All news, All about Intellipedia!

Why is it news that Google sells to the Intelligence Community? Would it be news if Google sold servers or donated (for that matter) to a group that is looking to end world poverty?

Or are they just piggybacking on Intellipedia's success (not that Google needs it)?

Or could it be just opportunistic PR for Google. Personally, I think it's the latter since I doubt that Google only recently started pursuing government work. 

It also helps to have a CIA Intellipedia expert, like Sean Dennehy, comment about Intellipedia in the same article (though he does not necessarily endorse Google). It adds to Google's credibility (again not that they need it).  

Don't get me wrong, I like Google. I just wanted to point out their cleverness! :) Looks like their innovation does end in the server room! ;-)

Posted by eMarv at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I found this article after seeing it bookmarked in kirbyp's del.icio.us bookmarks. Thanks kirbyp!

Now for the quotes and comments:

"...officials from the 16 U.S. spy agencies — and even some beyond that — are increasingly using a new internal website called 'Intellipedia'..."

"...even some beyond that..." Interesting! At least one of the beyond that is the TSA which they refer to further down in the article.

"All of these tools ... are in their Model T stage," conceded Sean Dennehy of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, who helped develop the Intellipedia.

Congrats Sean! (You will be in the history books, for sure.) Regarding the Model T comment, it is great to hear that the Intelligence Community is not waiting to develop a perfect solution (which doesn't exist) and wait to deploy it (when it is obsolete). Agile methodology at its best! Throw something out there, let people pound on it, massage it, throw it out there again and repeat. BTW, it looks like Sean is becoming the king of the memorable sound bite. Remember his other quote in the LA Times article: "It moves us away from homogenized intelligence..." (I also saw an interesting quote in Influence: The Pyschology of Persuasion that extends Sean's comment: "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." Walter Lippman. I wonder if that is what happened in the past...)

"When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a Manhattan apartment building this month, officials from the Transportation Security Administration and eight other agencies updated information on the accident 80 times in two hours."

Can you say success story? Imagine if this were to happen with any other potential terrorist event. Actually, who's to say it hasn't happened already?

"Don Burke, a CIA officer from the Directorate of Science and Technology, said more than 3,600 users have created log-ons to use the site..."

I wonder how many are active users or what percentage of the registered users are actually active. My guess is that they haven't tapped into the Long Tail yet since as mentioned further in the article there are "tens of thousands of users."

Getting some traditionalists to contribute takes encouragement. Intellipedia's architects have resorted to sending small, black garden shovels to contributors.

"I dig Intellipedia!" says the handle. "It's wiki, wiki, Baby."

Want to see what it looks like? That you'll have to Google.

Why not just get rid of the traditionalists? (Just joking, I know there will always be traditionalists but it doesn't hurt to ask... :) As you all know, you need not look further than this blog's Intellipedia shovel category to see the pic. We also know that they aren't giving them only to traditionalists as Kevin is proof.

Posted by eMarv at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Kevin Story actually found this blog. He posted a comment on Intellipedia shovel entry. I checked out his blog and low and behold and Voila! I found the picture below.

Everyone, please join me in congratulating Kevin on becoming the first with an Intellipedia shovel! So what's the next award after the shovel? Kevin, if you read this, can you share how many edits you had or was it an award based on quality, not quantity?

Posted by eMarv at 03:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

I mentioned the announcement of the Intellipedia Roundtable on a previous post, but now that I found the original FAS post by Steven Aftergood, I just wanted to refer to it directly.

I am still curious to see how they got access to the Media Advisory. Maybe one of the recipients sent it to them... I actually posted a comment on his blog asking the question. Let's see if he publishes the comment and then answers it.

Posted by eMarv at 03:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Intellipedia article on the German Wikipedia

Intellipedia article on the Spanish Wikipedia 

Wouldn't it be nice if all of them were one and people could contribute and see the entry in their own language, but it would all be in one place with automatic translation. How's that for a Wikipedia requirement? :)

Posted by eMarv at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)