How many CIOs have said they don’t need consultants for big projects? [SFX: crickets] I thought so.
President Obama’s newly-named Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, said just that:
Whether it’s to serve the public or government employees, Kundra said federal agencies should be embracing off-the-shelf technologies and formats like cloud computing that are ubiquitous in the private sector.
“You don’t need to hire consultants to build out all this infrastructure,” he said. “You just leverage what’s on the cloud itself, yet in the federal government, we don’t have a single platform that allows us to do that.”
Using off-the-shelf, as well as open-source technologies, Kundra said, could result in significant savings for the federal government, which typically spends about $71 billion in IT purchases.
“One of the biggest ticket items in that $71 billion is the money the federal government spends on contracts, some that, frankly, haven’t performed very well, and there haven’t been consequences,” he said.
Consultants may do a good job for you, but where are they two years after the project’s done? Do it yourself: you’ll learn it better.
Take a look at how he used Googe Apps in this video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JZus5bvC3M]
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Interesting. The new Mitsubishi Delica comes with a bird’s eye view. The news, via Tech On, in Japanese-style English:
The Multi-Around Monitor System processes images shot by four cameras and displays a view from above the vehicle on the monitor. In addition, the front camera, which is equipped with a function to detect obstacles, detects vehicles, bikes and pedestrians approaching from either side of a blind intersection and warns the driver by sound and visual alerts.
As for the systems to display bird’s eye views, Nissan Motor Co Ltd and Honda Motor Co Ltd have already commercialized the “Around-View Monitor” and the “Multi-View Camera System,” respectively. But parts manufacturers of the two systems are different from Mitsubishi’s system.
Also, Mitsubishi’s system is the first one to detect obstacles by using a front camera that is used for bird’s eye viewing. The company is currently developing the two functions aiming at commercialization.
Mitsubishi developed the bird’s eye view system with Clarion and used a 250,000-pixel CCD for the front camera. Nissan’s system employs a 1.35-Mpixel CMOS camera develooped by Sony Corp, while Honda’s system is mounted with Panasonic Corp’s 350,000-pixel CCD camera. In terms of resolution, Mitsubishi’s system is similar to the one developed by Honda.
I’m particularly fond of Mitsubishi’s new tag line for the Lancer, “saving the world from global blanding.” It’s got legs.
Wonder if this minivan finds its way to the U.S.
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