Alex Dunne

I am sick of Facebook applications. I don’t want any part of annoying apps like zombie wars, movie trivia challenges, friends for sale, porno screen names, etc. They were fun at first, but not anymore.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. The Facebook backlash is coming.

Instant messaging has come a long way in the 10 years or so I’ve been using it. At first you were locked into a single messaging network, like AOL or Yahoo. Then IM clients like Trillian came along that bridged those networks, letting you message between networks. But there’s always been a lag between when a new messaging network comes out, and when the messaging clients would implement support. For instance, Trillian still doesn’t support Google Talk, which a couple of people at my company use (notably my CIO, and it’s important to be available to him). About a month ago I discovered Digsby, which is a new IM client which not only supports Yahoo, AIM, MSN, and Google Talk (big plus right there), it also integrates with Facebook and even a POP email account. If you use Facebook and have friends/colleagues on multiple IM systems, I highly recommend it.

There’s a really depressing article about Pentagon spending controls (or lack thereof) in Portfolio this month. I remember the big dustup a decade or two ago, when it was revealed that the military was paying in the neighborhood of $600 for toilet seats and $500 (maybe more?) for coffee makers. You’d think the Pentagon would have tackled the problem of where money goes by now. I mean, hey, we’re talking about the military here — they punish recruits for not making their beds correctly and having messy foot lockers. But when it comes to money, they are incompetent. REALLY incompetent.

For the first three quarters of 2007, $1.1 trillion in Army accounting entries hadn’t been properly reviewed and substantiated, according to the Department of Defense’s inspector general. In 2006, $258.2 billion of recorded withdrawals and payments from the Army’s main account were unsupported. It’s as if the Army had submitted multibillion-dollar expense reports without any receipts.

What’s worse, the G.A.O. apparently can’t force the issue. And of course, Congress is more than willing to continue writing the Pentagon huge checks.

…And to think, I can’t expense an item over $24 at work without a receipt.