Just 15 CIOs gave directly to the presidential candidates. Of those who donated to the three major candidates, three went for presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and one for Republican John McCain. None contributed to Democrat Hillary Clinton. Dave Kepler at Dow Chemical gave $4,600 to McCain. Gregor Bailar, former Capital One CIO, and Joe Smialowski, former EVP of Operations and Technology of Freddie Mac, each gave $2,300 to Obama. Northern Trust's Jana Schreuder gave $4,600 and $2,300 to Obama.

Among vendor executives, Obama edged out Clinton, 17 contributions to 14. However, four contributors supported both Democrats. McCain received six contributions.

Vendor executives were more on target in their support than CIOs. The three strong candidates got more support from vendor bigwigs than rivals such as Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Christopher Dodd.

Oracle executives, however, are no oracles. Chairman Jeff Henley supported Republican Ron Paul, giving him $1,000. Charles Phillips, Oracle's president, gave $2,100 to Democrat John Edwards.

-Kim S. Nash

Mash-ups: No Tech Experience Required

Enterprise mash-ups are not yet a panacea for connecting all the dots of corporate data, but they will soon let companies mix and match information to help workers do their jobs better, according to a recent Forrester Research report.

"Mash-ups are trying to solve a long-standing business problem, which is combining disparate data sources," says Forrester analyst G. Oliver Young, who wrote the report. "We think mash-ups are doing it in a unique way that's more user-oriented." Forrester defined an enterprise mash-up as "custom applications that combine multiple disparate data sources into something new and unique."

Young distinguished between enterprise and consumer mash-ups. Consumer mash-ups typically are built by a person or company and are there for anyone on the Web to use. In the enterprise, users will pull information from different systems and combine them. They will run them on a convenient portal and might represent the mash-up as a widget.

Vendors will provide tools for business users to build a mash-up on their own with no programming experience, says the report. But Young says IT will need to ensure that the tools are easy to use and that existing systems are structured to let users pull information seamlessly.

"IT has to enable the data sources," he says. "When that happens and the technology matures, we can see business users start to drive the train."

-C.G. Lynch

Virtual Worlds Project Failure Rate Is High

CNine out of 10 businesses that have launched virtual worlds saw them fail in 18 months or less, according to a recent report from Gartner. The report faulted companies for getting hung up on the technology rather than thinking about how people use it.