Drupal in Government Part 2: Drupal: The New Gov 2.0 Site Builder?

I have been writing a series of guest blog posts at GovFresh on Drupal in open government. GovFresh works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy through Gov 2.0 best practices, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place.

This month, I discuss how Drupal is close to being the perfect Gov 2.0 solution for savvy agencies – and soon perhaps a default solution for open government web initiatives in my post today entitled Drupal: The New Gov 2.0 Site Builder?

Last month I wrote about how Drupal supports five of the most effective open government sites in Five Government Sites Using Drupal Effectively for Open Government Initiatives.

Let me know what you think of these posts and what else you would like to see written about on this topic.

Drupal in Government Part 1: Five government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives

Why is Drupal important to the the Federal government? That is the main topic I will cover in a 3 part guest blog series on GovFresh. GovFresh works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy. It features Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place.

The first post Five government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives provides some high profile examples of who is using Drupal effectively in government and why Drupal is a great fit for what these sites are trying to achieve.

My second post will focus on the unique aspects of providing web content management for government that are relevant for Drupal (i.e. what can Drupal learn from Government?) And my final post will provide ideas and predictions for the future of Drupal within the Federal government.

Groovy: Quick and Easy Scripting

Groovy provides a viable (hipper? More modern?) alternative to shell scripting and/or Perl.

What Does the Open Government Directive Look Like?

On the first anniversary of the President's inauguration, I wanted to share some thoughts about the historic Open Government Initiative and discuss the implementation details of last month's Open Government Directive. Since we are developers, we wanted to do more than talk and write about what open government is, we are interested in how it actually looks and works to a user on the web. So we prepared some mock-ups for this purpose and shared it around town. This mock-up demonstrates both our concept for the user interface and content of a great /open site, but also prototypes what a simple approach to open government data and communications could be through a templated installation of Drupal we would like to build if some agency wants one?

Open Hollywood?

Clator takes a look at the emerging trend of Fan Editing and applies the principals of Open Source and Compulsory Licensing to suggest a new legal structure and profit model for Hollywood.

Today We Release Tattler, What Is It? Why Is It Unique?

Today we are releasing our first publicly available open source version of Tattler on Drupal.org. Tattler is a way to monitor topics you are interested in and learn who is talking about them, where, when and how.

Tattler might be used by a researcher, journalist, blogger, technology analyst, or PR specialist or anyone looking for a better way to research on the web. In other words, Tattler is for those that don't just listen to, but help shape the public policy debate - either with coverage or research. So what is unique about Tattler?

Overcome the limitations of Drupal's built-in content list using Content Management Filter

The built-in content list provided by Drupal does a few basic things well, allowing you to filter by taxonomy term, status, and node type. However, in cases where you have a large volume of content or a lot of custom CCK fields, this doesn't quite cut it. With the Content Management Filter module, the possibilities are endless.

A Story of a PHP Variable Reference Pitfall

If you think you have something as "basic" as PHP variables and reference rules all figured-out, you may have to think twice. Or at least that's what happened to me and following is an honest-to-heart story of it.

Tattler Starts Beta

Today we announced the start of beta for our topic-monitoring tool Tattler.

Using different usernames on a Mac over SSH

When I switched to a Mac recently, one of the things I loved about it was the underlying Unix shell. One of the most frequent things I do in a day is connect to a web server over SSH to do routine things (set permissions, edit a file, remove something, etc.). One annoying detail, however small, is that the username on my Mac is different than the various usernames I have on the servers I visit frequently.