As we await the naming of our new “Cyber Czar,”  it’s worth noting just what a jungle it is out there on the internet, and how much we need one.

While working in networking , I had the opportunity to see firsthand the level of garden-variety denial of service attacks a typical DNS server exposed to the public internet faces (DNS, in many ways the soft white underbelly of the internet, is discussed a bit here).

While impressive, though, my experience was limited to small business networks - imagine what it’s like when entire governments go at it: in 2008, the Department of Defense reported almost 360 million attempted attacks - that’s close to a million every day (up from ‘only’ about 6 million in 2006).

Here then, a short list of recent cyber-spying activity…
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By most measures, the White House’s first online town hall meeting was a smashing success.

A whooping 104,081 email submissions and 3.6 million votes later, today, the US irreversibly gained a whole new level of citizen participation.

To that point, the White House actually created a namesake post exactly for that purpose.

What should come next, in my mind, would be to ensure that this new-found form of political dialog marketing will continue to be exactly that - an ongoing, productive dialog to and fro the electorate and the elected.

To that point, anyone in digital media building and growing a brand online knows, focused quality discussion across the social graph is not as easy as it sounds.

After all, the Web’s bull horn capabilities are very much a two-way street. And media outlets everywhere are likely eager to pick up on any disgruntled citizen that felt s/he didn’t get a proper response.

So beware White House, from now on be prepared to handle your incoming emails with great care.

It’s all about keeping the conversation going.

I know this is not a political blog. But Washington’s elected officials seems to have gone (finally) seriously digital. 

And I just can’t help myself but chime in.

I recently wrote about the Obama administration’s fervor for online social networking and viral (political) marketing.

Turns out US Congress representatives have long taken similar interest in making Web 2.0 their own. 

No matter where you stand politically, I believe this is generally good news for the technology industry, plus associated consumer software products and applications.

From mundane announcements of “one minute speeches” to instantaneously delivered results on House votes, at least since November 2007, the Clerk of the US House of Representatives regularly provides copious live updates “scraped” right from daily session inside the House chambers.

Then I got curious. Did I also miss the US Senate’s foray into micro-blogging? 

Sure enough, I did 

Although seemingly limited to Senator votes on the floor alone, Twitter has been carrying those posts at least since November 2007.

Turns out, they all nicely track back to govtrack.us, an independent Web site to “help the public research and track the activities in the US Congress.

Little did I know, D.C.’s interest in twittering created a new virtual C-SPAN if you will, sort of the “local access” approach parsed out one online message at a time.

And during yesterday’s historic session (voting on a trillion dollar support budget no less), US House representatives took to Twitter like college students (secretively, under their desks), pushing Blackberry and smartphone keys - eager to issue last-minute statements right from inside House chambers.

To top it all off, now even closed-door Presidential meetings experience their first Twitter “leaks”.

So, if this is not a political blog, why am I (still) writing about this stuff?

I am simply excited about how Web 2.0 is rapidly growing up, maturing from its early teenage “angst” appeal to a “mainstream” text and video channel - all within a couple of years.

Think of it.

As more politicians, news outlets and civic organizations thrive to adopt Web 2.0-style concepts, instant viral messaging from elected officials and others raise the legitimacy of collaborative software as a whole.

From Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Qik, or Utterz, you name it, this is good for the devices and the connecting broadband services that support Web 2.0 at home and on-the-go.

If you still think this trend is not real, the US Postal Service announced today a fiscal-year loss of at least $6 billion, due to a 4.5% drop, or 9 billion items replaced by email and other forms of digital viral communications. 

And although it is not entirely clear to me that the same $6 billion shifted into Web 2.0 software in its entirety  (most social networking and micro-blogging services are free or ad-based at best), it clearly shows a fundamental shift in how we capture and disseminate information these days.

On that note, have you twittered today?

Granted, we’re not big Yahoo fans here at digitalmissive - at least not of Yahoo! Mail: recently, several years’ worth of email was lost from Andreas’ personal account, and since early 2007, the search function on mine started returning messages only from the last month or so.   Yahoo’s response to both issues was of the “Known-Issue,-Our-Engineers-Are-Aware-Of-It” variety, but both issues have remained unresolved over the past few months.

Concurrently (as you might have heard), things have gotten a bit bumpy around here economically lately - but for Yahoo the news has been even worse: in October, the company announced the intended layoff of 10% of their workforce by year’s end,  and after turning down a buyout offer from Microsoft earlier this year at $31 per share, today the company’s stock dipped below $10.

Perhaps to entice Microsoft to make another offer (and perhaps to avoid submitting himself to what would’ve been a memorably contentious 2009 shareholder’s meeting), in November CEO Jerry Yang agreed to step down once a replacement can be found.   But despite the imminent departure of the initial $31 offer’s main opponent, and despite Yahoo’s obvious (if somewhat humiliating) interest in winning back the software giant’s affections, Microsoft has not been enticed to return to the table with a reduced offer.

Most recently, Yahoo Senior VP Toby Coppel (head of operations in Europe and Canada) has announced his departure from the company as well (although Yahoo insists Coppel’s decision is unrelated to Yang’s departure and Microsoft’s lack of renewed interest).  While I was admittedly frustrated with Yahoo Mail, it is with no schadenfreude that I witness the company’s troubles - especially not for the 1000+ Yahoo employees to be let go by 2009.  But it is interesting to note that how well a company executes on the small stuff (such as the mail accounts of two guys from New York) often has a way of being predictive of its longer-term prospects.

It’s not clear whether Microsoft’s apparent disinterest in Yahoo is genuine or whether it’s a tactical stance given Yahoo’s continually weakening negotiating position – but either way, as unhappy as Yahoo shareholders must be these days, Microsoft owners should be showing Steve Ballmer the love for walking away at $31…

“Apple will announce Sirius/XM satellite radio support on September 9th”, I wrote back on September 5th.

OK, I was throwing the long ball there and it didn’t work out that way (at least not yet…)  - my bad.

Instead,  Apple’s much anticipated press event was somewhat less earth-shattering: new iPod Nanos and Touches with marginal improvements:

• New iPhone firmware.
• The introduction of HD television content on iTunes (the increased data transfer required for HD being Less of an issue given Apple’s non-streaming service).
• The return of NBC/Universal content to iStore (one prediction I did get right).

However, I remain convinced that since satellite radio is particularly well-suited to mobile users, an iPod/iPhone agreement (along the lines of Apple’s audio book partnership with Audible.com) remains an interesting possibility – and since Sirius/XM still needs a new way to grow quickly (new car sales are way down, the economy is affecting discretionary spending, and their stock price has been hammered), Apple would have substantial negotiating leverage.
“Yahoo mail search broken”, I wrote back on August 8th.

Well, another month has gone by and still is.

Add to that the continued lack of IMAP support and the queasy feeling one gets reading about Andreas losing 5 years’ worth of Yahoo email, and I’m finally off the Yahoo reservation, for good. It’s actually a bit baffling to me - both how cavalier they’ve been about their technical shortcomings and also how little adverse press coverage they’ve received - still, I wonder if the brand is in the slow process of becoming the next AOL or Radio Shack…


Anyway - speaking of IMAP, if you have a smartphone/PDA and a Gmail account, that’s the way to get your email (for more on why it’s superior to POP3, read this).  While Gmail and the iPhone play very nicely via IMAP, I’ve always wanted Google calendar sync as well, though – and I’ve recently found a very nice way to do that: nuevasync.com, a new service (still in beta) that can sync Google contacts and calendars to mobile devices without requiring any client-side software.  It does this by making the Google (and Plaxo) services available via Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.  In other words, nuevasync acts as the conduit between these two corporate rivals (in fact, the nuevasync.com home page avoids explicitly mentioning ActiveSync, referring only to using “synchronization protocols that are already built in”).  This begs the question: how does Microsoft feel about all this?  Since Nuevasync also makes the Google/Plaxo services available to Windows Mobile devices, to the extent there’s demand for that, it would tend to help drive sales of the Windows Mobile platform - and anything that makes Exchange compatible with more mobile devices could also be a net positive  – but these benefits come at the expense of letting Gmail users (such as myself) avail themselves of a Microsoft protocol.  For free.  For now, though, Microsoft seems to have no problem with Nuevasync, but that could change…

That’s it. Just like that. One morning you wake up to find most of your emails emptied, gone, vanished - never to be retrieved again.

Well, that just happened to me. But what happened really?

A happy Yahoo! Mail Plus customer since February 2003 - a full five years of my personal emails dissolved into thin air this past week.

A moment of panic ensued. Then I started thinking.

The good news: I discovered that Yahoo! has a toll-free number to call (still relatively untypical for a .com), their customer service rep was exceedingly helpful and to-the-point, without schmoozie upselling attempts and just a minimum number of subservient “we-love-you-Mr.-Customer”.

And yes, I did get my follow-up call the same evening, just as promised.

The bad news: In a heartbeat Yahoo! (accidentally?) removed a full five years of my personal email communications with friends, family and many other folks I care about - only to confirm Yahoo! had forever deleted thousands of my digital messages off their server farms.

To me, that real question behind this unexpected personal data kill: In our hyper-social, interconnected world, what role does our email communication really represent within our personal sphere?

Certainly not as direct and personable as a one-on-one phone call, email is faster to-and-fro sender and recipient than, let’s say, a letter or a fax.

Conversely, email lags the speed of instant messaging and typically is slower than a briefly “spit-out” Twitter-style micro-blog post.

Of course email is searchable. In fact, Yahoo!’s recent free browser update improved my ability to turn scant bits of memory (… didn’t what’s-her-name’s email mention “engagement ads”?) into a series of (mostly relevant) hits.

Try that with past voice mails , letters or faxes received. It will not work.

But did I hold on to years of emails because I really needed to, or simply because I could? 

And what meaning do personal emails occupy in my daily life in terms of actual productivity gains?

Pushed by Google’s competitive Gmail launch, in May of last year, Yahoo! responded by offering “unlimited email storage” capabilities.

At one fell swoop, I was confronted with the pleasures of an all-you-can-eat email depository.

But just because competition got tough on Yahoo!, and storage cost had fallen dramatically, doesn’t really mean myself (or most anyone) actually needed the extra space and ensuing clutter.

Leaves my postmortem analysis with the legal aspect of my involuntary email vanishing act.

In short, a look inside Yahoo!’s service agreement failed to provide detail into the liability aspect of emails lost. (Do I actually have recourse here?).

But then again, it’s too late anyway.

What’s gone is gone, forever in the heavens of the Internet ether.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who keep their ice cube trays filled and those who don’t. (Remember when there were ice cube trays in most freezers?)

So maybe I should update that: are two kinds of people in the world: those who keep their email inbox empty and those who don’t – and I have to admit I’m in the latter demographic.

There, I said it. While my desktops (both physical and digital) are pretty clean (and I like to think that I’m right up there as far as productivity goes), my Yahoo account goes back well into the last century, and my mostly unkempt inbox now has over 9000 emails in it. I know, not exactly best practices – but Yahoo’s recently moved to no limitations on email data storage size, and I’m taking Mr. Yang at his word (and I’ve had clients – Exchange Breakers, I used to call them – with several times that amount of messages in their inboxes).

What made such bad behavior possible was my profound dependence on email search. Since I’m not populating subfolders, I *need* my search functionality – and for several months now, (along with a fair number of other Yahoo users) my email search is broken, only returning matches from the last three weeks or so.

I’ve Googled it - it turns out there are a lot of us out there but not enough to be news-worthy. I’ve sent forms and chats to Yahoo support – I’ve only gotten the generic “this is a known issue, we’ve escalated it” response. If I were paranoid blogger (and I hear that can be a problem out there on these here internets), I could almost convince myself Yahoo is attempting to ‘encourage’ users like me to keep less of our data laying around cluttering up their data centers – but no, I think it’s just another example of the potential downside of having one’s data up the cloud: outages. While what’s happening to me isn’t as scary (or evidently news-worthy) as what happened recently to some Apple MobileMe early adopters (in which the emails were actually lost ).

Cloud computing: collaboration, portability, workstation platform flexibility, lower server and backup costs – a free lunch. That is, until there are host-side issues up there in that cloud. Then the feeling of comfort from having someone in cloud responsible for your data can turn intoa pretty uncomfortable feeling of helplessness, especially when (unlike the Google Apps and Apple MobileMe situations) the issue is not widespread enough to garner media attention and goes unresolved for months.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten pretty acquainted with that <next> button, having hit it hundreds of times now to page through 9 years’ worth of emails.

Yahoo, thou art bumming me out. Waaah.