Friday, November 13, 2009

IJIS releases NIEM Conformance guidance for RFPs

On October 30, the IJIS institute announced the NIEM Conformance for RFPs.  The document states that:
"It is intended to be a resource for public safety practitioners who are making decisions with regard to procurement for public safety computer systems that have, or may in the future have, information sharing requirements with other systems. The goal is to help ensure RFPs meet federal grant requirements and national best practices for information sharing, and to provide help in understanding the technology standards and how they relate to product selection. The National Information Exchange Model NIEM, which is most often included in U.S. Department of Justice DOJ and U.S. Department of Homeland Security DHS grant requirements, is a national approach and common vocabulary for information exchange."

"NIEM Conformance for RFPs was developed by the IJIS Institute’s Public Safety Technical Standards Committee IPSTSC and is available online:

http://www.ijis.org/docs/NIEM_Conformance_for_RFP_20091028.pdf

Monday, November 9, 2009

Ergonomic Mouse Helps

Since early summer your CTB editor has been experiencing hand pain in the tendon connected to the index finger.  After trying different treatment methods including rest, massage, heat, cold, the pain always returned.  Finally today I decided that enough was enough and researched various ergonomic mouse options.  After some online research I narrowed the choices down to two, the Microsoft Natural Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 and the Logitech Performance Mouse MX   Both seemed to do the job of turning the wrist/finger position from a parallel to the table surfact to a more natural tilted position please see the two websites for photos to see what this means.  So off to the store to try them out and I came back with the Microsoft version.  And I must report that there was immediate pain relief.  Of course time will tell if this is a solution, but so far, so good.