I was interviewed this morning on DC-area radio (MP3 available). The trigger was a series of posts I've made about priorities for the Obama Administration's new CTO, in particular my argument that the United States needs a high-ranking official with CIO-like responsibilities.

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Computerworld did a story about whether you can bet bad things deleted about you from the Web. They found that, unsurprisingly, you generally can't. Of course, there are exceptions. Slashdot, this blog, and one of my others combined to get thousands of scammy, lying web pages taken down from the site JLove.

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Twitter Awesomeness is a spoof tool mocking social media scorekeepers such as Twitter Rank.

Please note that these tools are MEANT for folks like social media consultants who take Twitter "success" seriously.

Or are they?

It's all verrrry meta ...

Ellen Messmer reminds us that the two biggest security problems at internet service providers (ISPs) are, in some order:

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My post yesterday about the United States federal computing mess caught the attention of Ed Yourdon on Twitter (yes -- THAT Ed Yourdon). He sent it on to Paul Strassman, who put a link to one of his own articles into the comment thread for another post in the series. Paul's article (that link goes up and down a bit) contains such damning observations as (emphasis mine):

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I recently posted a 7-point list of recommended Obama Administration IT priorities, and have generally held forth on the need for a true United States Chief Information Officer (CIO). But truth be told, that all boils down to "Solve our terrible problems with government IT," and those problems really boil down to one thing:

Government IT planning and acquisition are totally broken.

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The Washington Post offers an article whose main theme is "What are the Obama folks going to do with this giant internet community they've created? Along the way, they reported some striking-sounding facts and figures, including:

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President-Elect Obama has promised to appoint a Chief Technology Officer of the United States. I've argued that what Obama really needs and wants is first and an execution-oriented Chief Information Officer. The job surely requires great technological vision, but execution skills are paramount. Discussion on Slashdot ensued. While many of the comments were off-topic and/or inane, at least two good questions were raised:

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Edit: I've now done a radio interview in connection with this post. That and other related analysis can be found starting from this link.

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I've written before about brilliant hits and appalling misses in the 2008 Democratic campaign's use of technology. Now I'd like to play catch-up with some other writers' stories on similar subjects. Brad Reed of Network World offered an overview a few weeks ago of technology's impact on multiple sides of the campaign.

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Scott Bradner offered a 10-point wish list for Obama-era technology policies. 8-9 of the 10 dealt with internet and/or telecom issues (depending on where you classify his call to end computer/internet/telecom-related Fourth Amendment violations). Richard Stiennon's 10-point list focuses even more narrowly, on infosecurity. Here on NetworkWorld.com, that orientation makes perfect sense.

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Along with expressing some odd policy opinions -- anti-trust enforcement is BAD for the technology industry?? -- a CNet article reminded me that President-Elect Obama intends to appoint a govermental CTO to "ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century," among other duties.

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Newsweek is reporting that both the Obama and McCain campaigns were hacked by what is presumed to be foreign powers looking for insight into their policies and perhaps future negotiating positions. And they succeeded, too:

 

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 Correction: The "CNNBC" video I was writing about is actually by MoveOn.org, not the Obama campaign. I apologize for the error! 

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According to the Obama campaign, a certain viral video has already been emailed 11 million times, and is going out 30 more times per second. No matter what your politics or nationality, that's an achievement worth examining, and a video worth watching.* I'll tell you the first secret right up front: It's not just one video.

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I think there are mole tunnels under the Great Firewall of China. Here's the story as to why.

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Except for the italicized comments, the following are actual excerpts from my spam folders.

1. Upsize your magic wand! (Does it give a +3 to Charisma-based skills as well?)
2. Make her long for you every night (Uh, I thought that was supposed to work the other way around.)
3. Update your penis! (If you do nothing, it will shut down and reboot in 4:59, 4:58, ...)
4. Master the art of being good in bed, it isn't as hard as you think (Isn't that the supposed problem to begin with?)
5. The confidence comes in the course of time and the sizes fbop pj mkhtxw (If I can't have one in size gkiqa, I'm not interested.)

There are many kinds of spam, such as standard criminal spam, the kind of spam your business might actually send if you're not careful, or (believe it or not) do-good virtuous spam. Most genres of criminal scam are pretty boring, although male-organ-enhancement spam can get pretty creative.

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I'm fulminating a lot about spam these days. So it's only fair that I post one of the rare instances I know of in which spamming actually is a good and virtuous thing to do.

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In another blog post, I offered the lemma:

The customer or other person whose attention you've requested is always right.

in support of the proposition:

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