Is intimate personal information a toxic asset in cloud datacenters?
On Radar, Professor Carl Hewitt shows the advantages and disadvantages of government regulation in data center security, and presents other options for this issue. “This is a future that we expect most readers would find distasteful. There is an alternative: A client cloud is a local cloud controlled by a client, e.g., a family cloud might consist of the cell phones, computers, security cameras, home entertainment centers, Wi-Fi access points, etc. of a family. Semantic Integration could be performed in clients’ clouds so that clients by default store their information in cloud datacenters in a way that it can be decrypted only by using a client’s secret key.”

How Tim O’Reilly Aims to Change Government
Marshall Kirkpatrick features a technologist’s crusade to make government more responsive to citizens, how he’s going about it and what he’s learned. “Technologist Tim O’Reilly is spending time in Washington, and bringing Washington officials to San Francisco, to do something different – perhaps something more realistic. O’Reilly is trying to help government become a platform for innovation. A “government as platform” would supply raw digital data and other forms of support for private sector innovators to build on top of.”

When Collaboration is Literally Life or Death…
On ZDNet, Oliver Marks lauds the US military’s use of collaboration tools in a highly secure and organized manner that private companies can emulate. “Industrial strength strategic planning of collaboration environments will definitely separate the weakly organized from the ultra connected and clued up and is a key differentiator in modern business.”

Cloud computing: YOUR data – right?
ComMetrics cites recent events like Amazon’s remote deletion on Kindles as another reason to clearly define cloud data ownership. “Bottomline: Storing data using cloud computing (like Google Chrome OS does) means there is no local storage, so nothing can be owned, only rented. The only way around this problem is to download data and images to one’s PC.”

Rural broadband = more jobs, better salaries
Matthew Lasar features a report by the US Department of Agriculture Rural counties that says although broadband has proven to be economically beneficial, there persists a wide gap in high-speed Internet penetration in the countryside and in urban areas. “Only 41 percent of rural households had broadband access in 2008, the USDA says, as opposed to 55 percent nationally. And adoption rates still lag behind cities, with a “marked difference” between urban and rural use. Only 70 percent of rural households with access to broadband embraced it in 2007, the report says, as opposed to 84 percent of city dwellers.”

Killing Email: How and Why I Ditched My Inbox
Leo Babauta details his experiments on phasing out his email and keeping his dependence on it to a minimum on Zen Habits. “Q: Why so extreme? Why not just filter and check email less often? A: I’ve tried a number of tactics with email, including extreme filtering. For awhile I set up a special email address for friends and family and close colleagues, and everything else was shunted into a special folder to be read less frequently. It still took up too much of my time. I don’t check email as often as most people, but it was still a chore I have been enjoying less and less. So I decided to try something different.”

Work Smarter, Not Harder Tip: Fill Your Days with Sand, Not rocks
Jeannie Chan of Brazen Careerist ponders about what enables her to be good at multitasking. “It allows me to be completely focused at the task at hand. Whenever I have worked on mega-tasks, I would get fatigue mentally quicker. I would get distracted easier, probably because I wasn’t able to see the end of the tunnel. With a lack of focus, I would just simply not get as much done… Also, with a to-do list of tiny tasks, I would never feel like I was unaccomplished at the end of the day. I would always be able to cross off something!”

License Plates for the Internet? Digital Security for Personal Identity
Neville Pattinson floats the idea of a countrywide digital identity credential on Digital Nomads. “This is a big idea that could solve a lot of problems. In the best case, this would take the form of a digital identity credential issued by a single government agency. Other industries, such as banking, payment and healthcare, could potentially use the ID as a way to secure identity, online access and Web-based transactions. Much as Social Security numbers and Drivers Licenses did until cyber-crime made them as unreliable as ID credentials.”