"THE internet, argues Kim Cameron, who works as "Identity Architect" at Microsoft, "was built without a way to know who and what you are connecting to". That is bad enough in the private sector, where the only thing at stake is money. For dealing with government, it is potentially catastrophic. Technology can-just about-tell how an internet user got online. It can check the authenticity of passwords and logins, and validate smart cards or biometric checks. But such data, even if encrypted, can be stolen, borrowed, guessed or intercepted."

"The public face of this is a single portal, dc.gov, which allows residents to do almost anything that in the past would have involved either picking up the phone (and hanging on and on) or going to an office and waiting. The site not only lets them find out about every imaginable aspect of the city, but also provides them with a means of acting on the information. This is not just a matter of printing out forms, but often of filling them in and submitting them online too. It is possible to renew a driving licence, pay a parking fine, report broken traffic lights, request a visit from the rubbish-collection service, get all manner of permits, see planning applications and pay local taxes. "

"O SEE how frustrating the wrong kind of e-government can be, look at "Choose and Book", the flagship project of Britain's £12.4 billion ($25 billion) programme "Connecting for Health"-the world's biggest non-military government computerisation programme. The aim is bold and inspiring: to allow patients in the National Health Service (NHS), advised by their doctors, to choose the treatment they want, and book an appointment when they want it. "

This is likely NOT relevant for CS 2010

"A PRODIGIOUS amount of money has been spent worldwide on putting government services online, but the results so far have been hard to measure and often disappointing (see chart 2). Accenture, a consultancy that pioneered the business of selling technology services to government, has been publishing reports on the subject since 2000. The titles give a flavour of the industry's struggle to balance promise and performance. In 2001 it was "Rhetoric vs. Reality: Closing the Gap", followed by "Realising the Vision" in 2002 and "Engaging the Customer" in 2003. "

"EVEN the most curmudgeonly critic would have to admit the one great benefit of e-government: it comes twinned with i-government, where i stands for information. As readers under the age of 30 may be only dimly aware, before the internet age simply getting hold of information on any aspect of government was often far from straightforward. "

"Putting their services online should allow governments to serve their citizens much more effectively. But despite heavy spending, progress has been patchy, says Edward Lucas "

"WHEN the Sloan Digital Sky Survey started work in 2000, its telescope in New Mexico collected more data in its first few weeks than had been amassed in the entire history of astronomy. Now, a decade later, its archive contains a whopping 140 terabytes of information. A successor, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, due to come on stream in Chile in 2016, will acquire that quantity of data every five days. "

"Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analysing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and everyday life (see our special report in this issue). It has great potential for good-as long as consumers, companies and governments make the right choices about when to restrict the flow of data, and when to encourage it."

"With its research, G4LI hopes to identify which qualities of video games engage students and develop relevant, personalized teaching strategies that can be applied to the learning process. "

"Microsoft's research arm is leading a new effort to study the use of computer games as tools to help middle-school students learn science and math. The Games for Learning Institute (G4LI) aims to identify which qualities of computer games engage students and help develop relevant, personalized teaching strategies that can be applied to the learning process, its organizers said. The G4LI is a joint research endeavor by Microsoft Research, New York University (NYU), and a consortium of universities. Partners include Columbia University, the City University of New York (CUNY), Dartmouth College, Parsons, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Columbia Teachers College."

"This fall, New York City is rolling out Dimension M - M stands for math - in 109 middle schools across the five boroughs after trying the game out in two dozen schools, including I.S. 30, last year. Like a modern twist on "Jeopardy!," the fast-paced video game quizzes students on prealgebra and algebra topics ranging from prime numbers to fractions and complex equations. A correct answer brings 500 or more points, a wrong one as few as 25; the player with the most points wins. (No prizes, just glory.)"

"Although policy and processes were in place to facilitate the safe use of USB flash media, they were not being followed," Carey wrote. "Unfortunately, it was our bad IT hygiene that resulted in the ban of this all too flexible use of storage media." "

"The recent completion of the first of several planned undersea cables connecting East Africa to broadband Internet has raised hopes that high-speed Web access will increase here. "

Not relevant directly for medicine, but very good overview of growing mobile phone use in East Africa

"beginning of the academic year warning them of social networking issues. Source: Individual schools * Share * Yahoo! Buzz * Add to Mixx * Facebook * Twitter * More o Fark o Digg o Reddit o MySpace o StumbleUpon o Propeller o LinkedIn * Subscribe * myYahoo * iGoogle * More o Netvibes o myAOL * By Kyle Oppenhuizen, USA TODAY More college athletic departments are developing or publicizing online social networking policies for student athletes, experts say. USA TODAY researched social networking policies for 27 schools in six major conferences, including the University of Iowa, which will implement a new monitoring policy Friday. Last fall, pictures emerged on Facebook of two 19-year old Hawkeye football players holding cash and liquor bottles. Five of these schools already have specific monitoring policies in effect - Auburn, Iowa State, Ohio State, Miami and North Carolina. Others warn athletes of the potential dangers of sites such as Facebook and MySpace through student-athlete handbook policies, meetings, coach's discussions and even letters. Some schools don't have a specific policy but allow coaches to monitor at their discretion, or take action if inappropriate material online is reported. Iowa's policy puts senior leaders in charge of monitoring profiles of athletes' on their team and bring problems to administrators, who then work with the athlete, associate athletic director Fred Mims said. Administrators will not get involved, Mims said, unless issues are brought to their attention, in which case they will talk to the athlete about addressing the issue and check out the profile, public or private. Ohio State, on the other hand, requires athletes to have a public profile or add coaches and administrators as friends (which gives access to the private profile). Fred Stutzman, a Ph.D. cand

""Diagnosis of the ailment of the patient is undertaken and solutions are jointly agreed upon by both doctors. The patient is treated here in Nigeria and he does not have to travel to India. That is the beauty of telemedicine.""

"What IBM has shown is that with some simple off-the-shelf components and some clever software, telemedicine can give patients back one of the most precious things their treatment takes from them: their time."

But not everyone on dialysis now needs to visit the hospital every other day. Jonas Drawitsch lives 40km from Heidelberg's children's clinic but thanks to a system set up by IBM, he puts in his six hours of dialysis during his sleep and doctors check his progress at a distance. Every day Jonas takes his blood pressure and weighs himself. The measurements go via bluetooth to a mobile phone which then sends the information to the hospital.

"Mrs Watt's local hospital is in Fraserburgh. She was seen by a local doctor who then decided to link up by video with specialists at the A&E department in Aberdeen. After assessing the injury they decided Mrs Watt needed to travel the 40 miles into the city to have the break properly reset and plastered. Mr Ferguson explained that the use of telemedicine had proved crucial. "All the local casualty departments throughout NHS Grampian have got a video conferencing link through to us. "Already today we've seen more than 20 patients that way and only three have had to come into Aberdeen. "All the rest have been treated locally which of course saves people travelling in this weather and saves time and resources here.""

Benefits of telemedicine: ""What we found was pretty amazing," he said. "Out of 30 patients, only three had to be airlifted. If we didn't have telemedicine, all the 30 would have had to come to Sydney." "