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Government Agencies Lagging In Tech Adoption

Government market research firm Market Connections, today released a new survey that calls government agencies continually behind the curve in technology adoption compared to the private sector. The study, which examined the perceptions and adoption of new technologies among federal government decision makers, indicated the perception of technology adoption in government agencies as “ as...

FTC Warns Organizations Of Data Breaches

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced it has contacted nearly 100 organizations about personal information, including sensitive data about customers or employees that has been shared from the organizations’ computer networks and is available on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing sites which can lead to identity theft or fraud.



Social Media To Play A Major Role In Costa Rica Elections

Electing a woman to be your head of state isn’t that big a deal these days.

The latest country to join a long list of states with women leaders is Costa Rica: in the presidential election conducted yesterday, the winner by a comfortable margin is Laura Chinchilla Miranda, the first woman to become head of state in this Central American republic.

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FTC Turns Their Attention To Facebook’s Privacy Policies

For those of you who have ever been in sales or were trained to sell you may have heard the expression that it is “better to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission”. Nice pithy little saying that simply means, go ahead and do what you want to do to get the job done and if there are any issues they will be worked out. While that is something that produces chuckles amongst the rebel sales force, in practice it often ends up in bad business and forcing people to change things that don’t need to be changed.

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Consumer Groups Urge The FTC To Block Google From Acquiring AdMob

In November, Google announced it was acquiring AdMob for $750M. The deal is still in the works, of course—in part, at least, because the FTC is taking a first and, as of last week, second look at the deal. As the FTC continues to scrutinize the search giant buying the mobile ad giant, consumer groups are taking their opportunity to have their say—and it’s not in favor of the deal.

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FTC Demands Full Disclosure From Bloggers

I’m still struggling with the whole full disclosure thing from the FTC. It’s not that I disagree with it–in fact, I think I have been following their guidelines all along. But now I feel like I really need to watch myself or I’m going to jail. All this was brought to mind when Mashable featured the work that Converseon [full disclosure: I am Converseon's Chief Strategist] client Telstra [full disclosure: I have tangentially worked on the Telstra account for Converseon] did to publicize its social media guidelines with an interactive learning module [full disclosure: oh wait, I don't think I need to say anything this time].

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The FTC Redefines Honesty For Social Media And Bloggers

So the much-vaunted Federal Trade Commission guidelines for social media came into play today. There’s been a lot said about them on both sides of the fence, with plenty bloggers offering their views for and against. Some say it will inhibit free speech, while others applaud the FTC for getting involved.

Whatever your stance, one thing that is abundantly clear is that it’s not that big a deal.

So what if the FTC have turned their gaze towards social media, and bloggers in particular? There’s a key word that everyone should already be adhering to anyway.

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U.S Government Unprepared For Coming Cyber Threats

Warfare is something that through the years has evolved in a technological sense, but fundamentally has stayed the same — have your men kill the other men. In the cyber world, things work a bit differently but there is such a thing as cyberwarfare. And according to the GAO (Government Accountability Office) is a brand of warfare that’s on the rise.
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Google Fires Back Against FCC Probing

While it remains unclear whether Google Voice should be treated the same way as other telecom companies, the search giant isn’t taking any chances with the rather unpleasant probing it’s receiving from the Federal Communications Commission.

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FTC Finally Finalized The New Blogging Guidelines

In case you’ve missed it, the FTC has finally finalized its new blogging guidelines—including an up-to-$11,000 fine for not disclosing free products or other remuneration given for product reviews (or maybe not). Naturally, this has caused an uproar in the blogosphere—and now the president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Randall Rothenberg, has written an open letter to the FTC objecting to the new guidelines (via).

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FCC Probes Call Blocking In Google Voice

Last week, twenty members of Congress sided with AT&T and asked the Federal Communications Commission to take a good look at Google Voice, because the free telephony service doesn’t allow users to call certain rural numbers. Two days later, Sharon Gillett, chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, sent Google telecom counsel a list of questions about their service.

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US Government Moves Towards Web 2.0 With Apps.gov

Give the government some credit sometimes, the new Apps.gov web site is an open shopping portal based on cloud computing and web 2.0 applications. The web site is clean, sharp, and looks like it will serve a useful purpose if government agencies can get past the old way of doing things and embrace Web 2.0 like New York has.

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