It’s rare to hear someone refer to a conference presentation from a government bureaucrat as “a treat.” But, that is just how numerous observers have described a recent speech by Todd Park, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ “Entrepreneur in Residence” and chief technology officer. Read More »

Space agency NASA has sought Australian government and private organisations to participate in an international space apps competition next year. NASA's open government initiative director Nick Skytland told the Gov 2.0 conference in Canberra that the challenge will culminate in a two-day event that will provide an opportunity for government to use the expertise and entrepreneurial spirit Read More »

NASA, already among the government leaders in cloud computing, plans to offer a cloud storefront where scientists will be able to determine their computing needs and access cloud services from a central location. Read More »

NASA on March 29 and 30 hosted its first-ever Open Source Summit here at the Ames Research Center at the former Naval Air Station (NAS) Moffett Field, now known as the Moffett Federal Airfield. This is generally the destination for Air Force One and Air Force Two when the president and vice president visit the San Francisco Bay Area. Read More »

Sierra Wireless and the Eclipse Foundation announced an Eclipse working group to define an open development standard for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Read More »

A group of Internet activists gathered last week in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel to begin planning an ambitious project—they hope to overcome electronic surveillance and censorship by creating a whole new Internet. The group, which coordinates its efforts through the Reddit social networking site, calls its endeavor The Darknet Project (TDP). Read More »

Professor of orthopedic surgery Scott Delp developed OpenSim in 2007. He said his long-term goal is to create simulation tools that could be applied to address important clinical problems. Delp developed the project as part of SimTK, an online host for software from the National Institute of Health’s Center for Biomedical Computation at Stanford (SimBios),which allotted money to fund the OpenSim project.

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A year ago at Google HQ in Mountain View, Andy Rubin built a mechanical robot arm. "I put a hammer in its hand and connected it to a big Chinese gong. Whenever Android sells 10,000 units, the gong sounds and you can hear it through the whole building. When I designed it, it sounded three times a day: now it does it every three minutes. I really have to reprogram it..." Read More »

Ward Cunningham, best known as the inventor of the wiki, invited me to his home for dinner last Friday night. Ralph Johnson, a world-class leader in object oriented programming technology, pattern languages, and refactoring, happened to be his house guest. Read More »

I had the pleasure of taping a conversation with wiki inventor Ward Cunningham at Health Camp Oregon in Portland Oregon Oct 22, 2011. Ward and I had been having Skype video chats, comparing our notes about how his invention of the wiki and my initial architecture for VistA had so many similarities. Ward is an amazing thinker with a wonderful, generous attitude about technology. Read More »