We've all seen phishing e-mails before (thank you eBay, PayPal) but it's a bit trickier when the e-mail deliberately asking you to pony up your e-mail username and password comes from a sender purporting to be USCTEAM. The e-mail received today by several USC e-mail account holders suggests that the user's e-mail account will be terminated "permanently" within 7 days lest the recipient respond with account details including username, password, date of birth, and "country......

A little over a year ago I had an idea for the city website and thought to share it with ITA, the city's Information Technology Administration. So I headed over to the trusted lacity.org and found the webmaster's e-mail address on the homepage. I sent off an e-mail and a few minutes later, it was returned with an undeliverable address. "Maybe it was a fluke," I thought, "I'll try again later". A few weeks later,......

While cruising the City of Los Angeles website, we learned something new: James K Hahn is still mayor! Oh wait, the Information Technology Administration, who is in charge of the website, forgot to take this down. And this is not the first time this exact incident has happened. Cultural Affairs had to 4 month learning curve to who the mayor was last year until we called the Mayor's office and heard a gasp over......

Today, the Information Technology Administration (ITA) along with the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), announced some Los Angeles E-Democracy, as they call it. What does this mean? A bunch of online toys for us city nerds. Here's some of what they've done in the past 24 months: Online Council Votes: stalk follow your councilmember's voting track record. Online Council File Index: Keep track of any legislation considered and/or acted upon. Online Council Docs: We......