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"The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN) is a community of federal employees dedicated to the idea that citizens deserve clear communications from government. We first developed this document in the mid-90s. We continue to revise it every few years to provide updated advice on clear communication. We hope you find this document useful, and that it helps you improve your writing"

A 'Spooks And Suits' Red Team Game Social media apps meet national security Jul 20, 2011 | 12:40 PM | 0 Comments By Kelly Jackson Higgins Dark Reading What if a former Navy SEAL petty officer were a member of Anonymous? Senior members of the U.S. intelligence agency, including Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, and a former SEAL officer, will participate in a red-team exercise in September where they'll play the role of Anonymous/LulzSec and APT attackers, as well as the defenders trying to fend off these adversaries. Sure, simulated cyberattack games are nothing new these days. But this one is part and parcel of the upcoming Spooks and Suits summit in Silicon Valley on Sept. 23 and 24, and it throws together intell officials and attendees. It's the brainchild of cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr, who wanted to bring together three-letter agencies, like the CIA, NSA, and DoD, with social media and Web 2.0 developers and start-ups to actually communicate one-on-one with each another and with general attendees. It works like this: Attendees will be randomly assigned to one of four teams of 25 to 30 people: Anarchist hackers (a la Anonymous and LulzSec), APT attackers, or one of two defending organizations. The teams then must observe all of the panel discussions -- which will cover threats against the intell community, as well as demonstrations of new and existing social media applications -- from the perspective of either adversary or defender, depending on which team they are assigned. "If one of the apps presented has to do with a game, the objective for the attendee is to say, 'How can I use that game as an adversary? Or how can I use it to uncover or defend against an adversary?'" says Carr, who is the founder and CEO of Taia Global, an executive cybersecurity firm, and author of "Inside Cyber Warfare." "During breaks, they can play with the apps with an eye to their mission." The teams will have a working lunch period for buildi

Overview of the many features in Google+.  Circles, Huddles, Sparks, Hangouts and more.  

Some good advice for community brand managers dealing with trolls.

Positive government transparency or a "D'oh!" moment for the intelligence community (starting to think that's an oxymoron).

Which? "government transparency" or "intelligence community" ?

While some organizations are still considering a basic social media facelift for their intranet, perhaps incorporating some blogs for corporate communication or a wiki area for some shared content authoring, it's almost certain that this is too little and too late for many companies. Over the last three years, the world has undergone a social media revolution that has changed the behaviors of most of the developed world that have gone on to be validated as beneficial for the workplace.

Engineers have developed a device platform that combines electronic components for sensing, medical diagnostics, communications and human-machine interfaces, all on an ultrathin skin-like patch that mounts directly onto the skin with the ease, flexibility and comfort of a temporary tattoo. Led by researcher John A. Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, the researchers described their novel skin-mounted electronics in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Science.

YouTubers are some of the most innovative, entertaining and inspirational people in the world, and their creativity often needs more than the current upload limit of 15 minutes. Today, we're improving upon our previous launch by enabling long uploads for users with a clean track record who complete an account verification and continue to follow the copyright rules set forth in our Community Guidelines.

Open Atrium is an open source platform designed specifically to make great teams communicate better. An intranet in a box with: a blog, a wiki, a calendar, a to do list, a shoutbox, and a dashboard to manage it all. Let's not forget that it's also completely customizable.

encryption, as a preventive measure, assumes the primary threat is coming from the "outside" - typically (but not exclusively), in the form of a hacker trying to intercept communications or extract data from a lost or stolen device. While such threats are real and you absolutely must guard against them, we've reached a crucial point in the evolution of mobile technology, and just as importantly, user behavior where the primary mobile security threat is no longer the faceless and malicious hacker, but instead the legitimate, fully authenticated owner of the device itself.

"uClassify is a free web service where you can easily create your own text classifiers. You can also directly use classifiers that have already been shared by the community. Examples: Language detection, Web page categorization, Written text gender and age recognition, Mood, Spam filter, Sentiment,, Automatic e-mail support.   So what do you want to classify on? Only your imagination is the limit!"

Organizers of NASA's first Open Source Summit have released a summary of its proceedings that could serve as a model for other federal agencies wanting to conduct similar conferences for their own open source developer communities. The 85-page report documents how the event was organized, collaboration tools used, user statistics, attendee list, schedule and media coverage.

IBM announced it is joining with Italy-based hardware architecture firm Eurotech in donating a complete draft protocol for asynchronous inter-device communication to the Eclipse Foundation. It is being called Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, the machine-to-machine counterpart of HTT

Ushahidi's new hosting option makes it even simpler to set up a site with the crowdsourcing software.

Samsung and Korea's "KT" announces first NFC payment system that will be available to users.