Today, President-Elect Obama announced a New Deal-like economic stimulus plan with the priority of increasing jobs. The video below is the announcement. His plan includes making government buildings more energy efficient, building and improving roads and bridges, modernizing schools, expanding broadband internet access, and increasing the adoption of electronic medical records.
Boys’ Life magazine is now using WordPress open source software for their website. Boy’s Life is the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America.
Slashdot links to a BusinessWeek article that introduces open source and reports on companies using open source to save money. Some popular software they list as cost-conscious include Linux (operating system), Apache (server), MySQL (relational database), Firefox (web browser), Xen (virtualization), Pentaho (business intelligence), OpenOffice.org (full office suite), Drupal (content management system), Alfresco (content management system), SugarCRM (customer relationship management), and Asterisk (telephone switch/PBX).
USA Today reports on declining city budgets and the cuts made in response. Doesn’t look great, especially for those working in local government (like myself).
Rather interesting news, the FBI has released a new widget that shows their Top 10 Most Wanted, among other information.
TechCrunch covered this, and you can see the FBI page for the widget here. The FBI used the Clearspring widget network to design and host their widget, which looks like an iPhone.
This is just another instance of governments beginning to use internet technology, new media, and web 2.0 to spread information.