Here is a partial transcript of the press conference where this dramatic move was announced:

Vivek Kundra: The citizen cloud is a tremendous step forward in information technology hosting services. By running our government’s critical applications on a network of computers that are owned and maintained by American citizens instead of in huge, expensive data warehouses we will be able to reduce the federal technology budget from $80 billion to $10 billion in just six months.

John King: Obviously, I know what it is, but the average American citizen has never heard of cloud computing. Can you describe how this citizen cloud works?

Vivek Kundra: Cloud computing is an approach to computing that has evolved over the years. It takes advantage of the fact that the computers of an average American citizen sit idle an average of 90% of the time. Our plan is to borrow these spare cycles and use them to run the software the federal government uses to perform its obligations to the American people.

Lou Dobbs: What sort of software are we talking about here?

Vivek Kundra: Great question Lou. The citizen cloud is the preferred platform for every federal software application. We’re going to start migrating everything from the IRS tax refund processing platform to the CIA’s terrorism surveillance database to the citizen cloud within a week.

Marshall Kirkland: Wow. That’s pretty ambitious. Aren’t you worried about hosting sensitive information on machines you don’t have direct control over? I’m not sure I want my tax refund being hosted on my neighbors mac.

Vivek Kundra: We take security very seriously. That’s why every computer in the citizen cloud is going to use a special software package called eCondomsWork that isolates federal data from the rest of the data on that computer in a secure wrapper called an eCondom. The condom protects the data from penetration both by the computer owner and by viruses that exploit weaknesses in the OS and browser to attack the data.

John King: This condom thing – can you tell us more about how it works.

Vivek Kundra: (smiling) I’m sorry John, but if I’d known you were going to ask that I’d have brought someone from the FDA.

Wolf Blitzer: I don’t particularly want the federal government using my computer. What incentive do I have to let you use my spare cycles?

Vivek Kundra: Every American should feel a patriotic duty to support the government. This really is a moment for Americans to ask what they can do for their country, not the other way around. But… if that doesn’t work we have other options, one of which includes tax incentives.

Marshall Kirkland: So, you’re considering paying Americans to use their computers. Would it be a substantial amount?

Vivek Kundra: We’ll make it worth their while, but it will still be very cost effective compared to hosted data centers. An average home with one or two computers and broadband internet could earn as much as $1000/year.

Wolf Blitzer: What if that doesn’t work? That’s not a lot of money to many Americans – won’t a lot of Americans just forgo that money to keep your software off of their machines?

Vivek Kundra: Perhaps. But there are ways around that too. In fact, we’re considering just declaring spare computing cycles the eminent domain of the United States, sort of like the wireless spectrum, and controlling it that way.

Marshall Kirk: Even if you use eminent domain to claim the cycles, won’t you still have to get access to the boxes? What if citizens won’t let you?

Vivek Kundra: We’re going to use a time-proven method of appropriating spare computing cycles without the owner’s permission. Sometime next week, an email will go out to every American citizen promising them a nude picture of President Obama if they open an attachment. That attachment will secretly install the CondomWorks software package and display a tasteful picture of our president. At that point, we will have successfully appropriated the users computer.

Marshall Kirk: What about anti-virus software? Won’t they block you?

Vivek Kundra: We’ve already made agreements with the major software vendors to facilitate the CondomsWork attack and the FCC is announcing new regulations on broadband internet that make it illegal to actively prevent the CondomsWork installation and execution.

End of transcript. For the full transcript of the press conference, go to CIO.gov.

The federal Citizen Cloud is modeled after a successful program initiated by Indiana governor Mitch Daniels to use spare cycles of Hoosier’s computers to operate the state’s public registered sex offender’s database. Indiana has been using a network of 20,000 home computers to track and publish the whereabouts of the criminally perverse since 2007 for a claimed savings of $2.3 million.

Opponents of the plan claim they have been able to exploit a safari vulnerability to obtain the IP addresses of the entire Indiana citizen cloud and have traced them back to physical locations.

“80% of the computers used in Indiana’s so-called citizen cloud are in fact not the computers of citizens at all,” says Walter, an anonymous member of KillTheCloud, an Indiana-based information security group that is opposed to the use of cloud computing. “They are actually computers that we have been determined are not in the United States at all. In fact, nearly half of them are in former Soviet Bloc nations, and 25% of them reside in a data center known to be used to operate an illegal spamming botnet.”

When asked about the CondomWorks package, Walter had nothing positive to say. “CondomWorks is a total piece of crap. It is easily ruptured by both the computer owner and browser-based attackers. In fact, the hacker who obtained the IP addresses for us was able to break through Indiana’s CondomWorks package in fewer than 100 key strokes.”

“The citizen cloud is going to be a complete and total security disaster. Not only will the data be stolen, but it will be only months before smart software developers begin perverting the governments software to their own means, such as inflating tax returns, modifying criminal records, and stealing government resources.”

Representatives from the Indiana governor’s office were not available to comment on the allegations of KillTheCloud.

That’s how TroopTrack.com got started – it was an idea I thought through for a year before I ever said a word to anyone. The idea seemed so good to me that I couldn’t let it go, so eventually I gave into my own insanity and recruited a development team. It’s in Beta now and will be going live very soon. If you’re into Boy Scouts, check it out.

Uladoo.com was a completely different story. It didn’t spend any time at all in the idea retention pond. It came to me in the shower and I was pitching it to Carl Erickson at Atomic Object before my hair was even dry. Carl thought the idea was cool, so we pitched it to his developers. It wasn’t long before we were under way. In fact, uladoo.com will most likely go live next week sometime. Next week. Holy cow.

Chart your life with Uladoo
So… what the heck is uladoo. Uladoo is too things – a twitter account and a web site that play nice together. Twitter a message to @uladoo and it will turn it into a chart, like this:

@uladoo calories 1400 I ate half a plate of brownies. Stomach hurts really bad

If you’ve never sent a tweet like this before, uladoo will automagically make you a chart called calories with the first value as 1400. If it’s not your first tweet, it will add a new value of 1400 to your existing chart. It uses the date and time you sent the tweet to place it on the x-axis, so you don’t need to worry about that.

To look at this new chart, you can just go to uladoo.com/USER NAME (your twitter user name) and see all the charts you’ve created (except uladoo.com hasn’t launched yet, so don’t expect to see your chart there just yet).

Try Out Uladoo Before We Go Live
Uladoo.com will go live sometime in the next 7-10 days (we’re adding a few minor features). In the meantime, try uladoo out. Send a tweet to @uladoo with something you want to keep track of, then go to our staging environment (staging.uladoo.com/USER NAME) and check it out. But don’t worry, if you get addicted to uladoo before we go live, we’re planning on taking all the data in staging live with us. So you won’t lose your investment in uladoo when we turn the lights on.

Ideas We Experimented with Developing Uladoo
For the record, I didn’t do any real work on uladoo.com. Carl Erickson, Shawn Crowley, and the others at Atomic Object did all the hard work and I occasionally got to play with their work product. But we did have a few discussions about web application design principles we wanted to base uladoo.com on.

Here are a few of the ideas we put into play that really stuck with me:

I hope those of you who twitter will try uladoo out, and let me know what you think.

There are a few really cool things about this issue. First, we launched it as a paper magazine at CAST, AST’s annual conference. It was really cool to do that, and it sparked a lot of interest in potential authors and advertisers. If you, like the CAST attendees, are interested in either, shoot me an email at dave@techdarkside.com.

Another really cool aspect of this issue is an article I compiled from a controversial email discussion I started about common myths of software testing. The debate got so hot and acrimonious that at least one person left AST over it! Naturally, this left plenty of good stuff for me to publish, and you’ll like the graphical theme I applied to the piece.

I really like Alltop.com. It’s fun to look through the topics and follow whatever catches my eye. The content they point to is good and new topics are added all the time.

Best of all (at least for me, that is), Tech Dark Side is one of the sites listed on Alltop.com. Cool.

Check out Alltop.com. If you’re tired of news sites that only cover the news everyone is reading and would rather find something you’re interested in, Alltop is for you.

One of my favorite experiences introducing ET to business testers was also one of the first. Part way through the test effort I asked the UAT team how the felt the testing was going. The response was great: “We’re moving at ludicrous speed.” Anytime a Spaceballs reference comes into play on an IT project you know things are going well.

Mike and I intend this course to be very, very hands-on. As the name of the course implies, we will be practicing exploratory testing heavily. We’ll also cover important topics such as how to document your work, evaluate the results, manage your energy, and demonstrate traceability.

Mike and I will be providing this course through Mobius Labs in Indianapolis. You can read more about this course and register for it on the Mobius Labs web site.

A journey of 1000 miles begins with 1 step – but won’t end until 1000 miles later (that’s the part they never tell you)

Since Dave is taking some much-needed time to focus on other writing, he asked me to fill in for him as a guest blogger. Extra work, public exposure, lots of spam, for no money – I couldn’t say yes fast enough. Whenever someone asks me to fill in for them – I basically respond in the same way as if they asked me to watch their children.

1. “Will there be any poop involved?”
2. “What do you want me to do when they start to hate me?”
3. “Promise me you won’t be mad if I break anything. “

Perhaps this is why I don’t get ask to baby-sit a lot….that and small children can smell fear.

Dave didn’t leave me with many ground rules other than to use my best judgment. I’m sure he will regret that. But for the time being, I am going to try and behave.

To carry forward the techdarkside tradition, I will try and focus on a lot of the same things Dave did. However, I care more a little more about the technical side of things – so don’t be surprised if I throw some big O notation in the conversation. (See, if this wasn’t someone else’s blog – I might have made a joke there.)

So this is the part where I introduce myself. I have written a few other posts under DJ 1.0. That’s actually my real name – middle school was very painful for me. Suffice to say that I have had 15 years of experience in management consulting, Fortune 100, start-up and academia. I have learned a lot – mostly the hard way – in that time.

Well, that’s it for the introductions. If there are no questions, place your tray table and seat in their upright and locked positions. An attendant will come by to collect any last minute items you may have. When we reach cruising altitude, I’ll turn off the fasten seat belt light at which time you are free to move about the cabin….

Is there something in your professional life you plan to do that if you don’t do it you know you’ll always regret it? There are several things in mine, and I’ve made a commitment to stop procrastinating them.

One of those items is a book I’ve written called Genesis 2.0. It is a science fiction adventure about a nineteen year old human named Johnny Robbins who is captured by a genetically engineered species of humanity called Homo savantis. I wrote the first draft of this story four years ago and have been working on it on and off since then, including sending it out to agents and publishers.

If you know anything about publishing fiction, it is a long hill to climb and very few writers who set out make it all the way to the top. Many give up on their books and go back to their normal lives. I have been rejected by at least twenty different agencies and multiple publishers. There have been two highlights of my attempt, however. First, a big name publisher requested the entire manuscript after I sent in a query letter. I haven’t heard from them since. That was more than two years ago, but it was thrilling nonetheless. Second, a major agent read the entire manuscript, wrote me a detailed critique of it, and asked me to resubmit it once I had addressed the issues she identified. That was in October of last year.

Obviously, I’d be stupid not to re-write G2 (my nickname for Genesis 2.0) and re-submit it. Unfortunately, I am easily distracted by the many, many interests I have in life – wakeboarding, blogging, home remodeling, writing about project management, writing training courses, and working on my next novel all derail my commitment to working on G2.

The agent who is interested in G2 (Annie) told me to take my time with my re-write, because she’ll only do it once. I get one shot, and to tell you the truth I haven’t made much measurable progress. I have come up with some concepts about the characters that will really strengthen the story, but I haven’t put pen to paper and made these concepts anything more than ideas. I know Annie told me to take my time, but I doubt she meant nine months. I can feel the clock ticking on this particular dream of mine and I need to get it done.

So, why am I blogging about this? It’s simple really. I’m taking a month off, and I wanted to let you know why. I won’t post again until the second week of July, except perhaps to report on the progress of G2. I also won’t be working on the house, the boat, or any articles that I haven’t already committed myself to. I will respond to questions from readers, as time permits. Otherwise, June is dedicated exclusively to the re-write, and on July 1 I will re-submit G2.

What if Annie doesn’t like the revised G2? I have been on the verge of self-publishing G2 for about a year now, and if Annie decides not to represent G2 I will take it to Lulu or to iUniverse and publish it that way.

At any rate, wish me luck. I could use it.

Have a nice June. I’ll see you all again in July.