| Federal CIO Vivek Kundra Resigns, Plans to Join Harvard The federal government is losing its first-ever chief information officer. Vivek Kundra, the man behind Data.gov, the government IT Dashboard and the federal initiative to reduce data centers and move to the cloud, will leave his post in August, according to Politico. He is reported to be going to Harvard to join the Kennedy School and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, according to Federal News Radio. President Obama had tapped Kundra to be the first federal CIO in 2009 after he had been the chief technology officer of Washington, D.C.
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Facebook Users are More Trusting, More Connected & More Engaged, Says Study Online social networking sites have often been accused of separating people from the real world, and providing them with the illusion of connection through virtual relationships which aren't the equivalent of their offline counterparts. But that's not actually the case, a new study says. Facebook users actually have more close relationships than non-users, and are more trusting, more politically engaged and get more social support than other Internet users.
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Yahoo Debuts App Search Engine & AppSpot, an App-Finding App Today, Yahoo introduced two new search tools, one a new online search engine for finding new mobile applications, and the other a mobile app called AppSpot (iPhone, Android), which does the same. According to a Yahoo blog post, the goal of these new services is to help you better sort through the some 425,000 mobile applications on the iTunes App Store and the 200,000 apps on Google's Android Market so you can find the app you need. But will Yahoo's efforts prove better than any of the existing services that already do the same?
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Web v. Native Apps: Facebook's Project Spartan, HTML5 & Apple Can Facebook unseat Apple at its own game, within its own ecosystem? There are reports that the social giant is working on an HTML5 version of its platform that would become a distribution mechanism for Web applications through Apple's mobile Safari browser. In many ways, this is what people have been predicting for a while -- HTML5 will kill the native mobile application. There are few better companies than Facebook to take up the mantle of HTML5 to foster an environment of Web applications. Facebook has the user and developer base, the social reach and deep pockets to make a big splash in the mobile ecosystem.
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T.S. Eliot in the App Store: "The Waste Land" Comes to the iPad There are plenty of pronouncements about "the future of the book" when it comes to the increasing popularity of e-books and the steady release of new digital literature apps. Indeed, the ability to add video, voice-over, animation, and annotation all point to the great potential when literature becomes electronic, and in coming years we're sure to see a number of new creations that will challenge our definitions of "the book." But the while the possibilities of electronic literature and enhanced e-books sound good in theory, often they fail to deliver in practice. There are a lot of reasons why this occurs: it can be costly to add video or animation, and the integration with the text itself isn't always seamless or sensible. With this in mind, there are a lot of reasons to expect why an iPad version of one of the 20th century's most important poems, T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" could be a complete flop. It's "The Waste Land" after all, a 430-ish line poem that is both incredibly familiar and notoriously difficult. Indeed, Eliot himself seemed aware of the challenges in interpreting the poem as he included his own lengthy notes when the poem was published in 1922.
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Lookout Stays A Step Ahead in Mobile Security, Releases Safe Browsing Feature Mobile security startup Lookout is adding a new function to its suite of products today by releasing a "safe browsing" feature to its Android application. Lookout is also partnering with Sprint to make access to the application easy through the Sprint Zone or Tab in the Android Market. The traditional problems that personal computers face in terms of security - malware, viruses, Trojans - that lead to compromised data and security problems are rapidly shifting to mobile devices. Data and identity villains will always go after the richest targets. Phones were not a not a rich target ... until they became smart.
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As News Goes From Print to Pixels, The Onion Thrives
As many print media outlets continue to struggle to find their place in an increasingly digital ecosystem, the satirical newspaper The Onion has managed to not only make the most the Web and social media, but also continue to expand into new markets and new mediums.
On the second day of ReadWriteWeb's 2Way Summit Tuesday, a team of Onion staffers walked attendees through the publication's history, from its fictitious beginnings in 1756 all the way to its modern experimentation with social media and expansion into broadcast.
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CIA.gov Possibly Down, LulzSec Claims Responsibility CIA.gov, the public website of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, seems to be down for some people. Some ReadWriteWeb writers could not get it to load, though some could. LulzSec, the group who prosecuted an attack against the U.S. Senate website are taking responsibility.
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Bloomsday Online: James Joyce, Ulysses and Dublin Tomorrow, June 16, is "Bloomsday." Celebrated since 1954, it honors James Joyce and his groundbreaking novel Ulysses, set in the Irish capital and modeled on the ancient Greek epic, the Odyssey. The events of the novel are set on a single day, June 16, in 1904. Lionized and reviled, the novel celebrates the aspirations and lust, dignity and foolishness, of its protagonists, Leopold Bloom and Molly, Stephen Dedalus and others. For over 50 years Bloomsday has been celebrated with journeys to the locations in the novel, marathon readings of the book and even a road race. Now we can add the social web as both a "place" of celebration and an aid to that celebration.
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Webdoc Makes Creating Digital Flyers Easy and Ubiquitous What if you could create content as quick as you write a tweet? That is what startup Webdoc wants to know and it has created a tool where building a micro website or digital flyer is a relatively smooth and pain free project. Webdoc is not revolutionary, but it is an interesting step in do-it-yourself publishing. It gives users a frame that they can do just about anything in and then embed that frame anywhere on the Web. For instance, if you want to create a flyer for your band, add an audio clip and YouTube video and canvas the Internet, a Webdoc may be just the thing you are looking for.
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