Author: Pete Sinnott

June 18, 2007

Google launches a public policy blog

Google’s launched its own blog about public policy, “to do public policy advocacy in a Googley way,” claims Andrew McLaughlin, Google’s Director of Public Policy and Government Affairs. It’s certainly a good idea, even though postings over the last two months (it…
June 12, 2007

Inconsiderate FBO system design gets my goat

This really shouldn’t bother me as much as it does but check this out:  This is a screenshot from FedBizOpps after a user registers interest in an opportunity. Yeah, let me just click on that “X” at the top most right hand corner.……
June 8, 2007

Webcast on New FFATA Legislation & Strategic Planning

Got this from the Grants Policy Committee, as a reminder for the June 19 webcast:  The Grants Policy Committee (GPC) continues to lead federal grant management and administration streamlining activities. The next GPC Stakeholder Webcast & Meeting will be held on Tuesday,…

HOWTO: Scan directly to PDF (well, almost) on OSX

I have to print, sign, scan, and e‑mail a lot of documents and have been seeking out an easy way to do it for a while. It’s been particularly aggravating for multi-page documents because ImageCapture saves each page as individual files. There are…
June 5, 2007

HOWTO: Configure a Linksys WPS54G wireless print server on Mac OSX

While trying to set up our home theater Mac Mini to print to our shared printer, I accidentally deleted the printer on my MacBook (this is what happens if you run too many VNC sessions on machines that share a look-and-feel!). Putting…
June 3, 2007

What systems do you use to store and manage proposals and their content?

We have a LOT of content that’s used in proposals. We’d like a better way to store, retrieve, and reuse that content. How does your organization do this? We’re looking for something that can work over the Web and is more sophisticated…
June 2, 2007

Use Firefox keyword searches to speed browsing

Via the wonderful Lifehacker, I discovered a feature of Firefox that I can’t believe I didn’t know about before. You can create keywords for search boxes on pretty much any Web page and then, when you invoke the keyword in the Firefox address bar,…

Enigmail — neat‑o GnuGP extension for Thunderbird

I just installed Enigmail, a GnuGP (free, open source version of PGP encryption) extension that makes it incredibly easy to send encrypted e‑mail through Thunderbird. Install of GnuGP was easy using MacGPG, but I hit one snag in getting to grips with…
June 1, 2007

NIH seeking grants IT people

NIH has posted several government payscale GS-15 (senior level, effectively) job openings in the area that builds and operates their grants management system, eRA. Here are the links to the postings:  Chief, Operations Branch Chief, Customer Relations Branch Chief, Design…

Warning re Grants.gov’s expected high submission volume

Just got this from Vince Sprouls at Grants.gov, via the NGP. Take heed!  Due to high volume of submissions expected through Grants.gov due to multiple agency closings through June 5 the response time for processing applications may be longer than usual. …