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Congress Moves to Rein in Illegal Wiretaps
The JUSTICE Act, short for the Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools in Counterterrorism Efforts Act, was brought to my attention today. The JUSTICE Act seeks to put constraints on the Bush-era USA Patriot Act and FISA Act Amendment which drove national security efforts here at home post-9/11. In the past, I have been a very…
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The Washington Redskins Crowd-sourcing Their Games
A week before the start of the NFL 2009 season, Cincinnati Bengals Wide Reciever-turned-parttime-kicker, Chad Ochocino, tweeted to his fans that he was going to delete his Twitter account due to strict NFL rules. Of course he didn’t, and Ochocinco, always a showman, used it to deliver more buzz around his ego. However, the NFL…
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Government as a Platform?
Data, data, data. This is the answer for government in this new world of Government 2.0. Making government available to the citizens by building platforms for change. These are the ideas bandied around when the Silicon Valley Warlords came to Washington, D.C. this week to put on the invitation only Gov 2.0 Summit and teach…
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WordPress Security and How I’m Going to Take All Your Money
So, it’s happened again. Another vulnerability discovered in WordPress that is now becoming the raging topic around the blogosphere. Is WordPress insecure? Should people move to another platform? If we stomp our feet loud and enough and whine enough, then we can make WordPress look like a ridiculous piece of software that only amateurs should…
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The BASIC Cloud Framework API
Last night, I spent the evening with a bunch of PHP developers in DC. This informal gathering in the DC-PHP community is a regular occurrence known as the DC PHP Beverage Subgroup – Virginia Chapter. There is also a DC-chapter that meets once a month as well. These two informal gatherings are for the sole…
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WordPress Bible Book Tour
From the moment I announced that I would be writing the WordPress Bible, friends and fans all over the world have been asking me to come to their city to do an event. Clearly, I would love to do such a thing, but without tremendous support it is not in the cards. However, more recently,…
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Crime Statistics in DC
After the news today that MSNBC.com acquired EveryBlock, a service that tracks local news in 12 different cities and organizes news, reviews, and other localized data into searchable locales (zip codes, neighborhoods, etc), I decided to poke around a bit. One of the areas that EveryBlock tracks is crime statistics and Washington, DC is one…
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Bring Different Innovation to Washington
A few weeks ago, I received a call from my friend Robert Neelbauer at about 11 pm. He wanted to talk about innovation and technology startups in DC. For those who live around here, you know there’s not a lot of them. Mostly project-type things that entrepreneurs who work day jobs have cooking. And of…