Growing open government with Transparency Camp West

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Oldest stars of cosmos detected

An 8.2-metre optical telescope which forms part of the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile European Southern Observatory astronomers have said they had uncovered the oldest stars in our galactic neighborhood thanks to a massive telescope installed in Chile. Finding the most primitive stars outside the Milky Way galaxy "is crucial for our understanding of the earliest stars in the universe,&...

Secret of Nasca lines

Are they ancient road maps or messages for visiting aliens? Lying at the foothill of Peru's Andes Mountains is the site of one of the world's greatest mysteries. Etched, as if by giants, onto its arid, moonscape plains are immense lines that stretch for miles, forming strange shapes recognizable only from the air. Now, a team of specialists from around the globe has come to southern Pe...

Tapping Sahara’s green power potential

' Zahangir Kabir A solar array about the size of one percent the size of the Sahara Desert is good enough to supply the whole world with electric power. Fossil fuels are running out and carbon dioxide is building up. Scientists are worried about what to do for future survival of modern human kind. Engineers in Germany are combining old and new solar technology into what may be t...

Song reshapes bird brain

A finch lands on a person's hand In an experiment that unlocked insights into the learning process, scientists said Wednesday (17.02.10)they had seen brain cells in a adolescent finch change as it listened for the first time to the warble of an adult bird. Just a single experience can rapidly shape a juvenile brain and alter the way it functions, the research suggests. Whether in bir...

Research on Borneo’s elusive cat now possible

The Sunderland Clouded Leopard stalking through the Dermakot forest reserve in BorneoObaidur Rahman Recently, something phenomenal took place in the Malaysian Borneo's Sabah state's Dermakot Forest Reserve. On 15th February, a Sundaland Clouded Leopard, the latest and the least understood of all cat species, has been filmed for the very first time ever! This 3-foot long and about 90-pound big c...

BTRC shuts down RanksTel

Star Online Report Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission early Friday shut down all operations of RanksTel for its involvement in illegal VoIP (voice over internet protocol) business. “We have shut down all activities of RangsTel since early Friday after we found huge quantity of VoIP equipment at the company’s Mohakhali office,” BTRC Chairman Zia Ahmed told The Daily Star...

Growing open government with Transparency Camp West

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Admin on August 14, 2009 in Technology - Comments: No Comments »

(If you’re interested in meeting the team of Googlers working to strengthen the public sector and civic engagement through technology, check out our Public Sector blog. -Ed.)

Organizing public sector information isn’t easy, and companies like Google rely on the good work of open government advocates to access useful data. Last weekend more than 150 developers, NGOs, wonks, activists and government representatives from as far away as Russia and Israel gathered at our Mountain View campus for Transparency Camp West to discuss efforts to make governments more transparent and accessible to the public.

Sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan organization founded in 2006, Transparency Camp allowed open government advocates to freely swap ideas about a wide range of topics: voting, journalism, public transit, healthcare, citizen engagement and more. The theme of openness also extended to the Sunlight Foundation’s board meeting on Saturday. While most organizations hold their board meetings in private, the Sunlight Foundation opened their board meeting not only to staff, but also to members of the public.

The “un-conference” format let attendees decide session topics

At Google we’re inspired by efforts to connect people to the political process, to useful public information and to their governments — and we’re eager to participate. To hear more about the different kinds of bottom-up change proposed at Transparency Camp, head to the Google Open Source blog for a summary by Clay Johnson from the Sunlight Foundation.