Adding timeout to Net::HTTP.get_response
One of the parts of Ruby that shows the languages lack of maturity is the Net::HTTP module. There are a lot of magic techniques that people have learned to…
New FedBizOpps A Step In the Right Direction
During FOSE, I was surprised to find that FedBizOpps had completely changed its format, look, feel, and usability. I found out about this because I had bookmarked several pages…
Observations from FOSE Day 2
The people who came by our booth yesterday seemed to represent a slightly different mindset than what we saw in Day 1. I can still categorize the attendees: People…
FOSE is the Federal Open Source Expo?
FOSE means:“Free/Open Source Expo” – Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems“Federal Open Source Expo” – Eric Pugh, Principal of OpenSource Connections When the chairman of a company that spends…
If Free Is the Future of Business, Why Does the Government Pay So Much For Proprietary Software?
In the March, 2008 issue of Wired Magazine, Chris Anderson wrote an article positing that the marginal cost of technologies which drive the Internet (and, by inference, software) will…
Apple iTouch, the New PDA
Lets get crazy for a moment and declare the iPod touch the New Breed of PDA, a personal digital assistant, not to be confused with public display of affection,…
Semantic Web isn’t meant to help LinkedIn (and Facebook, and MySpace)
There was a great post on TechCrunch about Yahoo embracing the semantic web. Basically, the semantic web is the ability to extract meaning from unstructured content. So if LinkedIn…
4 Things Google is doing internally to foster collaboration and innovation
There have been a couple interesting blog posts this week that highlight a webinar presentation given by a Google engineer this week about innovation and collaboration, and how they…
IE 8 Beta 1 Released at Mix Keynote
IE 8 Beta 1 will be released after the keynote, which is still currently going on as I write this. IE has been play catching up of late, but…
eDemocracy barCamp Podcasting session summary
Last weekend I attended the inaugural eDemocracy barCamp in Washington DC. It was a very good experience and I definitely want to thank all those who organized it. I…
Arriving At Mix 2008 (Las Vegas)
Technically its 4am EST, but here its 1am (and I pretty much live on a west coast clock, even though I was born and raised in Va), which is…
Google Sites Launches, Bringing the Ultimate Mashup Maker One Step Closer
Today, Google announced the launch of its latest application, Google Sites. Google Sites is an application designed to make it easier for those who are not technically savvy to…