Congressman Rivera vs Wikipedia

Politico article "Rep. David Rivera war with Wikipedia" is a great example of a high profile figure taking-on Wikipedia as part of his PR/ branding strategy.  Actually, in Rivera's case, it's more like damage control.  Take a look. 

The article ends with another amusing anecdote: apparently during 2008 there were fierce edit wars over whether to call Obama "Kenyan-American", and editors changed Hillary Clinton photo to one of a walrus.  I love Wikipedia, but don't these people have jobs/ families?!
- sezflom

Data.gov.au

The Australian Government has just released Data.gov.au.  Again, there is a focus on innovation.  From the home page:
"We encourage all users to improve government information by using it to develop tools and applications which benefit all Australians. Submitting links to these new applications will enable their promotion through data.gov.au in future enhancements to the site."
- sezflom

Crowd sourcing ideas for national intel

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (USA) is sponsoring a prediction tournament in which "each team will develop its own tools for harnessing and improving collective intelligence and will be judged on how well its forecasters predict major trends and events around the world over the next four years."  The tournament will be administered by  the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California Berkeley.   US citizens are invited to sign up. More info here.  [H/T NYT]
- sezflom

Innovation by Govt: Panic button

The US State Department is working promoting a "panic button" application that pro-democracy campaigners can press to "wipe out the phone's address book and emit emergency alerts ot other activists" reports NYT.  Apparently there's been a specific budget ($50m since 2008) for promoting technologies for social activists, particularly "circumvention" technology.  There has also been training in new technologies.  The obvious concern here comes back to the old adage: one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.  
- sezflom