybe they won’t change your life in any significant way, but I dare anyone to tell me its not fun.
This is an absolutely wonderful direction for the health care industry to consider. Health care has gotten incredibly impersonal in the States. Despite the ridiculously large expense of health insurance, I’d be willing to bet that that’s a small part of people’s overall dissatisfaction.
Jay Parkinson is busy developing a system which will help doctors bring medicine and technology together…an area where medicine has been lacking for quite some time now. His system is called Myca and gives an great first impression of what can be done in this area. Using this system, he’s used many of his ideas of how health care should be and started hellohealth which takes a majority of the pain out of seeing your primary care provider.
In the next step, I see your information being managed by a trusted third party (Google Health?), accessible between providers (with the necessary permission, of course), and orchestrated through an application on your handset device. The Daily Fix does a quick run down of what Dr. Parkinson has been up to and I highly recommend the read.
Transparency and freedom is what the Internet is founded on. All of this business with ISPs trying to manage and prioritize your traffic is an absolute mess.
If you happened to be living under a rock this last year you missed the fiasco with Network Neutrality and our government’s attempt to make things “better” for the net. The latest tools released by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute will put an extra feather in the cap of netizens everywhere. At the very least, you will be given tools to make your ISP reveal more than they intended about how they handle your traffic. mLab is such a resource where you can find the tools which provide the evidence showing how innocent your ISP really is.
It’s also interesting (but not surprising) to point out that it is strongly supported by Google who has a strong stake in balanced networks as we move closer to a network based OS.
