Given the anticipation surrounding the announcement of our first CTO, I figured we could celebrate it in a way that's both fun and symbolic: a prediction market. I've set up a market that includes 14 possible nominees, along with a Field option. To participate, go here. If you don't already have one, you'll have to set up an Inkling account (which has many active markets on other political, cultural and tech subjects).

Because this is just for fun, this is a non-cash market that uses virtual money.

As the conflict in the Middle East continues rockets fired by Hamas continue to fall into the Israeli city of Sederot where countless of innocent victims have 15 seconds to find shelter and or find their children and loved ones. Mobile Technology is now being used to rally people around the world during those 15 seconds.

As the battle for the RNC Chairman gig heats up, Americans for Tax Reform is hosting a debate among the half dozen candidates vying for the job. The debate is happening now at http://rncdebate.org/. The live webcast by ATR is a step in the right direction for the GOP.

It's not specifically a tech-politics related event, but it's good to see the right opening up and broadcasting the debate publicly. ATR also opened up the discussion to the public and took questions online.

I'll recap the event afterward with thoughts. (UPDATED)

With the 111th session of Congress kicking off tomorrow and a mere 15 days until President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office, getting his desired $700 billion (or so) stimulus package signed, sealed, and delivered before inauguration day would take a feat of super-human legislating. What could complicate that goal: a proposal promoted by top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell to put the stimulus plan online for a full week...Is it our turn yet? Pressure is building for Obama to finally name a Chief Technology Officer, the nation's first...The first round of Change.org's Ideas for Change in America contest, to which techPresident is a partner, has wrapped...and a good deal more.

Failure and embarrassment must be good motivators. After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA allowed victims to file for aid online, but the Web form was only compatible with Internet Explorer. This was a non-event for most, but to geeks, it was an abomination, and the resulting negative attention may have inspired FEMA to create a new online assistance portal. There is now a single form for applying for all emergency assistance aid, regardless of the event.

And because the site was made in cooperation with several other agencies, you can do other stuff, too: apply for a small business loan, file a change of address with the Social Security Administration, apply for a student loan, and check on the status of your applications. This isn't the most exciting development, but it is the kind of development that better e-government is all about: giving citizens faster, less frustrating access to government services and information.

In January 2008, the Library of Congress became the latest government agency to experiment with Web-based volunteer labor when it uploaded 3,000 photos to Flickr. Last week, LOC published a report on the project's progress.

If you like statistics, the Library's report, available here in PDF, has a slew of them. But if you really want to understand the value of this project, you're better off looking at the Library's Flickr account.

Sure, you could spend these last waning hours of aught-eight in existential reflection on how admirably you spent the last twelve months, examining how to be a better you the year ahead. Nah. Spend them catching up the ongoing transition from wired Obama campaign to a presidential administration connecting with supporters and non-supporters alike...Pew's out with a new study that finds that a good chunk -- 62% -- of Obama voters have it in their heads to support President Obama's legislative agenda...and much more.

Israel's social media offensives -- on Twitter and on YouTube -- in the days since the start of air attacks in Gaza includes attempts that seemed aim at winning the war of public opinion on the idea that the military operation is a reasonable response to Palestinian rocket attacks and is targeted solely at Hamas properties and assets.

Launched at yesterday lunchtime, the second round of Change.gov's Open for Questions -- the Obama transition team's attempt to tap into the questions Americans most want their next president to answer -- has already pulled in 1,753,453 votes from 39,860 people on 33,150 questions...The Nation's Ari Melber sees in Open for Questions a chance to advance question that the press corps seems loathe to ask: will President Obama appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush Administration on torture, warrantless wiretapping, and more?...The Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet is beating up on Obama for his Seat at the Table feature, which posts the printed materials from meetings held by the transition team...and more.

Jose Antonio Vargas has been covering the intersection of politics and technology for the Washington Post since February of last year, and he's got a pre-New Year's wrap up of what he's learned along the way...Some of the digs against Digg, the community-ranking site, is that it's biased against women and weighted in favor of liberals. On the latter, enter #diggcons...MoveOn's Eli Pariser is out with a nice Washington Post op-ed laying out the case for why a President Barack Obama will need to tap into the wisdom and passions of the electorate if he's truly going to make transformational change on health care, the Iraq war, and energy policy -- the issues at the top of both his and the American people's agendas...and more.