mobility

New Web2go App Makes Listening To The Web Easy

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A new app for Android devices called, will read your favorite Websites and blogs to you, freeing your hands (via Bluetooth) while driving. But it also holds out a promising solution to those who have difficulty seeing or reading small text on a smartphone or tablet screen.

Available free of charge through the Google Play store, Web2go, developed by Tel Aviv-based Volacent Inc., introduces what the company calls Artificial Reading Intelligence (ARI). ARI allows the application to streamline the reading process so that the app reads only the relevant text in an article, skipping over superfluous information such as long lists of menu items, photo captions on advertisements and other data points that are not part of the story or blog entry. Keep reading →

Published January 11, 2013 at 1:30 PM

DOD, Microsoft Agree To Landmark Enterprise Licensing Deal

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The Defense Department has awarded a first of its kind joint enterprise licensing agreement for Microsoft collaboration, mobility, productivity and security tools. Valued at $617 million, the three-year agreement will allow the Army, Air Force and the Defense Information Systems Agency to begin using the latest versions of the company’s products.

The agreement creates a single framework providing all three organizations with a single, standardized way to access new Microsoft technologies. The contract also supports top DOD IT goals for data center consolidation, collaboration, cybersecurity, mobility, cloud computing and big data, company officials said in a statement. Keep reading →

Published January 4, 2013 at 4:33 PM

Public Attention Shifting From TV To Mobile Apps

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Now that usage of mobile apps has overtaken browsing on the desktop web, it’s starting to challenge television, the analytics firm Flurry says. The San Francisco-based mobile analytics startup says that consumers are spending 127 minutes per day in mobile apps, up 35% from 94 minutes a day in the same time last year. At the same time, desktop web usage actually declined slightly by 2.4 %from 72 to 70 minutes.

This means that U.S. consumers are spending nearly two times more time in mobile apps than on the web.

The dramatic growth carries a variety of implications for government agencies focused on improving citizen services, how citizens interact with government, and the adoption of mobile technology.

The growth also has implications for the television industry as a whole. The time spent on mobile apps is now starting to challenge time spent watching TV. Flurry estimates that the average U.S. consumer watches 168 minutes of television per day, based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2010 and 2011.
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This article was originally reported by Kim-Mai Cutler and our colleagues at TechCrunch. For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, like us on Facebook. Keep reading →

Published December 6, 2012 at 1:45 PM

10 Predictions For Government IT In 2013

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The relatively rapid adoption by government organizations of big data analytics, cloud computing social business and mobility is expected to propel the use of “smart strategies” in 2013, according to a leading research group.

IDG Government Insights, in its annual “Top 10 Predictions” for government information technology in 2013, predicted as a result that more than 40% of U.S. local governments will be in research and evaluation stage for “smart city” pilots/projects and 50% will begin implementation in 2013. Keep reading →

Published December 5, 2012 at 11:30 AM

Mobile ‘Wave’ Will Change Entire Industries, Economies

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Mobile technology is poised to radically change the global economy by eliminating many jobs and entire industries. But this shift to virtual tools, documents and services will also create a host of new opportunities that will literally be at users’ fingertips.

This brave new wireless world will have a profound impact on public and private sector organizations, said Michael Saylor, chief executive officer of Microstrategy and author of “The Mobile Wave-How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything.” Keep reading →

Published November 30, 2012 at 4:00 PM

Giving Thanks For Mobility

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It’s easy to take all the comforts of our modern lives for granted. Cars are basically parking themselves these days, and Wi-Fi on airplanes allows us to watch our favorite shows as we zip across the country in a matter of hours. Mobile devices can talk to and interact with us like humans – not to mention letting us securely accomplish our work from anywhere and at any time.

We sometimes forget that things haven’t always been this way. December 17 marks the 10-year anniversary of the E-Government Act of 2002 – America’s first step toward a modernized and accessible IT infrastructure.
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Published November 23, 2012 at 7:00 AM

Big Data Tradeoffs: What Agencies Need To Know – NIST’s Peter Mell

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The power of big data – like cloud computing and mobility – has emerged as a transformational technology force, but one that poses a host of planning questions for senior government agency officials. Peter Mell, a senior computer scientist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, devoted many months assessing the potential and the pitfalls of big data for NIST. He recently shared what he learned and what executives need to understand about big data in an interview with AOL Government’s Wyatt Kash.

Mell outlined some of the misunderstandings and tradeoffs associated with large scale data sets agencies are likely to encounter as they move beyond classic relational databases. He also talked about the importance cloud computing plays in facilitating big data analytics. And he shared with our readers a comprehensive slide presentation that puts many of the questions about big data and related security implications into perspective. Keep reading →

Published November 12, 2012 at 9:00 AM

EPA To Move 25,000 Employees To Microsoft Collaboration Cloud

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has contracted with Lockheed Martin and Microsoft to migrate the email and collaboration systems supporting approximately 25,000 employees to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 system, according to a joint announcement released by Lockheed Martin and Microsoft today.

The collaboration and communication service is expected to improve EPA employees’ access to communications and mobility tools and result in expected savings of $12 million over the four-year contract period. Keep reading →

Published October 31, 2012 at 11:01 AM

Hurricane Sandy Takes Out 25 Percent Of Cell Towers

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Federal regulators say Hurricane Sandy knocked out a quarter of the cell towers in an area spreading across ten states, stretching from Virginia to Massachusetts. And the situation could get worse before it gets better, according to an Associated Press report.

Many cell towers that are still working are doing so with the help of generators and could run out of fuel before commercial power is restored, the Federal Communications Commission says.

Just how widely residents of the East Coast dependency on high speed mobile communications is illustrated in a map, developed as part of the FCC’s Eight Broadband Progress Report, released in June 2011. The map shows census block areas of the U.S. with access to mobile services of at least 3 Mbps download and 768 kbps upload (in dark green) and areas with or without services of at least 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload (in orange.)

View the full map

The landline phone network has held up better in the affected area, the FCC says, but about a quarter of cable customers are also without service

Published October 31, 2012 at 10:00 AM

Five Critical Success Factors In Building A Mobile Enterprise

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For the past three years, we’ve been studying how the consumerization of IT has been impacting enterprises, including government. As Unisys’ third annual Consumerization of IT research study indicates, the growth of mobile device use in government and the private sector continues – with 44% of workers now using smartphones at work. That’s a 300% increase from three years ago, according to Forrester Consulting, which conducted the study for Unisys.

Tablets, which were rarely used at all two years ago, are now increasingly becoming the computing device of choice for many in today’s workforce. Driven by the adoption of new end user mobile technologies, government agencies are beginning to create innovative new ways of conducting business. Keep reading →

Published October 29, 2012 at 8:15 AM
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