Defense's forecast of 2000 repairs spending is increasing, report says
The Defense Department continues to push upward its cost estimate for preparing systems for 2000. In its most recent report to the Office of Management and Budget, DOD added about $600 million to its estimate, bringing the total to more than $2.5 billion. In the fall, DOD had estimated it would spend about $1.9 billion on date code fixes.
Emergency funds will make the difference for Rural Development
Emergency year 2000 funds will help the Rural Development Agency buy the new desktop and notebook PCs it needs to process single-family housing loans. The Agriculture Department agency uses software created and maintained by USDA's National Finance Center to process loans through its Single-Family Housing Program in St. Louis. But NFC had to upgrade the software and make it year 2000-ready, said Joe Perez, Rural Development's chief information officer.
Picture this: A business card with real impact
Mark A. Kellner I was recently at a conference hosted by a technology company. The participants were experienced businesspeople, and we all had gone through that basic ritual, exchanging business cards, hundreds if not thousands of times. Yet when I gave my card to people, their eyes lit up, their expressions changed, and I was questioned about it.
No need to strain your memory | GCN
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Digital Lava offers agencies another option in video publishing
Digital Lava Inc. of Los Angeles is aiming a new release of its video publishing software at the federal market. The first version of its VideoVisor desktop viewer, released in 1996, found few federal customers, chief executive officer Joshua D.J. Sharfman said. But he expects the new release, called vPrism Publisher, to do better, especially in the Defense Department. He said DOD has "a huge training burden" to deliver to many locations over various kinds of
The Rat knows how to sell—or buy—almost anything in Washington
Packet Rat R. Fink The online auction mania has captured the Rat's respectful admiration. It's his kind of business: no inventory, no shipping, no fuss, no muss. Just keep the site up, and the money rolls in. It's like selling air. Of course, some people do sell air on the Internet—or at least air derivatives. One enterprising wannabe e-business figured out how to capitalize on the narrow window of opportunity presented
TECH REFRESH
TECH REFRESH GCN January 25, 1999 Contracting officers kept busy adding new notebook computer products to federal contracts during the first quarter of fiscal 1999. Memory and storage upgrades for Dell Computer Corp. Latitude notebooks are now available on the company's General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contract. A second 6.4G hard drive to double the Latitude's internal storage is $466.
Computerized valet kept tabs on astronaut Glenn
When John Glenn donned a wired vest and head gear for a sleep experiment on his recent space shuttle mission, he had a helper, a kind of computerized valet to make sure everything was properly connected and activated. Glenn's helper was an artificial intelligence system called the Principal Investigator in a Box, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. PI in a Box acts as
SGI debuts its new multiprocessor systems for NT 4.0
Using its own graphics accelerator and architecture, Silicon Graphics Inc. has ventured into the Intel-powered PC market with 2-D and 3-D graphics-oriented systems running Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0. The dual- and quad-processor 320 and 540 systems can handle four streams of uncompressed video, said Cliff Apsey, director of product marketing. They transfer up to 3.2G of graphics and video data per second, he said.
Do not pass Go, do not collect 2000 without the dating game rules
If you think your agency's year 2000 problems are licked, here's a quick quiz. What's important about Sept. 9, 1999, Feb. 29, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2000? Some experts say certain database applications are going to parse the first of the dates as 9/9/99, which database users will recognize as common dummy date code.
Verity makes a plug-in that works as a file translator
Verity Inc. has developed a client package through which PC users can exchange and review files without having the native applications installed. The company also has a server product that can convert proprietary documents for viewing by Web browser. The $65 KeyView Pro 6.5 handles 225 application formats including Applixware Office, Corel WordPerfect Suite 8, Lotus SmartSuite 97 and Millenium Edition, and Microsoft Office 95, 97 and 2000. Users also
FAA names AT&T exec Daniel Mehan to become its first chief information officer
The Federal Aviation Administration last week tapped Daniel J. Mehan to be its first chief information officer. FAA chose the career AT&T Corp. executive from a pool of more than 50 candidates. Mehan, 54, is AT&T's international vice president of quality and business management in New Jersey. He will start his new job at FAA on Feb. 1.
Despite setbacks, DOD vows to fix all date code
The Defense Department will be able to protect the United States and its allies next year despite the threat of date code errors crippling DOD systems, deputy Defense secretary John Hamre said this month. DOD will have all of its 2,304 mission-critical systems year 2000-ready by Dec. 31, Hamre said at a Pentagon press briefing. As of Jan. 1, 81 percent of the department's mission-critical systems had been fixed, he said.
System sells stats on demand
Stat-USA, the Commerce Department's fee-funded statistics retailer, has put up an online newsstand that lets customers buy individual documents through a third-party transaction service. "As far as we can tell, we're the first agency to use this kind of system," Stat-USA director Ken Rogers said.
Marines post buying guide
SAN DIEGO—The Marine Corps has created a buyer's guide and posted it on the Web to make sure that Marines buy and use a common suite of hardware and software products. The buyer's guide, established in August by the Marine Corps Systems Command, lists specific servers, PCs and notebooks that local commanders and contracting offices are authorized to buy. The guide, posted on the Web at http://www.marcorsyscom.usmc.mil/buyersguide, also identifies standard
DISA, other DOD agencies garner awards for operations upgrades, systems work
Several Defense Department agencies received Hammer Awards from the National Partnership for Reinventing Government for improving operations and consolidating systems. The DOD organizations were recognized for streamlining operations, cutting costs by more than $11 billion and eliminating more than 110,000 positions over a six-year period. Among the winners were the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, and the Defense Logistics Agency.
LAB NOTES
In the pink. Apple Computer Inc.'s iMac has not only brought the company out of the red, it has revived the once moribund Apple in the hearts and minds of PC users as well. The iMac's rounded, post-modernist, translucent blue shell was what drew people's attention first. Then they started asking for it in other colors. Apple, seeing a golden opportunity, promptly announced it would make iMacs in five hues.
Opera browser is simple and effective
Tired of the browser battles? Want to eliminate Explorer and negate Netscape? Go to the Opera. This little browser's arias don't quite reach the same peaks as the Big Two. But Opera does a good job of supporting the Web's underlying Hypertext Markup Language most of the time.
New notebook makes good use of small package
GCNdex32 scores Floating-point math 4.20 4.50 Integer math 7.81 7.91 Video 7.04 7.02 Small-file access 2.89 2.71 Large-file access 2.60 2.65
Online service demands will drive outsourcing, futurist says
CHAPEL HILL, N.C.—James Canton thinks he has seen the future of government, and it is outsourced. Citizens accustomed to online consumer services will demand the same convenience from government agencies, said Canton, president of the Institute for Global Futures, a San Francisco think tank. But government cannot afford the time and money to develop information technology resources to satisfy them, he said.
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