Nick Denton sent me looking at this company:
Oh no, the corporate wordmanglers have got hold of blogging. “Traction is a leader in next generation Enterprise Weblog software, delivering interoperable, inexpensive, rapidly deployable, open and easy to use tools for groups and teams to communicate, share, organize and link business information in context.”
The Traction product doesn’t sound like all that, but they do have some interesting investors, such as In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital fund. And here I didn’t even know we had such a good public/private partnership going in the USA. Now I know where to send my next business plan.
This is the most intriguing techno-dealie I’ve run across in a while, so it’s worth exploring some of its implications. Public/private partnerships are common outside the US, but we’ve never been real big on them here for a number of reasons related to the structure of our government, the nervousness of the left about wealth-creation, and the nervousness of the right about things that smack of socialism. But we have a number of them in the home mortgage area despite all of those worries, and they work well.
One of the reasons the Pentagon buys $6000 toilet seats from defense contractors is to keep the contractors in business between big contracts, so there will be some folks to bid on the next B5 bomber project or whatever. A venture fund is probably a cheaper way to do this, all in all.
In-Q-Tel was created during the Clinton Administration, but given his non-relationship with the CIA, it’s not clear how it happened. Maybe he gave the CIA the go-ahead while he was distracted by an intern, maybe not. It’s worth looking into.
It’s fascinating, of course, that the CIA sees blogware as an important defense technology. I suppose they’ll be using Traction to bring down Saddam and the House of Saud; maybe get the bad boys so obsessed with blogwars they don’t notice the laser-guided precision bombs blowing the phone system to bits. That would be cool.
And finally, the pacifist, left-leaning, vegetarian web elves of Friscotown are going to explode when they learn that their peaceful hippie collaboration tool has been borged by the Military-Industrial Complex for its nefarious ends. Kind of gives the term “warblog” a whole new dimension. Ha.
damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn!
I have been working on a blog system for complex investigations and analysis! Pfft. Well I guess I will open source it gets useful.
damn.
In-Q-Tel was created by George Tenet.
And it was done during the Clinton administration because Clinton was competent.
Aaaahhh…the good ole days.
Ahhh…refreshing to see “George Tenet” and “competent” mentioned in the same paragraph. Maybe it’s more hysterically funny than refreshing, on second thought.
Ah yes… Clinton and George Tenet competent… they created InQTel in large part because the government has neither the work environment nor the pay scales necessary to keep good technical employees on hand, and they know it. None of their programmers are going to be doing much innovating, so they bit the bullet and reached out to the private sector.
But keep in mind these are the same folks who decided we couldn’t recruit any human sources who were suspected of engaging in human or civil rights abuses. Because, after all, its so easy to find non-violent terrorists with inside information they want to share with the CIA about attacks against the US.