An appearance of running the table 

It sure feels like Obama is on a roll now, after winning three states last night. If he does as well in DC, Virginia and Maryland, it will seem like he's running the table. That might mean that wins for Hillary in Ohio and Texas would come too late, and betting her time and money on those states could be as risky as Guiliani's decision to skip ahead to Florida.

Google forms: nice 

Actually it's a part of Google spreadsheets. Pretty nice and really easy to use. Not a lot of features, like, it would be nice if there was an e-mail field that would validate, but for simple stuff I can see a lot of people using it. I can see rogue departments in organizations using it when they don't want their form project to sit in a queue.

You can even send the form embedded in an e-mail message.

The results are automatically put in a spreadsheet in Google docs.

Should I be worried as Steve Gillmor suggests that Google won't be responsible about my privacy? I guess I am a little. His issue is the automatic befriending in Google Reader using your Gmail contacts -- and the fact that Google is stonewalling about answering questions about it, and the implications it signals about all the various possible combinations of Google bits associated with a user, especially since they've announced plans to mush together elements of their offerings into a social framework.

Personally I didn't get too worked up about the Gmail -> Reader sharing, I suppose because when I suddenly had a few friends in Reader I didn't see any names of people I didn't know or didn't care with share links with, and links aren't usually all that personal.

I did have a negative reaction when I checked out Yahoo Live the other morning and saw my full name appear in the chatroom visitor's list when I hadn't even signed in. I must have been signed into some other Yahoo product without realizing it, or could they have used a cookie from another app? I don't know, but it embarrassed me a little; I'd have liked the choice to show up anonymously.

I guess it just goes to show you something that's not all that surprising: privacy issues are personal and variable. You should be able to choose the level of exposure that's comfortable for you.

George in trouble? 

It is kind of heartwarming to see that when supporters realized Hillary's campaign was in financial trouble, the money poured in. It reminds me of the last scene in It's a Wonderful Life when the whole town files into the Bailey living room with their money because they heard George was in trouble. I cry every damned time.

(But I still don't trust her and Bill.) It would be nice to have a president who didn't seem like such an operator.