Technically Incorrect

I have become used to receiving urgent messages from people who have a sudden a desperate need for the use of my bank account.

There are tales of Nigerian wills and family disputes in Hong Kong. And I cannot even count the number of times I have won the UK Lottery.

I often wonder what sort of folks are behind these wizard wheezes, how long they take to concoct their bilge and whether they sit there hoping, like wizened insurance salesmen in sweaty nylon shirts, for that one big success that will make their year.

However, reader Julian Gomez has pointed me in the direction of what some might consider a new low in attempted online theft.

There are nasty, demented minds out there writing e-mails purporting to be from U.S. Marines stationed in Afghanistan.

Gomez received one that went like this: "When on a routine mission of search and destroy, we stumbled upon a concealed barrel with piles of weapon and ammunition, my men and I agreed that the money be shared, the sum of $900,000.00 (Nine hundred thousand dollars) now happens to be my share."

(Credit: CC Nina Hale)

If you are not already sucked in by this exciting tale, the writer brings in an international flavor: "I have the cooperation of a German diplomat working here for its evacuation to a safer country, though, I have not disclosed the true contents of the package to him. He believes it to be personal effects of an Asian American who died in an air raid."

So, perhaps carelessly, the writer is already admitting he is a liar. However, like the creme-de-la-creme of liars, he wants is to be able to trust you: "I need someone I can trust to receive this package as a relative to this dead Asian American, there is a secured way of getting the package out to a safer country for you to pick up."

All you have to do, therefore, is to pretend to be the relative of a dead Asian-American Marine. What could be simpler?

However, there is one crucial stricture: "One passionate appeal I will make to you is not to discuss this matter with a third party, should you have reasons to reject this offer, please destroy this mail as any leakage of its content could spell doom for me. I do not know how long we will remain here but hopefully before the year runs out, we shall be out."

Yes, the liar, having secured your trust, ends with an appeal to your sympathy.

Of course scam artists have been around since lucre became lucrative. And most people will see this tale to have the height it actually does. However, it takes just one person to fall for it to make it worth the scammer's while--perhaps someone with a special affinity for the military, someone lonely, perhaps aging, perhaps as trusting as the director of the FBI, whose wife prevented him from falling for an online scam.

With the boundaries of reality shows being expanded like the gut of a hot-dog eating champion, mightn't this be the time to get the finest online minds to compete in a show perhaps called "Scammers in the Slammer."

The winner would be the one who, less brawny than the Bounty Hunter but more brainy than Larry Page, smoked out more of these insidious little people from whichever hole they happen to inhabit.

I, for one, would love to watch that show. Wouldn't you?

Many of you will, perhaps, remember how Woz was very suspicious (and then suspiciously changed his mind) about the voting on "Dancing with the Stars".

Now we are tormented with cries that local AT&T representatives in Arkansas gave lessons in sending up to 10 simultaneous texts to people at "American Idol" viewing parties. The surprise winner (to some, at least) was Kris Allen from Arkansas.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Fox and the two companies that produce the show, FreemantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment, denied that the "enthusiasm" of local representatives nefariously influenced the result.

After all, the "Idol" rule book states: "A weekly monitoring procedure will be in place to prevent individuals from unfairly influencing the outcome of the voting by generating significant blocks of votes using technical enhancements. The producers reserve the right to remove any identified 'power dialing' votes. Note that this applies to both toll-free and Text Messaging votes."

However, I have plowed through the whole of this rule book and can find no restrictions as to how many times you can actually vote.

The key word, therefore, is the word 'unfairly'.

(Credit: CC JonDissed/Flickr)

One has to assume the technology simply identifies multiple texts sent within nanoseconds of each other. Whereas the hands of normal human beings that would be voting have to at least pause to press send more than once.

Voting is open for a strict two-hour period after the show and only AT&T subscribers can vote by text. Everyone else has to call. There is even a little kink that those who happen to be outside of their phone's area code cannot vote.

So one has to wonder whether the actions of a few enthusiastic AT&T employees could really have swayed the results.

Strong rumors suggest the voting wasn't even close. So even if every single inhabitant of Arkansas voted 10 times, that would still only be around 28 million out of the allegedly 100 million votes cast.

And it's not as if this purported Arkansas cabal won't have been the only voting group out there. There is even a very fine site called "Vote For The Worst" which tries to get people to, indeed, use their cell phones to shoo in the least talented. Vote for the Worst is claiming that it put Allen over the top. Or under the bottom, depending on your perspective.

Naturally, one wonders about the wisdom of allowing people to vote multiple times. Money can be a wicked beast when trying to create reality show rules.

But it is surely far more likely that Arkansas' Allen, who was suitably middle-of-the-road and had never been in the bottom three, simply received far more votes than Adam Lambert, who hails from San Diego.

Lambert is the more original artist by far. But his black fingernails and rock diva personality are not so easily digested in the South.

And just in case none of you has noticed, only one "American Idol" winner has ever not come from the South. Yes, abstinence enthusiast Jordin Sparks from Arizona.

The fix, I fear, is out.

Monday, I was concerned that the words "Ashton" and "Kutcher" had not yet been associated with the proposed new Twitter-based reality TV show.

Today, the real Ashton Kutcher himself tweeted his concern about the show's content: "Wow I hope this isn't true. I really don't like being sold out. May have to take a twitter hiatus."

When he wrote "this," he was referring to a report from the Examiner.com that speculated whether people would be asked to, in one way or another, cyberstalk those bathed by fame.

"Hey, how about TwitterPunk'd?"

(Credit: CC TechCrunch50-2008)

The example the Examiner used was that on the March day on which Kutcher tweeted a photo of his wife, Demi Moore, pressing his tuxedo while wearing a bikini, might contestants be asked to use their Twittering talents to work out where these fine stars might be.

Moore, for her part, tweeted: "hope this isn't true-if it is our Twitter time may come to a quick and sad end!"

She then followed it up with a retweet to her husband and Twitter founder, Evan Williams, among others: "@lindag199: @ev wht R U thinking? Tweet! twttr coming 2 a TV near U http://TwitPWR.com/fSn/ ths is not a gd move! cc: @mrskutcher @aplusk."

The other most important person at Twitter, Biz Stone, earlier was reported to have denied that there is one official realitweet TV show.

Mashable quoted him as saying: "There is no official Twitter TV show--although if there were it would be fun to cast!"

He added that Twitter has " a lightweight, non-exclusive, agreement with the producers which helps them move forward more freely."

Lightweight? Twitter? No, no, no.

If scientists got the correlation models together, I wonder if they would find a blisteringly harmonious relationship between those who loathe reality TV and those who loathe Twitter.

Critics of the microblogging service declare that, like reality TV, tweets are just mindless ego-fodder being released on the masses by the second.

Well, now the two ego-fodder receptacles appear to be coming together for the further enlightenment of the world.

Variety reported Monday rather up-to-the-minute news of Brillstein Entertainment, a powerful artist management company, and Reveille Productions, the folks who used to be owned by NBC Entertainment's co-chairman, Ben Silverman, and have produced rather likable TV in "The Office" and "Ugly Betty."

These two significant players are about to make a reality series in cooperation with Twitter.

The creative possibilities for Twitter will surely never be over capacity.

(Credit: CC Mykl Roventine/Flickr)

Perhaps you yourself have had a gestating idea for a reality TV series featuring Twitter and will feel miffed that someone has gotten there first.

All I can tell you is that according to the plans for the as-yet unnamed opus, the concept consists of "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format."

Will real people compete to see who's the finest twittering paparazzi? Will they have to decipher cryptic tweets sent by Shaq and Demi Moore with clues to buried treasure? Who can possibly know?

All that is clear is that Variety quoted Brillstein's Jon Liebman as saying: "We've found a compelling way to bring the immediacy of Twitter to life on TV."

Strangely, the words 'Ashton' and 'Kutcher' have not immediately been associated with this project.

But it seems that soon "Dancing with the Stars" and "American Idol" may find a rival in realitweet TV.