Database

The Washington Post has launched a new site called WhoRunsGov.com that consists of comprehensive profiles of people in politics and the government.Currently the site is focused on people involved in the government and politics on a national level but plans are in the works to expand it to include state officials, experts at think tanks and interest groups.

A group of libraries that are participating in the Google Books Library Project want to make sure that their work lives on in case Google doesn't. They're forming a backup database of digitized books in case Google should go out of business in the future (insert joke or snide comment here). The database is called HathiTrust.

The U.S. federal government's terrorist database is severely hampered by technology issues and the estimated half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding to upgrade the system is on the brink of collapse, according to a congressional committee.The "Railhead" program was created to improve the terrorist watch list and enhance the integration of U.S. terrorist intelligence from the nations 16 separate intelligence agencies. The majority of more than 800 private contractors from dozens of companies working on Railhead have been laid off.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has introduced a plan to create an online prescription drug database so that doctors and pharmacies can reduce prescription drug abuse."Every year thousands of doctors try to check their patient's prescription history information but California's current database is difficult to access," Brown said."If California puts this information online, with real-time access, it will give authorized doctors and pharmacies the technology they need to fight prescription drug abuse which is burdening our healthcare system."

Building database sources and constructing queries intimidate the typical Internet user. Blist founder and CEO Kevin Merritt believes databases should serve people, instead of the other way around.

It was a team effort, but GoDaddy.com was the main mover; it’s this domain name registrar that “will take over the entire portfolio of more than 850,000 generic top-level domain (gTLD) names held by RegisterFly.” "GoDaddy And Friends Rescue RegisterFly Database"

It isn't an accident; the world's largest database of terrorism attacks has been made available for researchers of all types.

MySpace.com partnered with Sentinel Tech that they are donating a Sentinel Safe database to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The database, jointly developed by MySpace and Sentinel, enables websites identify, remove, and block convicted sex offenders from online communities.