Technology

Vivek is leaving his position as chief information officer of the whole USA after making major contributions to the country.

The deal is that it’s hard to get stuff done in Washington, with lots of entrenched interests, and sometimes projects that don’t get done, or worse, get done and make things worse.

Vivek both helped get projects done and helped slash other projects, savings billions of dollars in the short term and enabling a lot of other good projects.

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There’s a lot going on in Washington, people trying new ways to provide real help to citizens in a cost-effective manner. Often that involves social media or other such tech.

Here’s something new from the Small Business administration … and remember, small businesses are the big job creators in the U.S.:

SBA’s Mobile App helps entrepreneurs find local resources so they can start or grow their business through professional mentors, workshops and introductions to funding or contract opportunities. SBA’s resource partner network includes 10,000+ business mentors, 3,000+ locations, and hundreds of procurement centers and commercial lenders throughout the US. Aspiring entrepreneurs can use the built-in startup cost calculator to get their plans in action before meeting with a mentor or attending a business planning workshop. SBA videos and official notices are also available via the app so entrepreneurs have info on-the-go.

Hey, I’ve been working with these guys; they do a great job helping people with their voting rights.

Check out VotoLatino.org and their Facebook page, maybe do me a favor and Like it.

Here’s a little more from their site.

Founded in 2004, Voto Latino is shaking-up America’s political establishment by bringing thousands of young Latinos into the political process. A non-partisan, nonprofit civic engagement organization, Voto Latino has produced award-winning, multiple-media campaigns headlined by celebrity voicesthat encourage young Latinos to register to vote and get engaged. Voto Latino strongly believes it is this new generation of young American Latinos who will shape America’s democracy for a generation.

In 1971, this sentence started popping up on computer screens all across ARPANET, the network we recognize today as the ancestor of the modern Internet. The whimsical message, it soon emerged, was the work of “Creeper,” the first-ever self-replicating computer program. Created by a Massachusetts researcher, Creeper traveled from computer to computer, displaying its simple message before hopping to the next one. It didn’t delete any files, it didn’t snatch any personal information — it just said hello. Someone even developed a companion program, “Reaper,” that followed Creeper around, removing it from infected systems.

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Have you tweeted today? Or ever? I bet you have used Facebook today. As a country we fall in love with the unbridled technological progress that the great minds of our country afford us. It can do so much good for us — it connects us with long-lost friends, family and otherwise. It allows us to stay up to date, up to the minute in some instances, of events around the corner and around the world. All of this is absolutely fantastic when it helps us out, but we are often remiss in our consideration of the negative ramifications of these very same advances.

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The folks at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs center are doing a great job, now using Facebook for social media outreach to local vets, to provide more services for returning troops.

Check it out at Facebook.com/vapahcs. They’re getting high scores here and here and for that matter, on Yelp. I also just read that Lisa Freeman, who’s director of the Palo Alto VA center, was cited as one of Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Women. I’ve met her and staff and veterans at VA Palo Alto, very impressed. Bay Area folks should know that they have one of the best VAs in the country and that couldn’t happen without outstanding leadership.

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The Internet as we know it today started as a small Department of Defense project as early as 1969. Back then, the Pentagon was looking for an alternate way of communicating, beyond the telephone system, during wartime threats. The best plan was to communicate across a “web” of networked computers — a program that was to be run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Created just after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1959 and long heralded as the whiz-bang arm of the Pentagon, DARPA quickly stepped into action and perfected the ARPANET, as it was first called, by 1983.

Just think, American ingenuity has done what hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, thousands of soldiers’ lives and all the might of the U.S. military war machine could not — spread democracy like a prairie fire.

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Hey, the folks at the Social Security Administration are moving ahead, providing increasingly better customer service through the Net.

Think Social Security is just for your grandparents? Think again! You probably didn’t know that, in addition to making retirement payments and issuing Social Security cards, the program offers other types of coverage — for people of all ages! To find out more, as well as get answers to questions like “what’s that FICA tax that comes out of my paycheck?” and “why should I worry about planning for retirement now?" check out this webinar, “Social Security 101: What’s in it for me?” The broadcast starts at 3 p.m. EST on Thursday, March 10 and will feature a brief presentation followed by an interactive question-and-answer session. RSVP and watch the webinar at this link. There’s something in it for you!

Hey, if you see some kind of local problem that the city should fix, the folks at SeeClickFix really do have an app for that. You can report the problem with a photo and geotagging, informing local gov't. In San Francisco, it's tied into the 311 system.

Here's a problem along with a little of what it looks like in both the app and Web contexts — real impressive: