An important element (read: selling point) of Internet marketing is the ability to know more about consumers and their behaviors. Everything can be tracked on the Internet, for the most part, and there is obvious value to marketers and their efforts. The flip side of this ability to track people is the privacy issue and lately the US government has been raising it’s regulatory eyebrows at the online world.

For fans of Kevin Rudd, the end of Australia’s elections was anything but bitter.  But Google was nonetheless there, continuing the election coverage that it first announced in September.

Several common website errors may give webmasters fits, not to mention site visitors when seeing them appear online.

Performance Pricing alleges in a federal lawsuit that the four Internet players they have sued infringe on a patent the company holds, in relation to paid search advertising.

Sick of American politics?  Well, this may not make you feel any better, but Google’s got a brand new website offering a detailed view of the Australian equivalent.

Only one week has passed since NBC / News Corp announced the name of their online video project – Hulu.
And it was TechCrunch that made us all laugh when they ironically translated Hulu into Swahili – meaning, among other things, “cease” and “desist”.

Forget waiting for some federal shield law to be passed: the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has determined in two separate rulings yesterday, that blogs are, in fact, media, as reported by TechCrunch.

It doesn’t look like lead-generation company ValueClick is going to the acquisition-ball anytime soon.

There’s most likely a balance between no regulation and too much regulation, and the current Democratic Congress is walking that line. No one would doubt the potential harm caused by "rogue" Web-dealers, but Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) tightening grip on Internet service providers should at least cause one to step back a bit to look at it.

The public satisfaction with federal government Web sites dropped from last quarters all time high and stayed relatively unchanged over the last seven quarters. The first quarter 2007 special report on E-Government Satisfaction from the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows that customer satisfaction with federal Web sites declined 0.7 percent from last quarter to an overall score of 73.4.

Even with the drop in satisfaction, e-government faired better than the federal government, which had a score of 72.3 on the ACSI.

In the past, large organizations have been reluctant to switch over to a new Microsoft operating system due to factors of cost, new training, and the possibility unknown bugs still lurking about in the software. In this case, however, reluctance has given way to outright refusal.

Growing consumer disappointment with Windows Vista, coupled with the need of major businesses and government agencies to begin assessing long-term computing needs, seems to be forcing IT professionals to consider non-Microsoft alternatives for their operating system and office suite applications.

When you consider that Google’s net income in 2006 was well over $3 billion, it becomes apparent that individual customers don’t matter much to the company’s overall business. Google may be trying to change that, however: yesterday and today, it’s holding a special sales meeting with “nearly 200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed military members.”

A press release from FaceTime Communications stopped me cold today.

If you despise cold weather, crowded shopping malls and parking lots, or if you simply want to shop in your underwear, doing your holiday shopping online will be your savior. That is, if you know how to shop online without being scrooged.

Google Germany is running a Doodle in honor of the 16th anniversary of the day East and West Germany became one.

AP is reporting growing support for the creation of a Google-like search engine for tracking federal goverment spending.

Despite increased demand for high-caliber leadership in all segments of the technology community, it wasn’t until fairly recently that we saw the migration of top information technology executives between the federal and corporate sectors.

US Senator Lamar Alexander and his ex-staffer Deborah Taylor Tate now occupy opposing positions on the issue of colleges funding network upgrades that will make them compliant with federal wiretapping needs.

The Internal Revenue Service began the process for obtaining information from eBay-owned PayPal on certain money transfers outside the US.

According to this post from Jeff Jarvis, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

What do schoolgirl doodles, the IRS, and instant messaging have in common? Absolutely nothing. But we know you’re busy, and sometimes you just want to read something short and sweet and then get on with your day. Well, here you go.