The Fortune piece includes the tale of how ChaCha came to be:

The trigger to launch ChaCha came when Jones was preparing a speech for the National Academy of Sciences at Stanford in 2005. To fill in some technical gaps in his talk, he phoned several venture capitalists and technology experts for help in tracking down information. Each pointed him to a specific website. "I thought, 'Holy s—-! I can actually do it now! If I recruit an army of experts, I could actually do what I was considering doing 20 years ago.'"

Wheeler said the potential for the partnership struck him when, writing a speech, he struggled to track down a vaguely remembered quote. He was impressed when IU's Ask a Librarian service found the quote, from former Harvard President James Bryant Conant, within hours. But a ChaCha guide got it in two minutes.

"That's where my head about exploded," he said. "I realized this is our core problem for the 21st century."

Jones is a millionaire inventor. And I suspect he's equally good at inventing the story behind his company. He almost has me believing that if there were more public speakers in the world, maybe ChaCha would actually have some users. That is, besides those students forced to use ChaCha because their university's president is buddies with Jones.

Jones has already cut his own $100,000 check for Daniels's campaign and says $750,000 of the million-dollar goal is already committed. Jack Gill, an early ChaCha investor appointed by Governor Daniels as an Indiana University trustee, counts among the contributors with his own substantial donation. Likewise, John McIlwraith, managing director of Cincinnati-based venture capital firm Blue Chip Venture, also a ChaCha investor, is among Daniels's supporters.

McIlwraith, on his support for Daniels:

As far as governors who seem to get it when it comes to creating the right environment for high-growth tech companies, he's high on the list. If Indiana is successful, it will give us more investment opportunities. It feeds on itself.

The only real question, though, is whether Daniels's ties to ChaCha count as a political benefit. Indiana Democrats hope to portray Mitch Daniels as out of touch with the average Hoosier and in the pocket of fat-cat businessmen. Shouldn't be too difficult, since we suspect the average Hoosier uses Google.

As of May 31, Gill was listed, like university president Michael McRobbie, on ChaCha's board of directors (PDF). His appointment as trustee came on the same day IU and ChaCha announced their partnership. But you wouldn't know it from reading the Herald-Times — even though Steve Hinnefield, the same reporter who followed up on our story wrote about Gill's residency troubles.

Hinnefield writes, "Gill is getting positive response for the skills and experience he brings to the board of trustees." He fails to note the "positive response" is coming from ChaCha founder and CEO Scott Jones, whom Hinnefield merely identifies as "an IU alumnus and Indiana technology business leader." Here's what Jones has to say about ChaCha board member Gill:

I think it really helps our board of trustees to have someone of that stature, and someone that progressive. He's a visionary thinker about education in general.

The reporter does end the story by giving Gill space to endorse new IU president and extremely recently former ChaCha Director Michael McRobbie. Gill claims he didn't even want to be a trustee; it was the attraction of working with McRobbie (again) that swayed him:

I think he's the right man for the right job at the right time. I just think he's a very insightful, decisive, dynamic yet sensitive leader.