The cool thing (pun not intended) about using dynamic maps for emergency services, is that real-time data is easily visualized. This is a huge benefit to disaster recovery and incident response groups, as well as friends and family: The San Jose Mercury News has created an excellent example of just such a map:

Firefighters are evacuating residents near a wildfire that is burning out of control in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Your company should have something like this ready to go as part of your continuity and emergency plans.

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Update August 2020: The San Francisco Chronicle has a real-time air-quality map that tracks fires in the region

See air quality in your area in near-real time. This map shows ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated hourly.

ArcGIS is hosting a CalFire map of evacuation areas:

National Fire Situational Awareness maps are on the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) site

And Esri offers an embedded #FireMappers Wildfire Early Notification Map

And data.thecalifornian.com has its own fire map pulling from the NWCG site

San Diego’s Supercomputer Center WIFIRE project is trying to use all this data to predict wild fires of the future.

And Google has just announced a new real-time fire-tracking feature in maps:

Type in the name of an ongoing wildfire into Google search, and the site will now bring up a map featuring a near-real-time boundary of the fire.

Computerworld has an article titled New mashup tools look to penetrate IT. At first I couldn’t stop thinking about the word “penetration” in a traditional security context. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about the danger of developers pulling data feeds from all over yonder to create a “time-saver” interface.

JackBe allows users to let Excel directly consume mashups. A plug-in is connected to the spreadsheet so that whenever data is changed, the Presto server updates the data.

Heh. And you thought you had an Excel security problem today…

Problems have already arisen with the advertising model that is used for dynamic webpages and click-through. Unfortunately I missed the Web 2.0 conference but I wonder what portion was dedicated to the “penetration” aspects and necessary controls to prevent loss of integrity or confidentiality.

The AP reports that the price of oil is causing a reduction of security in neighborhoods:

Some police chiefs think the moneysaving measures are not all bad, and might actually help them do a better job. But they worry about the loss of take-home cars, saying the sight of a cruiser parked in a driveway or out in front of a home deters neighborhood crime.

The “better job” part is apparently based on the theory that police will interact with the public more if they are walking around instead of sitting in their cruisers.

Energy security is fast becoming a hot issue in America.

Wikipedia says the Romans had a different use of the term:

a century was actually only 80 men

It is like the opposite of a “baker’s dozen”. Seriously, though, it looks like regulations modified the definition of a Centurion’s establishment.

Centurions took their title from the fact that they commanded a century. Centuries were so-called because they originally numbered roughly 100 men. Just after that they numbered 60 men each and were paired into maniples, one with greater authority. After the Marian reforms, however, the standard establishment was set at 80 men.

What, they couldn’t rename things?