This is the Daily Link Report for September 11th

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Dropbox’s Web Interface Gets An Overhaul: Adds Bulk File Management, Search, And More – Dropbox, the impressive file syncing service which makes it easy to sync your files across multiple computers and the web, has released a brand new version of its online interface. Today’s upgrade brings with it a number of new features that will make it much easier to manage the large number of files users often have on their Dropboxes.
• Yeah, But Did You Steal The Zynga Playbook, Playdom? – It’s a day late, but social game site (and Zynga-antagonizer) Playdom has finally responded to our request for comment on the lawsuit and temporary restraining order they got hit with earlier this week.
• Skype Kills Extras (and Its Developer Ecosystem) – Skype’s new owners should be aware of one small thing: They are paying $2 billion for a company that, despite having more than 400 million subscribers, doesn’t know how to leverage that platform. Why? Because it doesn’t understand developers. It never has. We have consistently pointed out this lackadaisical attitude towards its developer ecosystem. The fact is that if you put your lot with Skype, then you are really on your own. Today the company announced that it’s killed Skype Extras, an API-based effort that was launched with much fanfare in June 2007.
• Yeah Ok, So Facebook Punk’d Us – Techcruch's report of the "Fax Photo" feature in Facebook was a joke played on them by Facebook.
• Twitter Changes TOS, Opens the Door for Ads – The new TOS, which is far more expansive and specific than the old one, not only addresses privacy concerns, but ownership, spam, rights, and links. The microblogging company said that, now that they better understand how users utilize Twitter, they can update the TOS to match.
• Facebook Friends Can Now Be Filtered By City (Again) – Over the last few weeks, Facebook has been removing regional networks. Silicon Valley? New York City? Peoria, IL? They have been slowly stripped from Facebook, to the dismay of many. The biggest complaint from users? They want to find their friends by location when they travel.

  Facebook’s heard the complaints and they understand the value of finding friends by region. So Facebook has decided to address that complaint by adding a filter to find friends by their hometown. This was announced via a Facebook wall post.

• How to Access Gmail When It’s Down – Gmail – Lifehacker – Just because the Gmail Web interface is down it doesn't mean you can't get your email.
• Morning Types Crash Faster Than Night Owls, Study Says – Habits – Lifehacker – The early bird may get the worm, but there's something to be said about burning the midnight oil. In fact, according to a new study, staying up later and longer may increase alertness and productivity more than being an early riser.
• Microsoft: We haven’t bought ‘pornography’ | Technically Incorrect – CNET News – A Microsoft representative declared in an e-mail: "Microsoft has not purchased the keyword 'pornography,' and this term has never been in our AdWords account."
• Your Tweets Are Yours: Now Back Them Up – Yesterday’s change in Twitter’s Terms of service, in which they explicitly state that every user owns their own tweets is cool, but what does it really mean for the user?

This is the Daily Link Report for September 9th

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Social Media for B2B – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Many business-to-business (B2B) companies are struggling with what their social media strategy should be, or if they should even have one. Unfortunately, many executives incorrectly believe that social media isn't applicable for their B2B company. Rather, they think it's something reserved for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies.
• Social Media and the Impact on Network Security | Search Engine Journal – There are many pros for social media. You can use social media to augment traditional public relations and communications strategies. You can build a profile and a brand and reach a wider audience. You are more engaging and can communicate directly with customers and the public. Your employees can provide value well beyond the 9 to 5 work hours. Social media has become necessary to fill the void as the media/newspapers have closed down or cut reporting staff recently. You can supplement existing partnership capabilities with tools such as podcasts, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to accelerate the sharing of knowledge, increase teamwork and enhance communication between co-workers.
• Did @PhilBaumann Just Save Follow Friday? – A better way to utilize #followfriday's power
• Google Preps To Turn On Chrome Extensions – Good news for those Firefox users who really want to switch to Chrome but fear living a day without extensions, that day is here. Or, at least, near. Google today announced that it was turning on extension support in Chrome by default in all the new developer builds (in Windows) from now on.
• In other news, we got to see the Palm Pixi today. It’s not too bad (but, really, no Wi-Fi?) – You get the feeling that Palm had something to hide today. On the surface that makes no sense, considering it officially announced the Pixi, the company’s second webOS-based phone, this morning. (The company’s first webOS phone, the Pre, launched to much fanfare last June, owing to an almost Bill Goldberg winning streak-like level of hype.) But as you’re already aware, Apple had an announcement or two of its own today, including the inclusion of a digital camera on the iPod nano. It’s unfortunate, but Apple events are really the black holes of this industry: on Apple event days, no other tech news can escape out into the wild. That is to say, unless your company name is Apple, Inc., you’d be better served laying low for the day, and make any announcements later in the week.
• Google Books Investigation: Congress is Now Involved – The entire Google Books affair has turned into one complicated mess.

  Here’s a recap of what’s been happening: In late 2008, Google (Google), The Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers came to an agreement over Google Books, which lets you search and read millions of scanned manuscripts. The agreement settled copyright issues and gave publishers and authors a cut of the revenue Google generated. For a long time, we thought that was the end of the matter.

• Google Proposes Micropayment System To Rescue Newspapers – Despite their frosty relationship, Google is proposing a micropayment system that could give the newspaper industry a way to charge for its online content. According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the micropayment system will be based on Google Checkout and be available within a year “to both Google and non-Google properties.”
• Google Says Domain Registrations Don’t Affect SEO, Or Do They? – Over at Search Engine Roundtable today, Barry Schwartz writes about the latest comments from Google about domain registration and its impact on SEO/search rankings. In this case, it’s Google employee John Mueller suggesting in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that Google doesn’t look at the length of a domain registration.
• 5 Ways to Pimp Your FireFox Address Bar | Search Engine Journal – The address bar is where you see the full URL of the current page. This is the only bar in FireFox I always have in front of my eyes (I may have some of the bars hidden when I need more space but this one is always active).
• Yahoo Launches New Contacts API | WebProNews – Yahoo has launched a new Contacts API, which uses OAuth. With the API, applications can allow users to read, write, and sync access to their Yahoo Address Book, which is one of the biggest address books on the web.

This is the Link Report for September 8th through September 9th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• WordPress Acquires Grammer Gramer Grammar Checking Software – Automattic has announced the acquisition of After the Deadline, a service that provides spell checking, style checking, and grammar checking. Huzzah!
• 7 PPC Tools that Can Help Your SEO Efforts | The Adventures of SEO Boy –
• Don’t Lose Yahoo Traffic By Not Optimizing for Bing | WebProNews – Don't forget that Bing and Yahoo are still part of the mix. People still use these search engines and therefore you should optimize for them (Well at least Bing)
• Have a Facebook Page? Post on Tuesdays – As it turns out the best time to post to your Facebook is on Tuesday. Find out why.
• Protect Your Company’s Collaborative Spaces – You need to be prepared to lock out former workers from your online network once they leave. Good article from the people at GIGAOM
• United Way hopes to net new donors via social media – When one of United Way’s 500 cause members on Facebook asked her friends to donate money to the charitable organization in lieu of buying her birthday gifts, officials at the Greater Dayton agency were not only pleasantly surprised but excited about the possibilities for future fundraising.
• Should you ‘friend’ your doctor on Facebook? – CNN.com – Staying connected with your doctor takes on a whole new meaning. Good? Bad?
• Obama’s Facebook advice: Making a prez: The Swamp – "Let me give you some very practical tips,'' the president told the high schooler. "First of all, I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook.
• The Internet Marketing Driver: SEO, Forms, and Hidden Content – The Danger of Coding Yourself Into Search Obscurity – Too much coding with forms and hidden content Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) shows you how to fix this and do well in SEO
• AIM Now Goes Both Ways (With Twitter And Facebook) – Remember AIM? Yea that thing called Instant Messaging. Wow that's dated. Well now AIM can be used as a Facebook/Twitter app

This is the Daily Link Report for September 8th

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Flickr Finally Goes Native With An iPhone App – Flickr on iPhone with an app? Nice! Finally, some say.
• What to expect from tomorrow’s Apple event – Techcrunch's take on what to expect from the Apple event tomorrow.
• EduFire Raises $1.3 Million For Video Education Platform – EduFire, the startup that offers online video classes for a variety of subjects, has raised $1.3 million in Series A funding from Battery Ventures, with Google AdSense godfather Gokul Rajaram and Western Technology Investment participating.
• The Top 20 VC Bloggers (September 2009) – When it comes to lists of top VCs, one of our favorites is the top VC bloggers. Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, started keeping just such a list last May, based on how many subscribers each VC blogger has on Google Reader. This morning he updated his VC blogger leaderboard. The top 20 are below, all 100 are on his own blog, Thinking About Thinking (No. 71).
• Rep.ly: TweetMeme Comments Get Their Own Awesome Short URL – Several weeks ago, Twitter link tracker TweetMeme announced its own comment system, which includes the ability to retweet individual comments left on the site.
• Smart.fm: How Well Do You Know Your Facebook Friends? – Smart.fm aims to act as a full-fledge learning platform, wherein users can access the site, say “I want to learn about this topic” and be presented with tools, quizzes and world lists that test memory retention and understanding. There is a social element too, and users can both add their own information to existing courses, and share their learning schedules, remix content and ask and offer help.
• Google And Apple Go To War (GOOG, AAPL) – Google and Apple are on a collision course.

  While the companies are not each others' biggest rivals, they are increasingly competing with each other.

  This follows years of enjoying one of the coziest relationships in Silicon Valley — one that will now get more complicated as the companies compete in more areas.

• 10 Incredibly Cool DIY Projects – 2009 Backyard Genius Awards – Popular Mechanics – To create an incredibly cool car-crusher or oversize rocket or solar-pedal powered contraption that the world had no idea it needed takes brilliance, determination and a healthy dose of crazy. The winners of our Backyard Genius Awards have all those qualities, and we salute them for it.
• Embeddable Waves: The Google Wave WordPress Plugin – Google Wave is coming and it's embeddable to your blog and Website

This is the Link Report for September 4th through September 8th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Twittonary – a dictionary of twitter words – Twittonary helps you find meanings of all the new words that have come up lately on twitter.
• Security Threat: WordPress Under Attack – To prevent this attack, if you have not done so already, update your WordPress install immediately to the latest version. Change all your passwords to a strong password (cough), including WordPress blog access for all users, database, FTP, control panels, etc. These are all highly recommended procedures.
• Google Wave: 5 Ways It Could Change the Web – Mark your calendars Google Wave is coming Sept 30th. Here are 5 ways it could change the Web
• WordPress › Blog » How to Keep WordPress Secure – Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.
• PluggedIn-Embracing social media, photo sites stay in the game | Reuters – Photo management services are fighting to stay relevant and in the "picture"
• Verdict is In……Twitter and Fox Went Past the Fringe – You have to give Twitter and Fox credit for trying to get Social Media into the everyday lives fo people but it failed miserably.
• Improve Keyword Conversion Rates with Google Analytics – When you check all of your carefully selected and researched keywords, the results put a smile on your face because they are in the top spots in each of the search engines. You then look at your site traffic numbers for these keywords, and they are higher than ever. Then you scratch your head and ask, “Why are conversions so low?” Take a breath: the answer can be found in your Google Analytics data.
• Bit.ly Launches J.mp to Save You Two Characters – Need to save two characters in a tweet? You could rework your wording a bit (change “people” to “ppl” or “for” to “4” for example), or, if your tweet includes a link, you could turn to a shorter URL.

  Bit.ly, Twitter’s default shortener, is already plenty short, but if you want the same experience in two less characters, you can now use j.mp, which appears to simply be bit.ly rebranded with a new URL.

• Bad Neighborhood – Link Exchange Tool – Text links are an important factor in today's search engine optimization, and exchanging links with other websites is a good way to get them. However, doing a link exchange with a website that is penalized can have some detrimental results.
• Is Google Using A Privacy Double Standard? – On one hand Google doesn't abuse your data and personal information, other hand if the government and legal system comes knocking your information might not be safe from their eyes.

This is the Link Report for September 2nd through September 3rd:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• X/HTML 5 Versus XHTML 2 – The competition to become the next markup language for the Web is heating up. This article takes a look at what's cool and what's uncool about the competing technologies.
• 10 free tools to help you create online presentations | Blog | Econsultancy – 10 great tools to present online. A great list
• What Keeps Us Online Late at Night: Porn, Games, and Chat – Study says a lot about what people do late at night on the Internet.
• Facebook Captcha: What You DON’T Need to Type – Facebook's captcha has a bigger bark than a bite. You don't have to fill out a lot of it.
• Google Patents World’s Simplest Home Page – Google – Gawker – After a five-and-a-half-year fight, Google and its attorneys have managed to convince federal bureaucrats to bestow a patent on the company's iconic home page. We always thought the page was brain-dead simple, but apparently it's an innovative "graphical user interface."

This is the Daily Link Report for September 1st

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• 45+ Excellent Fresh Free WordPress Themes Around | Showcases | instantShift – Excellent Fresh Free WordPress Themes Around
• Yes, You Can Use HTML 5 Today! [HTML & XHTML Tutorials] –
•  HTML5 Gallery – A showcase of sites using HTML 5 markup
• Inline Validation in Web Forms – Okay we all agree validating forms is a must. Getting your forms to validate and heck even work sometimes is a real pain. Alistapart has agreat tutorial on how to do it inline.
• Get Ready for HTML 5 – HTML5 is here if you like it or not. It will most likely revolutionize the Web.
• Google CEO Eric Schmidt Interview: His Thoughts On Search, Books, News, Mobile, Competition And More – Techcrunch interview with Google's CEO Eric Schmidt
• EBay Is Said to Have a Deal to Sell Skype – NYTimes.com – EBay plans to announce on Tuesday a deal to sell its Skype Internet calling division to a group of private investors, according to two people briefed on the company’s plans.
• The Mobile Payment Rivalry Heats Up – First there was the OS wars then the Browser Wars and then the Social Media platform wars. Now there's the micro payment wars.
• Twitter’s Massive Growth Spawns Second Web Hosting Facility – Finally Twitter is starting to scale or are they? A new hosting facility will help with the load. But we can only wait to see if it will really help the Twitter infrastructure.
• BROWSER WARS: Google Chrome to Come Standard With Sony Computers – Sony has made the choice to make Google Chrome to be it's standard browser. This might bolster Google's meager 2.6% of the browser market.

This is the Link Report for August 30th through August 31st:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Be Careful When Evaluating Paid Search Tests – Interpreting test results for paid search campaigns can be surprisingly difficult. One reason for this is order latency. The fact today’s clicks don’t all generate orders today, but instead sales trickle in over time means that analyzing new launches and tests can be tricky. Two ways to address this complication are described below.

  Problem: Successful tests can look bad initially because of order latency

• Turn Google Voice into a Growl-Friendly Windows App – Google Voice – Lifehacker – Get Google Voice as a windows popup app. Very handy!
• Adobe Buys Business Catalyst / GoodBarry – Adobe will own the American part of the Australian company. Business Catalyst / GoodBarry provides tools that help web designers set up online businesses for their clients with minimal cost and effort and no programming skills required, combining website content management, e-commerce features, e-mail marketing, business analytics and basic CRM tools into one system.
• Wikipedia Will Use Colors to Add Layers of Trust to its Articles – Wikipedia plans on signifying the level of their trustworthiness by adding layers of color. It’s easier to trust editors with a high number of entries and revisions than those who are new to the site, and now registered users will be able to easily discern between the two by looking at the color of the text’s background. This will most likely make Wikipedia more authoritative.
• AJAX Search: Is Google Sweating Bing Or Just Feeling The Need For Speed? – Is it possible that Google sees a real threat in Bing? Possibly but they've been improving their search for a long time, well before the birth of Bing.
• Google Voice Warms Up For iPhone, Cuts Off Calls After 15 Minutes – Google voice dropping calls on the iPhone after 15 odd minutes? Oops!
• Why Don’t Teens Tweet? We Asked Over 10,000 of Them. – Over the last few months everyone has weighed in on the question of “Why Don’t Teens Tweet” — except, it would appear, teens. We recently ran a survey of 10,000+ US teens aged 13 – 17 to see if we could add anything new to the question. As it turns out, the question itself is flawed.

  Great analysis on how people and teens tweet

This is the Daily Link Report for August 28th

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• SEOmoz | Early Detection: How Social Media May Save The World – Social Media can be used to help in disasters and quick reaction and help spread the news.
• Facebook to Introduce Charity Gifts – Last week, we reported that Facebook was opening up its virtual gift shop to third-party developers and also introducing physical gifts, for example, being able to send someone a dozen roses using Facebook credits.
• Do You Know Who’s on Twitter? – eMarketer – More than one-half of all Twitter users (53%) are women, and the majority are young. Among users who disclose their age, 66% are under 25, and another 15% are ages 25 to 29.
• Ted Kennedy’s family set up Twitter account to spread funeral news – Telegraph – Ted Kennedy's family have set up an account on Twitter to keep the public informed about plans for his funeral.
• Google Now Identifying Businesses in Street View | WebProNews – Google has now made it easier to view businesses in Street View on Google Maps. When a user conducts a local search, the bubble that pops up on business results will show a Street View link.

This is the Link Report for August 26th through August 27th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Phone Call Tracking in Google Analytics – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – UK Internet marketing company ClickThrough Marketing today introduced a module add-on for Google Analytics that allows advertisers to track phone call conversions from any source/advertising channel.
• Ready for a Mobile (Advertising) Storm? – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – A report from Juniper Research has found that growing consumer adoption of mobile Internet services and heightened brand engagement with mobile services will be reflected in a sharp increase in expenditure on mobile Internet advertising. How much of an increase? According to the report, ad spend on the mobile Internet will reach $500 million globally in 2009 and rise to nearly $2 billion per year by 2014.
• Essential WordPress Plugin: Add To Facebook – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – Plenty of plugins are out there to help readers share your blog content, but perhaps the new Add To Facebook plugin for WordPress is the most significant. For starters, consider Facebook's more than 250 million users.

  The plugin is extremely easy to add if you are using one of the latest versions of WordPress. Simply download the zip file and upload it through your WordPress administration panel. You can then choose your settings for the plugin under your WordPress "Settings" section – either a text-only link or a small image and text link, and whether to add the link to every post.

• Snow Leopard review – A very thorough review of Apple's new Snow Leopard OS at Engadet
• EASTER EGG: Yelp Is the iPhone’s First Augmented Reality App – This makes your iPhone just that much more cooler and helpful. Augmented reality uses your iPhone’s camera, GPS, and compass to show virtual items in the real world. Put your camera in front of a restaurant and it will come up with info, or use it to find nearby Twitter users
• Audi Taps its Facebook Fans to Help Design Car of the Future – The German luxury car maker is taking a stab at using social media to create buzz about the company, the brand and their cars. Very clever
• New Facebook Privacy Policies Will Have A Significant Impact On Platform Applications – As a result of a new privacy agreement with Canada, Facebook has issued statements suggesting that there could be major platform changes ahead for developers.
• New Attack Cracks Common Wi-Fi Encryption in a Minute by PC World: Yahoo! Tech – Computer scientists in Japan say they've developed a way to break the WPA encryption system used in wireless routers in about one minute. (That's great! <insert sarcasm>)
• Social Networks: Boomers Feel Left Out – Even though baby boomers make up more than one quarter of all US Internet users, and even though the majority of this group spends over five hour per week online, a new survey by Burst Media found that only 14% of boomers feel that the content on the Internet is focused on people their age.
• 5 Social Media Lessons Learned from Whole Foods – Whole Foods is into using Social Media. The best way to improve your own company's use of social media is to learn from others. Check out the case study on Mashable.