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November 25, 2003
Republican Hackers
Doc's put out a call for Republican hackers for a story he's doing for Linux Journal. He's actually a bit more particular than just wanting people who program and belong to the Grand Old Party---he's looking for anyone working on the Bush campaign who'll talk to him about what they're doing technology-wise.
We're seeing a lot more innovation from the Democratic candidates in their use of the Web this political season than from the Republican side. I suspect that that has to do with the fact that there's going to be a hard-fought primary on the Democratic side. Incumbents are typically more conservative in their strategy because they can afford to be. Still, I'd love to hear of innovative uses of technology that candidates of any stripe are employing this season.
As long as we're on the subject, I'm anxious to not sit on the sidelines through the 2004 election. I'm happy to serve as a consultant to campaigns looking for ways to use technology to connect with voters.
08:47 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Open Government Interoperability Project
Tom Adelstein has written a great series of articles on the use of open source software (OSS) in state and local governments.
Tom is helping to head a project called the Open Government Interoperability Project whose stated purpose is to provide "a blueprint for government software interoperability, exchange and data access." The project has compiled a list of over 185 local government applications that could be built as open source.
The project's position statement ought to be read by every government worker in the US. Note that I didn't say "IT worker." Don't make the mistake of thinking this is something that just the techies need to know. Most of them probably already know it at some level. Its the business managers that need to understand why interoperability is crucial to their future and how OSS can play a role.
The project will provide a framework, common database vocabulary, a toolkit and other support necessary to carry off their vision. I hope the database vocabulary include support for developing common data models and XML vocabularies as well.
11:39 AM | Recommend This | Print This
Bookmarklet: See CSS Changes in Real Time
If you ever do any site design and play with CSS stylesheets, you know what a pain it can be to make a change, save it, reload the browser, and repeat until you get the look you want. I found a nifty little bookmarklet that shows CSS stylesheet changes in real time as you make them. It only works in Mozilla and Netscape but its very handy. There are several other Web Development bookmarklets over at squarefree.com that look worthwhile as well.