Federal IT Dashboard: Good starting point?
As we've covered over the last couple days, Obama's man-in-charge, CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled a new IT dashboard which aims to give regular people access to spending data, in an effort to make the government more transparent. Will it work, and how significant is it? We talk to PCMag's Kyle Monson and BuyMeGetMe's Gary Krakow about the topic.
Gary has high hopes but is extremely skeptical. As a former NBC news-er, he's seen his share of government misinformation and he thinks that people will try their best to fudge the numbers. Kyle thinks the data is there, and that it's pretty in-depth, but he thinks its missing the next step of how to act on the data. Regular people won't know what to do with the data, but the fact that the project went from concept to action in 90 days speaks well for the future of the project.
What's your take, is it going to change the government or is it in vain because the government can't truly change? Sound off in the comments, and be sure to check out our other video from the Personal Democracy Forum.
Guests:
When is a netbook really a small laptop? And is Conficker worth the hype?
The company that invented the netbook category, Asus, released a new netbook that includes a DVD drive, a rarity for the classification. Is it still a netbook? Is netbook a lame term to begin with? What makes a netbook a netbook? Kyle Monson and Brad Linder both say the new 1004DN is still a netbook, since it's primarily focused on running net apps. Also, we dive into the Conficker saga, with our predicitions of what we'll see come April 1st.
When will your mom use an e-book?
Geeks are pretty excited about the future release of a Fujitsu ebook tablet that has color e-paper, the only problem is the pricetag: $1000. So what's stopping your mom from skipping the paperback in favor of the PDF? We ask Kevin Tofel of JK On the Run, and PC Magazine editor Kyle Monson. We also dive head first into the browser beta mess, and sort out which features are most important, and which are worth skipping.