JAva still important to cloud efforts

Cloud and SOA - Saving the Federal Government Big Bucks
— The U.S. government's Federal Trade Commission’s long list of responsibilities includes handling consumer fraud com-plaints, the National Do Not Call Registry for marketers and iden-tity theft cases. Until recently, the FTC's information technology systems handled these different types of complaints separately without communicating with one another. But that all changed when Bluedog, a systems integrator and software developer based in Dublin, Ireland, helped bring to fruition an SOA (service-oriented architecture) that modernized the FTC’s CIS (consumer information system). The $1.2 mil- lion upgrade involved bringing open standards and a Web-based architecture to the core system. Now, with cloud capabilities "baked in," the once-radical idea of SOA as a means to de-couple services from applications means big savings, for government and commercial.

Embrace the Tao of the Cloud

In my forthcoming book, The Tao of the Cloud, I expand upon the core elements of The Zen of SOA: An Executive Blueprint to Web-Enable Your Organization With Service-Oriented Architecture, my first book. Many have come to realize that the Cloud builds on SOA, and embracing de-coupled, standardized services paves the way to a cloud migration strategy. This ZDNet article explains, shared, service-oriented infrastructure will go a long way in today's craptastic economic environment. One benefit: by building out the architecture, all [services are] discoverable, and [one] can get to the data with a HTTPS message. Pretty compelling, in a time when nobody wants to spend money on new infrastructure.




- Posted by Tom/Bluedog

Health Care in the Cloud - public portals as a solution

At the dawn of the dot-com era, portals and information exchanges were all the rage (I designed oversaw construction of a few, myself). My recent work at MITRE on the Affordable Health Care Act's federal information hub involve my designing a portal for those states who did not want to build their own.

Patient portals are the information aggregation and user interface engines now linking several applications, such as the organization’s electronic health record, including admission, transfer, discharge, or any hospital information system.

In this article,the idea of making use of publicly available solutions is raised:

The idea is to place this very complex data into an understandable context to provide the patient with a complete view of their health, including recent diagnostics, treatments, medications, and, most importantly, the monitoring of current health data to work more productivity with their doctors.

The article rightly points out that many in health care technology personnel push back on the use of cloud computing because of the privacy and security issues around patient data. But well-architected solutions with adequate security measures abound.

Read more here...

Need some diversion? How about cool MTB pictures?

Nothing gets me motivated more quickly than thinking about getting work done so I can get outside. This site has some awesome mountain bike pictures and videos.

Mountain biking is a kick-ass way to stay in shape, burn off stress, and get out in the woods. Research suggests that light stimulates brain chemicals that improve mood, and for good results, get sunlight exposure first thing in the morning. Phototropism in plants is mirrored in our own evolution.

So if you want to get a change of pace going, consider a change in workout to make your exercise regime more interesting.

Facebook privacy woes are nothing compared to what the government is snooping about you

Many people clamber for the setting link when Facebook changes its privacy policies, but, as TechDirt discusses, nobody really seems to mind the eroding of their privacy rights by the US government.

There's currently nothing on the New York Times web site about the votes (either yesterday's or today's). The Associated Press wrote a story about the House's vote in September but nothing yet from yesterday or today. The Washington Post did post a story this morning. A Google news search will land hits with mostly tech or web-based media outlets.
Compare the lack of response to the way people react to privacy breaches connected to Facebook or Twitter. Media outlet after media outlet carried reports about a private picture of Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's sister, accidentally being made public somehow through social media channels. And how many of your Facebook friends posted that silly, pointless "privacy notice" on their walls?

- TT/Bd