How Secure are Secure Facilities?

How Secure are Secure Facilities?

Dennis D. McDonald
Security
One of the things I've learned from reading and listening to the thoughts of my friend Martin McKeay, a security expert, is that the best technology can be undone by poorly or inconsistently implemented processes. I thought about this over the weekend when I drove a friend of mine from Alexandria to the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
Should We Be Able to Buy and Sell our Personal Financial and Medical Data?

Should We Be Able to Buy and Sell our Personal Financial and Medical Data?

Dennis D. McDonald
Data Access, Identity, Market Research, NSA, Personal Data Ownership, Privacy, , , Web 2.0
When I first heard about USA Today breaking the NSA domestic phone spying scandal involving the major long distance phone companies, I wasn’t surprised. I won’t even be surprised when, in the next few months, word leaks out that Federal agencies are also involved in non-court-approved electronic screening of domestic call traffic looking for specific words and word combinations.

Blog Page Doodads, ZoomClouds, and Strategic Blogging Policy

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Doodads, Tag Clouds, ZoomClouds
Readers of ALL KIND FOOD will notice that its pages are not encrusted with badges, tag clouds, blog rolls, linkbacks, permalinks, scrolling comments, advertising, Amazon links, dancing babies, and other detritus and ephemera. I call these "Blog Page Doodads." My blog doesn't go in for doodads. That’s by design. When Jeremiah Owyang recently announced to members of The Podcast Roundtable that he had added a cloud of tags supplied by ZoomClouds to his blog, I did wonder if I should add something like this to my own. I've decided not to, at least for the time being.

Is the Internet Increasing or Reducing the Demand for Oil?

Dennis D. McDonald
Industry Analysis,
I am puzzled by the seemingly robust nature of the US economy and the lack of a melt-down due to runaway gasoline prices. I still remember the inflationary hardships caused on the 1970’s by rapid rises in crude oil prices and the inflationary spiral that priced so many people out of the housing market due to huge rises in interest rates. Why do economic conditions seem smoother now despite massive trade imbalances, crushing federal deficits, and an unending commitment to costly (in terms of blood and money) foreign adventures such as Iraq? Is it the Internet?

How To Relate Kaplan and Norton's "Alignment" Process to Enterprise Web 2.0

Dennis D. McDonald
Enterprise 2.0, Governance, How To, Management Tools, Web 2.0
There’s an interesting book excerpt available on the Harvard Business School’s “Working Knowledge” web site titled Managing Alignment as a Process, by Robert S. Kaplan and colleague David P. Norton. I read through the excerpt and what it says about “alignment” is interesting to put into the context of enterprise adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and processes.

DRM is just the Tip of the Iceberg

Dennis D. McDonald
DRM, iTunes
David Berlind's How the portable player tail wags the DRM and operating system dogs (ZDNet, April 25, 2006) is a good indicator of why I haven't written much about DRM here lately. I originally started writing about DRM last year when I realized its use in music CD's threatened my lifelong music collecting hobby. Now that I've pretty much given up buying music, DRM is pretty much a spectator sport for me.

Reality and Opening Up Document Format Standards

Dennis D. McDonald
Standards
Techweb reports on a current effort by a government entity -- this time it's Minnesota -- to open up document format standards. There was a time when such eventualities were addressed by source code escrows that would guarantee a software user access to the tools to recreate and support a product, format, or system should the original vendor or developer go belly up.

The Many Changing Faces of Web 2.0

Dennis D. McDonald
Definitions, Governance, Industry Analysis, Management Tools, , Web 2.0
Basically, “Web 2.0″ means different things to different people. * To the programmer, it’s a set of tools and techniques that have the potential for fundamentally altering how network based applications and data are managed and delivered. * For start-ups and venture capitalists, it’s an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of another bubble. * For the corporate CIO or IT manager, it’s another set of technologies and architectures to be adopted and supported in an era of continued I.T. department budget strains. * For newer or smaller companies, it’s an opportunity to acquire technical and business process infrastructure at a fraction of the investment made by older and legacy companies. * For the marketing manager it’s an opportunity to “end-run” a traditionally unresponsive I.T. department. * For the CEO of an established legacy industry, it’s a threat of loss of control over customer relations. * For the customer it’s an opportunity to establish and maintain relationships that are both personally fulfilling and empowering in the face of the traditional power of larger institutions.

Online Intellectual Property: What About "Non-Documents"?

Dennis D. McDonald
DRM, Demographics, Digital Content Management, Google, , Web 2.0
I received the following email from fellow blogger Chris Law (1000 Flowers Bloom) in response to my article Web 2.0 and Maintaining the Integrity of Online Intellectual Property: I really like your article. One thing that I think is very much related is what happens if it’s not a document? What if it’s say the classified listings on my site that are then being mashed up with a Google Map?

Market Segmentation, Relationship Management, and the Relevance of Web 2.0 Applications

Dennis D. McDonald
Demographics, Sales Management, , , Web 2.0
I haven’t really decided how “revolutionary” web 2.0 applications are. One school of thought is that web 2.0 applications like blogs, podcasts, and wikis are “just another set of channels” to be considered in the overall mix of ways to manage communications with one’s target markets and customers. There’s another school of thought, though, that suggests that the interactivity and social networking aspects of Web 2.0 are finamentally changing the balance of power and influence in the marketplace in a profound way. I come down somewhere in the middle.

Enterprise Blogging and Corporate Ethics

Dennis D. McDonald
Blogging, Ethics
Dave Taylor, a co-moderator with me of the members-only LinkedinBloggers Group on Yahoo!, has an interesting read on his blog titled "Walmart and Edelman PR lead the way on working with bloggers." Lately I've been reading about the increasing acceptance of blogging by corporations as an extension to their ongoing corporate communications with their customer and the public.
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