Case in point: Upon arriving at the poll, I had to show my ID and sign in before waiting for a machine designated for my township. There were 10 voting machines in my voting location, but only three could be used by those of us waiting in the long (long) line. The whole time I was there, three machines designated for another township saw such limited action that dust bunnies began to build around them. In the days of electronic voting, why can't a machine be used for multiple townships? Just choose the one applicable for each voter as their turn comes up.

It also escapes me why your physical presence is needed to vote in the first place. Why not vote online? If I can give my credit card number across a secure connection and assure merchants that I am who I say I am, if I can access my pay stub online and change my contributions on the fly, if I can take final exams remotely -- do I still need a volunteer poll worker who retired years ago and can't see more than two feet in front of them to look at my ID and authenticate my vote?

That makes about as much sense as saying that a testing center receptionist who has never seen an out-of-state driver's license (and couldn't spot a real one from a fake) is the best method of preventing certification fraud.

It may be schadenfreude, but a part of me delighted last Tuesday at the realization that many of the IT certification world's idiocies and inefficiencies exist beyond its borders.

Xsan 2 Administration Exam Now Live
Apple offers a certification program for its SAN file system for Mac OS X (known as Xsan), intended for those who administer, integrate and implement Xsan. Exam 9L0-622 (Xsan Administration) has recently gone live. This is the only exam you need to earn the Xsan 2 Administration certification and it consists of 75 questions that must be answered within two hours with a score of 75 percent or better.

The exam is based on Xsan 2.1 and Mac OS X Sever 10.5.5. The exam consists of the following six topics and weights (numbers are rounded):

• Maintenance and troubleshooting (26 percent)
• Client management (23 percent)
• Deployment (19 percent)
• Concepts (14 percent)
• Planning (10 percent)
• Volume management (8 percent)

More information on key knowledge areas and objectives for each topic can be found here (PDF).

Book of the Week: 'The New Language of Marketing 2.0'
Every business owner today wants to do viral marketing; nowadays, it's difficult to pick up a business plan in which it's not mentioned -- if not highlighted. Most confuse viral marketing with free advertising and believe that by sending out their message via the Web, they can attract millions of customers without incurring any cost. Oh, if only it were that easy.

The truth of the matter is viral marketing -- and all Web-based marketing -- takes careful planning, crafting, implementation and management. In The New Language of Marketing 2.0: How to Use ANGELS to Energize Your Market, Sandy Carter walks through a plethora of case studies and shows how to use the ANGELS framework for implementing such Web 2.0 entities as social networks, widgets, wikis, Twitter, podcasts/videocasts and blogs.

Published by IBM Press, it mentions the words "IBM" and "WebSphere" regularly, but not enough to detract from the fact that this is a really good blueprint on implementing a well-developed framework. This book should be a must-read for anyone involved in Web delivery, from IT admins to entrepreneurs and CEOs.