Although they probably could have chosen a better name -- maybe something a little less, I dunno, Orwellian -- the idea is pretty nifty: Accenture Federal Services has received a $3 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to develop a "biosurveillance" system that will allow the Office of Health Affairs to monitor and react to national health emergencies via social media.

Presidential elections are pretty much made for Twitter, as news media, analysts, pundits, bloggers and ordinary citizens generate streams of easily-condensed information and opinion to tweet and re-tweet. With important news emerging in small increments, minute-by-minute, Twitter might actually be the ideal medium to track election results.

Hey, did you know there's an election going on? I know, I was surprised too! But apparently it's a big thing -- it's all over the social media! According to a new survey from Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project, 22% of registered voters have already announced who they voted for or will vote for via social media -- and unsurprisingly the portion goes up among younger folks (also known as the "oversharing generation").

There's something about social media that makes people want to mash it up with everything, and that includes clothing. In the most recent sartorial application of social media, "fashion technology" house CuteCircuit has created a dress containing 2,000 LED lights which can display Twitter messages received via wireless Internet. The dress was commissioned by EE, a British 4G mobile network, and modeled at an event in London last week by Nicole Scherzinger, the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, who is currently a judge on the British version of X-Factor.

I feel bad for Shashank Tripathi. No, not THAT Shashank Tripathi (the guy who tweeted a bunch of very false but very alarming "news" about made-up events in New York City during Hurricane Sandy). I feel bad for Shashank Tripathi -- the guy with the same name who lives in Singapore, and who became the unsuspecting target for cascades of Internet vitriol because people thought he was the other guy.

Okay, so obviously the first person to blame when untrue and potentially dangerous rumors spread on Twitter or other social media sites is the person who started the rumors. If you haven't already guessed, I'm referring to a jackass named Shashank Tripathi, a hedge fund analyst who was, until recently, the campaign manager for Republican congressional hopeful Christopher R. Wight, and who got his jollies during Hurricane Sandy by tweeting alarming but false tidbits of non-news from his account, @ComfortablySmug.

(Andy Rooney voice): Ever noticed how you don't appreciate something until it's gone? I sure don't. Take electricity: Everybody uses it. Heck, you can't do anything without it. Most of the time we go through our daily routines counting on electricity to just be there, almost like the air we breathe -- except air doesn't come out of the wall.

Hurricane Sandy -- you've heard of it -- has produced all the usual social media ephemera which accompany major events, including the obligatory Twitter parody accounts, narrated in suitably belligerent fashion. Meanwhile the powers that be are making admirable use of social media to keep the public updated about the monster storm, which some are calling (perhaps prematurely) the storm of the century.

Team sports have always been inherently social, as demonstrated by the phenomenon of baseball cards, which could be amassed, shared, and traded; now a new company called the Virtual Fan Network, founded in 2011, is helping athletes and advertisers reach fans via "virtual fan cards," which carry key stats and can be shared via social media, and which can also carry advertising and sponsorships.

Europe's business movers and shakers are embracing social media in a big way, according to a new survey by CNBC titled "Europe's Mobile Elite 2012." In the CNBC survey 69% of European execs agreed that "it's important for businesses to integrate social media into marketing and business plans," and 87% reported being a member of at least one social network -- compared to 74% in 2011 and 60% in 2010.