Friday - December 19, 2008
The Justice Department has sued Microsemi to force the chipmaker to unravel its $25 million acquisition of Semicoa, a deal the government believes is driving prices up and quality down for semiconductors used by the Defense Department and NASA. The antitrust lawsuit filed Thursday claims that Irvine, Calif.-based Microsemi created a monopoly on parts called "small signal transistors," which amplify electrical signals, when the company bought Semicoa in July.
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Sunday - November 30, 2008
Despite the city's fiscal woes, Philadelphia's 3-1-1 nonemergency call center is on track to open by the end of the year. Still, Managing Director Camille Barnett said that some of the plans have been scaled back. "It's changed in the parameters, but we've kept the essence," Barnett said.
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Tuesday - November 18, 2008
What mistakes will cause emergency communication systems to undergo excessive stress or possibly fail in a disaster, and what steps should be taken to improve performance? One of the biggest challenges for emergency communication centers is the wide range of situations that require responses.
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Friday - November 14, 2008
Saturday, Nov. 8, 6:15 p.m. I am meeting a friend at 7, and I'm later than I wanted to be getting to the Metro. Unfortunately, I'm a bit off my stride. I forgot to get dollar bills and now have to scrounge through my purse looking for enough loose change. It occurs to me how nice it would be if the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority took debit cards.
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Wednesday - November 12, 2008
For the second time since its acquisition of Siebel, Oracle is rolling out a major upgrade of the iconic on-premise suite. Version 8.1.1 has rehabbed many of its features -- as well as lavished a great deal of attention on the loyalty functions. The company is also introducing Oracle CRM Gadgets for Sales -- five mini-applications that provide enterprise data and service leveraging Web 2.0 content.
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Friday - October 31, 2008
The U.S. government is getting better at designing Web sites that are user-friendly and provide value, according to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, released by the University of Michigan and ForeSee Results. Satisfaction with federal Web sites improved 1.4 percent to 73.9 on ACSI's 100-point scale -- one of the highest scores in this category thus far.
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Friday - October 17, 2008
It has been eight years since the 2000 presidential election revealed the many flaws that existed in the mechanics of U.S. voting systems. Despite that debacle, many states have not made even basic improvements to assist voters -- such as providing user-friendly Web sites that tell them how to register and where to go to vote.
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Friday - October 3, 2008
Railhead, a massive government IT project, is failing -- and it's not an isolated case. Large IT projects in agencies from the FBI to the Census Bureau spectacularly -- and, it seems, regularly -- crash and burn, much to taxpayers' disgust. It seems there are certain aspects of government culture that make IT failure more likely. It just may be that failure is built into the system.
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Saturday - September 20, 2008
The public sector is frequently under fire for inefficient data storage and data loss. With the pressure mounting to avoid further embarrassment, departments are looking to the channel for advice on how to deal with their data challenges. The release of the British government's "Hannigan Data Handling Procedures in Government: Final Report" in June introduced more regulations on data handling, storage and retrieval.
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Saturday - September 6, 2008
Imagine the worst bureaucratic nightmare you've ever endured -- a customer service rep that speaks robot, hours spent on the phone trying to fix the cable, an audit performed by the friendly folks at the Internal Revenue Service. Now, imagine this repeated every Tuesday for six months.
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Friday - June 6, 2008
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has a new day job: game developer. The former justice's latest pursuit came to light during her keynote address Wednesday at the Games for Change Conference held at Parsons The New School For Design in New York. Designed for seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders, "Our Courts" will be an online interactive civic education project.
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