Steve OHearn's Page

I just read a post online by someone with a California police department who speaks of Google's recent agreement with Los Angeles to bring in Google's email platform to serve a local government office. This is described, in the post, as "cloud computing".

Technically it is cloud computing. But this particular form of cloud computing is nothing new. Email online - through a web browser - has been around for years, since at least the mid-1990's. The reason many people didn't use webmail back in t… Continue

This morning's tech journals are carrying reports that the U.S. federal government's chief CIO Vivek Kundra has warned U.S. federal agencies to prepare for a "data deluge" as Web 2.0 applications ramp up in usage.

But this quote got my attention: at the July 21 Open Government and Innovations Conference, Kundra reportedly stated that "'[t]his notion of thinking about data in a structured, relational database is dead" [… Continue

There's a great article today at DefenseLink about the need for information technology acquisition reform on behalf of the DoD. The bottom line: current IT acquisition is patterned after conventional weapons systems acquisition in ways that suited large scale industrial manufacturing, but run counter to the nature of the speedy development, adoption, and enhancements of information technology.

It's not new to make this observation about I… Continue

I just read that Rajeev Motwani was found dead Friday in the pool of his Palo Alto home. Very bizarre.

Motwani was the 47 year old Stanford professor who served as inspiration and advisor to many Silicon Valley success stories. Google co-founder Sergey Brin posted a reflection on Motwani on his blog on Friday.

Perhaps we'll hear more as a complete report of the cause of his death becomes public.

But in the m… Continue

Today I met with my fellow members of the National Press Club's "Joan Friedenberg Online Journalism Awards" committee. Together we selected the results for this year's awards categories, to be officially announced by press release from the Club, later this year.

As good as previous years' candidates have been, this year's submissions were even more advanced, displaying better uses of technology, more innovat… Continue