The DoD reverses course on Social Media ban

Well, it certainly looks official enough, from the Memorandum for Record from the Deputy Secretary of Defense, dated 25 February, 2010.  The Directive-Type Memorandum (DTM) is titled Responsible and Effective Use of Internet-based Capabilities.  The DTM can be found here.  To smmarize the message, effective immediately, all of the unclassified networks (also known as NIPRNET) shall be configured to all access to these "internet-based capabilities."  Now, before everyone starts to jump for joy, there are some caveats in the DTM.  First and foremost, military commands have the ability and responsibility to protect and defend the network from attack and malicious code, along with restricting or preventing access to these sites if the bandwidth becomes constrained or to preserve military operations.  Also, sites will be denied that provide access to prohibited content; such as, gambling, hate-speech, pornography, etc.

There is an attachment to the message that spells out the types of social networking services (SNS) applies to.  It applies to:
SNS
Image and video web hosting services
Wikis
Personal, corporate or subject-specific blogs
Data mashups (aggregation sites)

This is certainly good news for me.  I hope that this ban will now allow me and the rest of my classmates at the University of Alabama's Interactive Technology Masters Degree program and who are in the US Military be able to access the wiki, social bookmarking sites (delicious), email, video sites, that we need to for our course work.  I hope that the word reaches everyone.  So please help me spread the good news.  The DoD finally understands the importance of web 2.0 and social media.  I wonder what's next?  Ya'll have a good day.  Roll Tide!

Thanks to Ben Parr for posting the story on Mashable

What's the buzz about Buzz

Howdy y'all,
How is everyone doing? It's Valentine's Day, the Daytona 500 and a day to begin blogging about Buzz. What is it? What's the buzz about Google Buzz? Google Buzz is something that Google unleashed on February 9th, as part of gmail that allows you to share your thoughts, multimedia, photos, updates, whatever within your social media feeds by way of your gmail. You can share your thoughts both publicly or privately, you decide. So essentially, your network is your address book (initially).

Google buzz is pretty much already set up for you if you have and use Gmail. If you have gmail friends, then you automatically have a Buzz follower. The buzz about Buzz is that it will pull images from links, play videos and let you scroll through pictures. Since it's a Google product, it's already hardwired to work instantly with Picasa, Google Reader, and yes, even Twitter.

If you post something in Buzz, you will get replies back in your In-box. As you reply and recommend things to your little community of friends or group, you will also see their recommendations. So, will Google Buzz gain traction with the "early adopters" of technology? Only time will tell, but Google seems to be gaining some serious traction. You have an immediate social network of followers via your gmail account the habitual habit of checking your email throughout the day. So what's left to learn? Oh, it works on your phone too! So what are you waiting for? Go get Buzzed!

If you would like to see some stagering numbers as to Buzz and it's game changing uniqueness, go no further than:
http://mashable.com/2010/02/14/google-buzz-column/
or watch a video about Buzz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi50KlsCBio

My old unit and our communications gear