BREAKING NEWS
The Transportation Department has selected MCI WorldCom Inc. as its FTS 2001 provider in a contract worth an estimated $160 million. MCI WorldCom will supply voice, data and Internet services to the department and its agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration. Company officials credited MCI's prior experience at providing mission-critical FAA network services for giving the company an edge.
Coming Corel suite builds on solid core
Real-life requirements: Corel Corp. has not shipped a new office suite for a couple of years, so the buzz is high about the imminent release of WordPerfect Office 2000. I tried out the second beta version. Corel representatives as-sured me most of the features are final and little will change be-tween now and the product's release.
Koskinen: Protect Y2K emergency fund account
Clinton administration officials this month pleaded with lawmakers to protect year 2000 emergency funds from partisan budget crossfire. John A. Koskinen, chairman of the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion, said the money is critical as agencies enter the homestretch on year 2000 efforts. Koskinen asked that the emergency funds appropriated last year not be withdrawn.
Xerox integrates document sharing, summaries
Summarization is finally getting respect from users of document-sharing software, according to product managers for Xerox Corp. The company's Visual Recall document management software automatically generates one-page summaries or 20 key excerpts from documents. "We had summarization three years ago, but folks didn't see a value in it at the time," said Jay Ganesh, Xerox product marketing manager for Visual Recall.
PRODUCT PREFERENCE SURVEY: Antivirus software
When the Melissa virus struck recently, they needed a cure, pronto. And users I talked with said they got it from Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif., whose Norton antivirus software was the top-rated brand in the GCN survey. "Symantec had the Melissa fix out there within 36 hours," said John Engstrom, an IRS computer audit specialist in Tampa, Fla., who uses Symantec's Norton antivirus 5.0. "I was impressed with
DOD Computing Briefing Book
Through the 15-year, $1 billion Integrated Space Command and Control contract, the Air Force wants to wed 40 air, space and missile defense C2 systems to give commanders a common, real-time picture of the battlefield. The Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Air Force Materiel Command's Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., are leading the ISC2 procurement.
Tech Refresh
DriveSavers Inc. claims it can recover data from just about any burned, crushed, dropped or waterlogged hard drive, floppy disk or magneto-optical cartridge, among other dead media. The company boasts a success rate exceeding 90 percent. DLT Solutions Inc. of Herndon, Va., has added DriveSavers services to its General Services Information Technology Schedule contract, a move that might interest federal sites that have no prohibition against sending their unclassified media off-site.
After a crash, Search and Rescue can recover lost or corrupted data
Instead of sending a damaged hard drive to a data recovery service, agencies can recover the lost or corrupted data themselves using $149 software—as long as the stored data has not yet been overwritten and the disk is still spinning. Search and Rescue from PowerQuest Corp. of Orem, Utah, is the enterprise version of Lost and Found from Highpoint Technologies of Austin, Texas, which Power-Quest bought last year.
Air Force runs NATO support network 24-7
Before North Atlantic Treaty Organization pilots began their bombing sorties in Yugoslavia, U.S. Air Force personnel in Europe made some construction sorties of their own at Cervia Air Base, Italy. Technical Sgt. Jeffery Bennett and Staff Sgts. Bert Caouette, Brian Connolly and Jules Volney built an unclassified fiber-optic LAN within 24 hours of arriving at the base, said Maj. Timothy N. Williams, commander of the 48th Expeditionary Communications Flight group at Cervia.
Those who spam feds may be worse than nuisances
Are you facing e-mail madness? Have you been getting unwanted electronic mail lately? Does your in-box greet you each day with a collection of unsolicited electronic advertisements for everything from get-rich schemes to porno site pointers? What right do these strangers have to insult your morals or your intelligence at your own desk?
Treasury installs tool to show both sides of the financial coin
Thanks to its complex financial reporting systems, the federal government reported a $70 billion budget surplus in fiscal 1998, the same year it recorded a $60 billion spending deficit. Believe it or not, both financial statements were accurate, said Steven App, deputy chief financial officer at the Treasury Department. Federal budgeting is based on cash, whereas the government's financial systems use accrual accounting.
SSA will round up stray domains to brand them with common NT
The Social Security Administration, one of the government's largest and most geographically dispersed agencies, wants to rein in its so-called rogue domains—LANs running Microsoft Windows NT that do not conform to the common field office LAN structure. "We have 14 domains out there that we want to consolidate into a single domain," said Ron Cooper, a computing specialist in SSA's Client-Server Division.
Here's the deal: free equipment in exchange for corporate flesh art
Packet Rat R. Fink Here's the deal: free equipment in exchange for corporate flesh art The Rat recently stumbled across a news item that set his mental wheels spinning. A taco restaurant chain in San Francisco is giving away a lifetime of free lunches to customers who get tattooed with the restaurant's logo.
Internet gives documents a new dimension
It is such a natural that, under Al Gore's National Performance Review and, later, Access America initiative, the Net became more than popular; it became policy. The government has decided to use the Internet as its preferred distribution channel. Beyond the Internet, agencies have widely adopted Internet technical standards as their own.
Pacific Fleet takes a Y2K test
After year 2000 readiness tests of several hundred mission-critical shipboard systems, officials of the Navy's Pacific Fleet reported significant progress. But the service will keep working until late this year testing and fixing some systems. From Feb. 19 through March 6, the Pacific Fleet tested the USS Constellation's systems during an at-sea exercise off the Southern California coast. Officials reported only four systems of 150 failed in the Battle Group Systems Integration Test.
Lawyer doubts law will have effect on 2000 disputes
How much impact will the Year 2000 Information Readiness and Disclosure Act have on legal disputes between the federal government and contractors over year 2000-related systems failures? Very little, one Washington lawyer predicts. Although most civil proceedings are covered under PL 105-271, contract enforcement actions brought by a government agency are not, said Michael Aisenberg, who represented industry interests in drafting key provisions of the law.
At last—an Alaska lawmaker submits a bill to regulate e-mail
Users who oppose Internet censorship and filtering are glad to make an exception when it comes to obnoxious e-mail. As a spam-hater myself, I welcome the Inbox Privacy Act sponsored by Sen. Frank Murkowski. The Alaska Republican's bill would force e-mail marketers to identify themselves by making it illegal to hide behind false return addresses. Junk e-mailers would have to honor consumer requests to be removed from lists, and they would have to submit to electronic
FAA: Test indicates all systems are go
A successful year 2000 air traffic control test at the Denver International Airport this month convinced the Federal Aviation Administration that all of its systems will perform A-OK on Jan. 1. "The test went flawlessly," said Timothy Gilbert, technical director of FAA's Year 2000 Program Office. FAA on April 10 and 11 split air traffic systems at the Denver International Airport tower; the Denver Terminal Radar Control Center; the Colorado Springs, Colo., Terminal Radar Control Center; the
For Web browsers, stick with the Big 2
The Web has become indispensable to users searching the Internet for product prices or hunting down contacts on agency intranets. Despite marketing campaigns and the notoriety of antitrust actions, however, few people care which browser they use. I decided to find out whether the most recent versions of browsers had any great improvements over their predecessors. I looked at the two newest versions of browsers in widespread use and one alternative.
HUD uses schedule to standardize on Dell PCs
Housing and Urban Development Department users have been using Dell Computer Corp. PCs exclusively for three years now. HUD began buying Dell OptiPlex systems exclusively in 1996 and 1997. Users now are getting 450-MHz Pentium II systems with 128M of RAM, 10G hard drives and Microsoft Windows 95, said Randall Graham, director of HUD's Customer Service Division in the Office of Information Technology.
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