Being a public radio guy, it occurred to me today that an on-air fundraiser would be a fun and interesting model for boosting the number of people who follow me on Twitter. So this morning on Twitter I announced a follower drive. I wrote,

As public radio colleagues do the important work of raising money, I'd like to start my own drive on Twitter. Goal: 20 new followers today.

I'm small-time compared to A-list Twitterers, so 20 new followers seemed like a lot. Twitter users responded in a mostly positive fashion. Many couldn't resist public radio fundraiser jokes. @esagor said,

If I got you a new follower, do I get a free tote bag?

A few users needled me for begging. @ShawnKing suggested it appeared a little unseemly, while @s4xton wrote,

I just stopped following @jongordon because of his Twitter follower drive. Ha ha ha.

He wasn't kidding. He unfollowed me until the drive was over, but I won him back.

I should have set the bar higher. I exceeded my goal by five followers, and it only took about 90 minutes. It was tempting to keep working the network for more followers, but I quieted down as I promised.

Early in the experiment, @jojeda wondered how I could gain new followers through a Twitter follow drive, as the only people who could see my pleas were already following me. The idea was that people who follow me could tap into their own networks, of which I am not a part, to spread the message. It really worked. I'm certain that a few influencers, such as @chuckumentary, were responsible for the new followers. There's a marketing lesson here somewhere.

Julio Ojeda-Zapata of the St. Paul Pioneer Press made a nice little video of a recent iChat session about the Chumby. Here it is.

I really have to get a better webcam. The MacBook's built-in iSight camera is not cutting it. Also, I probably should not wear golf attire in future videos...

I've spent the past few days testing Chumby, a grapefruit-sized, Linux-based widget display device encased in a beanbag. In this interview (RealAudio - MP3 - iTunes) , I compare notes with Dwight Silverman, who previously wrote about Chumby here and here.

Dwight finds the Chumby cute and irresistible, but it does not appeal to me. If I want a weather forecast, an Internet radio stream, a Twitter feed, etc., I know a better way to get them -- on my main computer.

Things I don't like:

-$180 price tag
-Poor choice of Interent radio streams
-Speakers are in the back of the device, making it sound terrible
-You have to plug it in to an electrical outlet (battery power option likely to be added later)
-Cuteness. I don't need cute.

SmartyPig is a Web site designed to help people save money for specific goals, like buying an iPhone or a new digital TV. It includes a social element that lets friends and family contribute to an account and monitor a saver's progress.

Today on Future Tense (RealAudio - MP3 - iTunes)
I talked with co-founder Jon Gaskell. He was also interviewed by MarketWatch, and I've included that interview below.

Foreign governments and manufacturers working together could sabotage American computers and computer networks by selling hardware implanted with malicious processors, according to a story in the April issue of Popular Mechanics.

Security experts warn that as supply chains become more global and more opaque, no one can be sure what parts are going into the computers that run, well, everything--from air traffic control towers to banks to weapons systems. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff raised the issue recently at a briefing attended by Popular Mechanics and others. "Increasingly when you buy computers they have components that originate ... all around the world," he said. "We need to look at ... how we assure that people are not embedding in very small components ... that can be triggered remotely."

The scenario seems unlikely, but possible. Security expert Bruce Schneier does a pretty good job of raising doubt about the threat of counterfeit chips:

"It's certainly possible for the world's major espionage services to secretly plant vulnerabilities in our microprocessors, but the threat is overblown," says Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of the data security company BT Counterpane. "Why would anyone go through the effort and take the risk, when there are thousands of vulnerabilities in our computers, networks and operating systems waiting to be discovered with only a few hours' work?"

Tomorrow on Future Tense, I'll talk with Glenn Derene of Popular Mechanics about his story.

Scientists have devised a new, high-resolution, interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels that's 10 times more accurate than current maps.

The maps show CO2 emissions at 100 times more detail than was available before. The new model examines CO2 emissions down to local levels on an hourly basis.

Kevin Gurney, the leader in the project and an atmospheric scientist at Purdue, told me today he hopes the map will lead to better policy. Gurney will be my guest on tomorrow's Future Tense. Until then ...

Wired.com features a photo essay called "Unlikely Places Where Wired Pioneers had their Eureka! Moments." Included is Arthur Fry, 3M researcher who saw the light in the choir loft at North Presbyterian Church in North St. Paul.

"I was singing in the church choir, and I would often put little pieces of paper into the music on Wednesday night to mark where we were singing. Sometimes, before Sunday morning, that little paper would fall out. It was during the sermon that Sunday morning that I thought, 'What I really need is a little bookmark that will stick to the paper but will not tear the paper when I remove it.' I thought about a colleague in 3M's central research department who had been looking at these acrylated adhesives that we used in things like Magic Tape. He had come up with a batch of little sticky spheres. I got samples of those and set about trying to make a bookmark. I thought it was going to be a little niche market. I discovered they weren't just a bookmark but were wonderfully useful for notes and labels -- because it's a paper world out there and we need to stick things to paper."

In the New Yorker, Eric Alterman has a thoughtful and depressing essay on the decline of newspapers in the U.S. Describing the Huffington Post-style sites that are usurping newspapers, Alterman writes

And so we are about to enter a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism. The transformation of newspapers from enterprises devoted to objective reporting to a cluster of communities, each engaged in its own kind of "news"--and each with its own set of "truths" upon which to base debate and discussion--will mean the loss of a single national narrative and agreed-upon set of "facts" by which to conduct our politics. News will become increasingly "red" or "blue."

Today's Future Tense (RealAudio - MP3 - iTunes) featured an interview with Mary Flanagan of Tiltfactor Lab, which researches and promotes games designed to promote social and political change.

Just as some filmmakers, novelists, and poets seek to fight social ills like poverty and violence by highlighting those problems, computer game makers, too are beginning to use their medium to promote social and political change.

In a game called Peacemaker, players attempt to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by assuming assume the role of the Israeli prime minister or Palestinian president; Darfur is Dying is a web-based game designed to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Africa; Food Force teaches children about global hunger and humanitarian aid.

Here's a short video interview with Flanagan.

Security expert Bruce Schneier reacts to research that shows heart defibrilators are theoretically open to mischievous hackers:

The risks are there, but the benefits of these devices are much greater. The point of this research isn't to help people hack into pacemakers and commit murder, but to enable medical device companies to design better implantable equipment in the future. I think it's great work.

More to come...