Set your sights on smart sites
Heading into the new millennium, the Internet will evolve into an ever-more sophisticated tool for communications and collaboration, according to industry analysts. Just about everything that can be done on a standalone computer now probably will be fused to the Net. Several emerging technologies have a head start in transforming the Internet over the next few years.
New Intergraph graphics bundle is a whiz at 3-D apps, company says
Intergraph Corp. is claiming that its Wildcat 3-D graphics system can perform up to 10 times better than current 3-D desktop systems running Unix or Microsoft Windows NT. The Huntsville, Ala., company announced the graphics package last month at the Siggraph trade show in Orlando, Fla. The performance boost comes by way of the Intense 3-D Wildcat 4100 accelerator chip set and ParaScale architecture, which will be standard in all Intergraph TDZ 2000 ViZual workstations. Users
British conservation group claims hacker had Navy Net address
An official with a British conservation group alleges that someone using a Navy computer at the Pentagon tried to hack into the group's server. In an e-mail to the media, the group claimed that an unknown user at the Pentagon tried and failed three times to breach a secure link on a Web server used by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society located in Bath, England.
Combining e-mail from multiple accounts is a very messy process - COMMUNICATIONS
Many government employees have e-mail accounts tucked away all over the Internet: perhaps a Novell GroupWise account at work, a NetCom or America Online account at home, and an extra account at http://www.hotmail.com for watching mail lists. It's nice to be so plugged in, but multiple accounts mean lengthy address books at each location. If you want to merge address books or combine message folders, compatibility problems often ensue.
People
The General Services Administration has named William A. "Bill" Griessel assistant regional administrator of the Federal Technology Service. He will head operations in the six-state Great Lakes region, headquartered in Chicago. Frank Lalley has become the assistant commissioner of the Office of Service Delivery at the General Services Administration's Federal Technology Service. He will lead the transition to the FTS 2001 long-distance telecommunications service when contracts are awarded this fall.
BUYERS GUIDE - Presentation hardware
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." —William Shakespeare Check this list before you hit the road If it's important, carry a spare. If you can't, rethink your presentation. Use a carrying case that can survive a drop by a luggage handler. Consider the size of your audience. Will you need a built-in public-address system? Does your presentation demand a whiteboard, and will there be one at
A late entry in firewall assessment gets kudos for performance, speed
One product was not available during the test period—CyberGuard Firewall for NT, Version 4.1 from CyberGuard Corp. of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. National Software Testing Laboratory has since tested CyberGuard and found it a top performer. One caveat: Use of network address translation reduced performance of the other firewalls, and CyberGuard does dynamic translation that the lab did not test.
Toot your horn, and increase traffic to your Web site with portals
Portal is the buzzword of the moment, just as push was last summer. Chances are, the term will lose its panache as fast as push did. But the idea of building a popular entry point for important information will survive and thrive. The fact that portals have risen to the top of the collective Internet consciousness marks an evolution in our understanding of how people use and navigate the Internet.
HHS wants feedback on a new identification system
The Health and Human Services Department, which Congress has charged with creating a health care identification numbering system, wants to get the public's view of a new national ID. In its 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Congress directed HHS to come up with what it called Unique Health Identifiers for all citizens. The UHI numbers would let the government, health insurers, hospitals, doctors and health researchers track peoples' medical histories from birth to death.
DOD COMPUTING | BRIEFING BOOK
Simulation milestone. The Defense Department's Joint Simulation System has reached its first milestone. Build Zero, a recent software design review, successfully demonstrated that JSIMS' basic architecture works. JSIMS is a modeling and simulation tool that integrates Army, Navy and Air Force systems. The $150 million program combines the services' next-generation models, including the Army's War Simulation-2000, the Air Force's National Air and Space Model, and the Navy's Maritime System, into a collaborative system. TRW Inc. provides JSIMS'
ENTERPRISE COMPUTING
Paper is cheap, paper archival isn't Archival medium/Estimated cost per megabyte Paper: $10.00 Microfiche: $1.20 12-inch WORM optical disk: 0.11 51/4-inch optical disk: 0.09 Near-line archival tape: 0.01 WORM optical disks once were the only electronic storage media approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now the write-once, read-many-times media faces lower-cost competition from tape cartridges that mimic WORM disks, according to a storage industry official.
Put paper in its place: a permanent round file, contends the furry one
No matter how diligently he adheres to the touch-each-page-only-once mantra, the Rat still finds himself needing a backhoe to dig out his lead-lined cubicle every three months. Electrons the furry one can deal with. Molecules, he can't. So the cyberrodent seems like a natural when agency brass wanted to detail someone to look into electronic payments and transactions.
New desktop computing products
Agencies that deal directly with citizens on corrections or social service issues, or that prefer biometrics to passwords for network log-ins, can buy a PC fingerprint reader from Compaq Computer Corp. The biometric reader captures minute characteristics of a user's fingerprint, rather than the fingerprint image, for storage on a server running Microsoft Windows Server 4.0, said Michael Takemura, Compaq product marketing manager.
AF awards $486 million in training contracts
The Aeronautical Systems Center this month awarded five vendors contracts worth $486 million jointly to develop training systems for the Air Force. The vendors—Boeing Co.; Camber Corp. of Huntsville, Ala.; Intelx Corp. of Leesburg, Va.; Lockheed Martin Corp.; and Raytheon Training Inc. of Irving, Texas—will provide the Air Force with systems, courseware, training and support.
USGS opens gateway to Earth
Before the Geological Survey teamed with Microsoft Corp. to set up the TerraServer Web site, USGS had never tried to put so much data online over the Internet. The earth science agency typically distributes its aerial image data on CD-recordable disks or 8-mm tapes, or stages it over the network using the File Transfer Protocol.
Plug-in will let you become a sophisticated mapmaker
Pros and cons: + Best of GIS and graphics creation + Many tools for map enhancement – Lot of training and resources required Real-life requirements: Adobe Illustrator under Win9x, NT or Mac OS; 200-MHz processor; 64M of RAM; 17-inch monitor; at least 4M free on hard drive
GAO: Pentagon must play larger role in Force XXI
The Army so far has exercised acquisition oversight over its Force XXI battlefield digitization initiative, but the General Accounting Office contends that should change. Defense Department senior management should scrutinize the cost and schedule risks related to creating the first digitized battlefield, GAO said in a report late last month. At the heart of the Army's battlefield digitization effort is the Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and Below (FBCB2) program. For the FBCB2 program, the service is
Congress weighs bill to protect data ownership
Not everyone is happy about the way that the Internet has expanded the ability to find, use and download information from all over the globe. Some database owners worry that the Internet and the law have combined to undermine their ability to profit from information products. In response, they have partially pushed through Congress a new database protection bill that could affect the price and availability of data.
There will be fewer protests unless there are more
In case you missed it, I'll tell you what happened at a recent symposium on bid protests held by the American Bar Association's Section on Public Contract Law last month. The participants were lawyers, agency officials, contractors, folks from the General Accounting Office and even judges from the Court of Federal Claims. Like a bomber crew in a World War II movie, every interest group was represented.
Data from Indian Affairs GIS helps 200 tribes manage their land
A tribe can get information only about the land it owns. American Indian tribes now have access to a geographic information system for land planning, thanks to a free service from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The bureau's Geographic Data Service Center in Denver maintains a database of aerial photographs, maps and other data sets that tribes nationwide can access with minimum technology, bureau officials said.
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