Technology Safari

A wildlife conservation group, Save the Elephants, is using GPS sensors to protect elephants from being jeopardized by the public and vice versa. According to a USA Today article, the group uses ESRI's GIS system to track the animals to ensure they're not being nuisances to farmers or endangered by ivory traders.

Cell phones attached to elephants send text messages every hour revealing their location, which aids in safeguarding the creatures if they roam out of Kenya's Amboseli National Park protected area or elsewhere in Tanzania and Kenya.

-- By Karen Stewartson, Managing Editor

Virtual World Brings Real Employee

In 2007, Missouri created an employee-recruiting site and held job fairs in Second Life (SL), an online virtual world. In September 2008, the state hired its first IT worker recruited directly from SL.

State CIO Dan Ross said the new employee first contacted the state as a computer-generated avatar during an SL job fair.

He's a Missouri computer engineering graduate who wanted to stay in the area, so it was a perfect match, Ross said.

Ross said more than half of Missouri's current IT work force is eligible for retirement in the next 10 years. He has aggressively searched for ways to attract young IT workers to state government.

-- By Steve Towns, Editor

Tough Choice

Nine out of 10 U.S. college students said Wi-Fi access is as essential to education as classrooms and computers, according to a survey from Wi-Fi Alliance and Wakefield Research. Nearly three in five students said they wouldn't go to a college that doesn't provide free Wi-Fi, while 79 percent said without Wi-Fi access, college would be much harder. The research also found that 48 percent of respondents would give up beer before giving up Wi-Fi.

Vital Stats

Hooked Up

BlackBerrys are by far the most popular mobile technology for connecting business users to the office, according to a recent survey.

• BlackBerry - 65.5 percent
• Windows Mobile platform - 22.5 percent
• Apple iPhone - 16 percent
• Palm - 9.1 percent
• Linux-based phones - 6.1 percent

Source: The Power Survey by J. Gold Associates

Coffee 2.0

Where do bloggers get the energy to endlessly update their sites? Caffeine. Survey results showed 93 percent of bloggers prefer regular coffee, while just 7 percent prefer decaf. Not surprisingly, 35 percent of the blogosphere drinks two to four cups of coffee per day, and 20 percent have more than four cups per day.

-- Joffrey's Coffee & Tea Company

Wireless Deployments
Government Technology magazine surveyed more than 400 government respondents about where they plan to deploy a wireless network in their cities or counties. The results are as follows:

However, the three top hindrances deterring respondents from deploying wireless networks are: resources, budget and security.