Information Technology

Our good friend Cheryl McKinnon, founder of Candy Strategies, tweeted us about the latest news from the Open Source Alliance of Canada (OSACAN). The alliance is a non-profit organization, founded to promote, foster and sustain the use of open source technology in Canadian government. Yesterday, OSACAN announced the establishment of a center of excellence to promote the use of open source technology in the Canadian public sector. 

For your convenience, attached is a copy of the press release regarding this non-profit center to be used for promoting the use of open source in government.

I do not know when it exactly happened, but a number of years ago I decided to become a pacifist. I am a pacifist that is in the war of open source versus proprietary. In my opinion, the debate over licensing and software development processes is only mildly interesting as it is the quality of the end product that matters to me most. I walk the fine line of being an advocate for open source and a defender of proprietary software. Admittedly I've confused a lot of people that have chosen to take sides in this war. However, there is always room for reasonable civil discussions of any topic when new data and new perspective is given.

"Is the next device that we deploy going to be an iPad, is it going to be a Windows or an Android-based tablet?" said Merritt.

That's a question that the IT staff at United will answer in time, but the mere fact that it can investigate all three client device operating systems is a major change for corporate IT.

-Patrick Thibodeau, With Post-PC Era Comes Real OS Competition, CIO.com, October 26, 2012

This month, Google announced that it has officially moved its Apache page speed module, mod_pagespeed, out of beta. For those websites running on the open source Apache HTTP Server, this module speeds up your site and reduces page load time. On the Internet, where user demand quick page rendering, this Apache module automatically applies web performance best practices to pages, and associated assets (CSS, JavaScript, images) without requiring that you modify your existing content or workflow.

"51 percent of respondents, including a majority of Millennials, believe stormy weather can interfere with cloud computing."

Wakefield Research, "Most Americans Confused By Cloud Computing According to National Survey, News Release", Citrix Systems via ZDNet

I spent most of the last two weeks camping and hiking in the Grand Teton National Park of northwest Wyoming. If you've never visited this national park then take my word on it that Grand Teton is one of the most beautiful places a person can visit in this world. The mountains in this place peak near 13,800 feet and rise from the valley by almost 7,000 feet. Despite the warm summer much of the United States experienced, ice glaciers can still be accessed through a number of day hikes. For anyone that loves the outdoors, this place has everything in the form of wildlife, scenery, and activities. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending from your perspective), what the Grand Teton doesn't have is good 3G or 4G cell phone coverage.

A few days ago, I received an early copy of a press release announcing the launch of Digital Clarity Group (DCG). DCG is an advisory and analyst company geared toward helping business leaders navigate "digital transformation" in their organizations. To the best of my knowledge, I have never recommend a particular consulting or analyst company on any of my blogs. I'd like to set new precedence and tell you why I think if you're a business leader you should consider hiring analysts from DCG to help you and your company face the upcoming technological challenges that have just started to surface.

Long time readers of CMS Report may recall that each summer I plan a number of small vacations intended to reduce my technology usage as much as possible. I have a real need to unplug from my Internet connection, step away from the blogging of content management systems, and leave the computer screen behind. I don't always succeed at this endeavor so this year I'm deploying some new tools to assist me in making this year's Technology Break a success. I now introduce to you, the Jayco CMS.

"On the other hand, the U.S. workforce is now 20-odd years into a decline in expertise in science, technology, engineering and math...If you include statistical analysis in that skill set, the decline potentially sets the stage for a perfect storm in self-service IT, where overconfident but underskilled end users run amok in business systems, draw bad conclusions from randomly mashed-up data or corrupt IT's once-pristine data stores."

-  Tracy Mayor, Self-service IT: Are users up for the task?, ComputerWorld, January 9, 2012