A Must-Use Site: ISN Gets A Makover (ISN)

Over the last week I have written about Jeff Carr's fascinating open source project and our own modest efforts with regard to the DNI's Open Source Innovation Challenege (Thanks to everyone who helped!), but the 800 pound gorilla in the open source world is the International Relations and Security Network (ISN). Established in 1994, with over 3 million hits a month and hundreds of top quality partners, ISN dwarfs most other efforts at open source.

ISN, housed at the Swiss Federal Insitute Of Technology in Zurich (the Swiss MIT and one of the top 50 universities in the world), channels more content in a day than most organizations create in a year. The ISN is part of the Center For Security Studies (CSS) at the ETH (the German abbreviation for "Federal Institute of Technology") and the CSS produces some very interesting and well-researched content of its own. Establishing organizations like the ISN is, of course, the kind of thing the Swiss do, but the Swiss government (which partially funds the site), the ETH and the CSS are to be applauded for supporting this extraordinary international resource.

The ISN's content used to be bound up in a hard to navigate website but no more. Last week ISN unveiled its new website and I find it to be a significant improvement. The interface is clean and simple and sorting the various products by type, subject or region is now a snap. The search feature is much improved and I was particularly impressed with how easily the RSS feeds integrated with Google Reader (my preferred RSS feed reader).

Note: I will continue to share some of the more interesting things I find in ISN's feeds and from other feeds I monitor in the SAM's Shared Items box on the right hand side of this page. Content there changes pretty quickly so if you see something of interest, be sure to bookmark it. It will probably be gone the next time you come back.

The site has a robust current affairs section and a massive digital library including a substantial link list and a comprehensive International Relations Directory. My only beef here (and it is minor) is that there is no separate subject heading for intelligence (hint, hint...). What is particularly good about these resources is that they come from partner institutions all over the world, helping ensure that whatever biases are inherent in one document are, at least, balanced by reports from the other side of the argument.

Dealing with the ISN as a partner is dead easy. ISN hosts our thesis series and occasionally publishes analysis by our students under the "Intel Brief" banner. Everyone from editor extraordinaire, Jen Alic, to our partnership manager, Linda Popova, is incredibly easy to work with. Having had an opportunity to visit the offices of the ISN, I can tell all of their partners that if it seems like an easy relationship to maintain it is because the ISN staff works their tails off to make it look that way.

Of particular note for OSINT specialists and intel studies programs is Chris Pallaris, the head of OSINT for the ISN. Chris is a good friend but is also one of the true OSINT visionaries. An excellent writer and speaker, Chris comes to this side of the pond periodically and is always worth listening to when he does.

SAM Goes Back To School, Part 4: Secure Your Laptop, Secure Your Data

Most college students have a laptop computer to work from. We did a survey a couple of years ago and the majority of the seniors we questioned actually recommended a laptop over even a high end desktop for intel studies students.

Many students keep the laptop in their rooms but, increasingly, I see students carrying their laptops with them everywhere: From dorm to class to work, etc. Obviously the more you have your laptop with you, the more use you are going to get out of it. Just as obviously, the more you move it around, the more chance you have for an accident, have someone steal it or just allow someone to mess with it.

Lifehacker had a great post earlier this week about setting up a free (or cheap, anyway) laptop security system. They talk about the different levels of security you can download, install or enable and cover applications for the Mac and the PC. Worth reading.

If you have one of those monster desktop replacement laptops or you just don't like carrying a laptop all the time, there is an alternative: PortableApps. You will need a flash drive (sometimes called a thumb drive). Get one with as much space as you can afford (They have gotten inexpensive, particularly through the online retailers. You can get a 1 gig drive for 3 bucks and an 8 gig drive for about 26 bucks at Amazon right now, for example).

The PortableApps website has some pretty clear instructions on how to download and load the apps (If you are having problems look for a Mercyhurst intel studies sophomore -- we gave a little extra credit for students who set up the system for themselves in Advanced Intel Analysis last year and most of them took advantage of the offer...).

The net result is that you can plug your thumb drive into any computer, work on the computer, and, when you are done, eject the thumb drive and leave taking all your work (and your browsing history) with you. Once enabled, all your work gets saved to the thumb drive.

The portable apps system comes with a whole host of open source software that you can use as well. Can't afford even the student version of MS Office? Then OpenOffice is for you and it comes pre-loaded in the PortableApps package (along with the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email tool, Pidgin for IM, etc). If you find yourself going from the dorm to the computer lab and back, then PortableApps can keep you from carrying a ton of weight and reduce the risk of damage to the laptop from theft or, more likely, accident.

A third option (and one that teams of students working on various projects seem to be increasingly turning to) is Google Docs or some other online productivity suite (such as Zoho). Google's offerings are not as fully functional as the MS Office tools you likely use right now but most people use very few of the functions in MS Office anyway.

The Google tools do have the enormous advantage of making collaboration a snap. This has proven to be particularly true with the spreadsheet application and team projects. With Google Docs, the team knows that everyone is working from the same format. While you can ensure the same thing with email and MS Excel, it simply is not as easy to set up and monitor. In addition, since everyone can see the whole spreadsheet everytime they log on, input mistakes are less likely to go unnoticed.

People worry about the Google hegemon and what it might do with all the docs that are uploaded there, and whether your data is truly protected, etc. I agree that these are obviously legitimate concerns for businesses and other formal organizations. I think the equation is bit different for college students. Here the question is something more like: "Is my 20 page term paper on 'Correlates of Bubble Gum Consumption In Burkina Faso' safer with Google or with me and my buddies and their coffee, beer or wine and my busy schedule and my cheap backpack without any padding, etc." I know what the answer would have been when I was a student...

Related Posts (Sam Goes Back To School):
Part 1: Wake Up!
Part 2: Top Firefox Add-ons
Part 3: Blogs Of Note

Don't Think, Stay Skinny! (Ars Technica)

Ars Technica is reporting today on a study that seems to indicate that "heavy mental effort leads to much bigger meals". The study was small scale and tested female students only but the results were statistically significant. The test was pretty carefully controlled and tested food intake after 3 conditions: resting, reading/writing or computer work. The students ate the most after the computer work but still ate significantly more after reading and writing than after just sitting around. The scientists concluded that knowledge-based work is "a new risk factor for a positive energy balance, with the potential to lead to overweight in the long-term."

Obviously they are going to do more studies but until they do, the next time someone fusses at you for not doing your school work, you have the prefect excuse: I'm trying to lose weight.

SAM Goes Back To School, Part 3: Blogs Of Note

There are a million great blogs out there so the list below is obviously incomplete. I have selected these blogs based on largely internal criteria - you may well disagree. I am also sure that I have forgotten somebody -- so forgive me as well. In this case, please do not hesitate to post your own favorite site in the comments or drop me an email.

The Basics: Secrecy News, Danger Room and Google News Alert for "Intelligence". OK, OK; these are mostly focused on US national security intelligence rather than intelligence writ large. The facts remain that 60-70% of our students, at least, go to work for a three letter agency and the 50-60 billion the US drops on intel each year dwarfs every other intel program in the world. Secrecy News, sponsored by the Federation Of American Scientists, is probably the most respected intelligence watchdog out there. Wired's Danger Room is interesting, eclectic and very widely read. Finally, while you will get many false positives, all intel studies students ought to have an alert set up with some news service (I use Google's News Alerts on the keyword "intelligence".

The Experts: Haft Of The Spear, IntelFusion, Soob, Analyst's Corner, The Dark Visitor, Risk, Uncertainty and Everything Else and much of the blogroll. Michael Tanji posts occasionally to Wired's Danger Room but if you want all of his good thinking you have to go to his site, Haft Of The Spear (affectionately known as HOTS). Jeff Carr over at Intelfusion is another blogger worth listening to. His recent OSINT project should generate some pretty cool results. Deborah Osborne's Analyst's Corner is a unique resource for crime and law enforcement analysts. The Dark Visitor is about Chinese hackers and if that interests you, then this is the best place to learn more about it. Finally, Professor William McGill explores the scientific aspects of intelligence at Risk Uncertainty and Everything Else. There are others in the blogroll (in the column to the right) worth checking out as well.

The Techies. Ars Technica, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, and ReadWriteWeb. All of these blogs cover technology in one fashion or another but each has its own specialty. I like Ars for its commentary on the way technology and society mix. TechCrunch covers the business of technology while Gizmodo focuses almost exclusively on gadgets and new applications of technology. ReadWriteWeb is all about web applications and fills in some of the gaps left by the other three.

Resource Blogs: Docuticker, Information Aesthetics, MakeUseOf, and Lifehacker. All of these blogs provide resources for getting stuff done. Docuticker provides links to many articles and studies of interest (I get a lot of the links in the Shared Items column at the right from Docuticker). Information Aesthetics is all about data visualization and is very good at providing new ideas or tools for making more compelling graphics. MakeUseOf is a web tools site with lots of tips, etc. for getting more out of the internet. Finally, the granddaddy of them all, Lifehacker, with tips, tricks and useful tools for just about everything.

College Blogs. Wise Bread, Hack College and Mind Hacks. Wise Bread is all about living on the cheap while Hack College is specifically targeted at helping students get through college. Mind Hacks is not truly a college blog but I always find good tips about how to study or analyze problems there.

Fun Stuff: Boing Boing, Rocketboom, Indexed, Ill Doctrine and Alexia Golez. These are some of the blogs I turn to when I need a break from work. Not all of it is for everybody but there is almost always something interesting on one of them.

Mercyhurst Student Blogs: The 19th Hole, GiRl SpY, Justin's Space and NewRisks. Student blogs are not as widely read as some of the others on this list but there are some very good ones out there. The 19th Hole covers a wide range of international issues while GiRl SpY covers the subject of women in intelligence with a unique and very personal voice. Justin's Space is a varied mix of interesting topics while the excellent NewRisks blog seems to have gone silent (Let's hope for its return soon!).

The Internationals: Silendo (Italian), Konkurrenzanalyse 2.0 (German), George C. Dimitriou (Greek), Inteligencia Competitiva (Brazilian), and Renseignement & Intelligence économique (French). We get quite a few international students and it is good to know that there are bloggers on every continent talking intelligently about intelligence. This is also good practice for students in various language programs. Me, I just use Ubiquity's translate feature...

As I mentioned earlier, I am sure I have forgotten some of the very best. Either post them to the comments or drop me note and I will make sure they get posted.

Previous Posts (SAM Goes Back To School):
Part 1: Wake Up!
Part 2: Top Firefox Add-Ons

Mercyhurst Intel Student At The Democratic National Convention (WSEE)

Our local television station interviewed one of our own, junior Jenna Jarema, while at the Democratic National Convention. She did well and if you haven't seen it, the video is here.