Blogger, and former Army intelligence analyst/computer specialist, Jeff Quinton is looking for work in the Baltimore/DC area:
I’m looking for something in the Baltimore-DC area that would be full-time for the rest of the summer (after 7/16) and could be flexible PT/FT in the fall depending on my school schedule. Drop me a line (jeff-dot-quinton-at-gmail-dot-com) if you have any suggestions,connections or ideas. I do have a couple of things I had in the works back a couple of months ago that I need to follow up on (anyone involved in those reading this should expect contact from me in the next few days.) More information on my work and skill background can be found here.
It’s ramping up but the Palestinians are only witnessing a fraction of Israel’s power:
He did not, however, hold back IDF troops from continuing the operation that was already in play. More than 500 artillery shells have been fired by the IDF in Gaza in the past 24 hours.
An Israel Air Force helicopter fired at an Islamic Jihad terrorist as he attempted to launch a Kassam rocket at Israeli forces. 25-year-old Abdel Rael later succumbed to his wounds, the first to die since the start of the IDF operation.
IAF jets scored direct hits on close to a dozen targets in the wee hours before dawn on Friday. In Gaza City alone, the Palestinian Authority Interior Ministry was struck, as was a Fatah office and a Hamas terrorist training camp. PA Interior Minister Said Siyam’s office was targeted because it was “a meeting place to plan and direct terror activity,” said IDF sources.
Where are the cable news networks on this story?
It does seem a little late for them to be realizing that blogs might be useful but at least the story more or less gets the details right:
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding a new research area that includes a study of blogs. Blog research may provide information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting the war on terrorism.
Dr. Brian E. Ulicny, senior scientist, and Dr. Mieczyslaw M. Kokar, president, Versatile Information Systems Inc., Framingham, Mass., will receive approximately $450,000 in funding for the 3-year project entitled “Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information.”
“It can be challenging for information analysts to tell what’s important in blogs unless you analyze patterns,” Ulicny said.
Nothing really new here. Blogs of War has been mined by government funded companies for years. One even sucked down my RSS feed (and yes your comments too) several million times during 2004-2005. I thought that was a little rude (and told them as much) but let them continue because they were a well respected company and there was a slight chance that they were doing useful work. This new effort will attempt to sort through the datalanche that is the blogosphere:
“We are developing an automated tool to tell analysts what bloggers are most interested in at a point in time,” Ulicny said.
This analysis, Kokar said, is based on what Versatile Information Systems calls the RSTC approach to blog analysis – relevance, specificity, timeliness, and credibility. RSTC helps information analysts filter the most important information to study.
“Relevance involves developing a point of focus and information related to a particular focus,” Kokar said. Timeliness has to do with immediacy – how important is a topic now. “Credibility,” he continued, “is the amount of trust you have in an information source.”
$450,000 to reinvent Technorati? I wonder if these guys are hiring…
I’d rather see the Military spend that $450.000 on something more productive like learning how to communicate with bloggers. They’re still patting themselves on the back for sending me and other bloggers the link to DefenseLINK via email. There’s so much more that they could be doing, on the PR and technical fronts, to move their information.
Related:
Answer Me! (Dr. Brian E. Ulicny)
Sooner or later the militant Palestinians will have to realize that they can’t go head to head with an increasingly unrestrained Israeli military:
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak demanded from his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad to deport the Syrian-based Hamas leadership unless it agrees to release kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Palestinian sources said on Friday.
The demand was made in the context of a compromise that Egypt was attempting to draft between the Israel and Hamas, whose Damascus leader, Khaled Mashaal was demanding that thousands of Palestinian detainees, held in Israeli prisons, be released. Mubarak warned Mashaal that his position was leading the Palestinians to disaster, Israel Radio reported.
Sadly the Palestinians were led to disaster decades ago and have only themselves to blame for chosing hatred, over peace and prosperity, at every opportunity.
