These are my links for January 9th through January 11th:

• 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology –
• Is This KFC Ad Racist? [YOUTUBE VIDEO] –
• Facebook Founder on Privacy: Public is the New “Social Norm” –
• Twitter Argument Leads to Alleged Murder [REPORT] –
• 38 ways to optimize and speed up your WordPress blog | WP Garage –
• iPhone Beats Droid, Nexus One And Droid Eris In Touchscreen Performance –
• Can the Skiff save the magazine industry? – There has been quite a bit of talk about Hearst’s Skiff ereader and we got a hands-on last night before the show closed. The device is about as big as a Kindle DX (11.5-inch display and a very thin bezel) but quite thin (.25-inches). They use a metal board spun-coated with e-ink instead of a glass sheet for the screen, which will definitely prevent the heartbreak of shattered ereaders for the next generation of readers. It uses Sprint’s 3G network.

These are my links for January 8th:

• Google Toilet Paper : Optimize Your Wipe | Search Engine Journal – Here’s a fun Friday post about what could be easily mistaken for a new Google product launch to accompany the Nexus One and other new Google products : Google Toilet Paper (which gives a new meaning to “just Google it”).
• MediaPost – news and directories for media, marketing and online advertising professionals – If you were on vacation, similar to me, during the end of December you might have missed Twitter's big announcement. The company acquired Mixer Labs, the creator of GeoAPI, which provides developers with the ability to query data. That data can come from about 16 million businesses and thousands of points of interest. The technology also offers developers a layer on which to handle complex geographical queries and location-based services.
• National Weather Service: Twitter Storm Reports – GeoTagging is the act of associating geographical information with something, and Twitter has recently added the capability GeoTagging individual Tweets. This allows the NWS to correlate each Tweet to your location when it was sent. This capability will help to enhance and increase timely & accurate online weather reporting and communications between the public and their local weather forecast offices.
• Wanted: Your Weather Reports, Geotagged and Tweeted – If your natural reflex when the weather gets rough is to tweet about it, that reflex can now help the National Weather Service do its job better thanks to a new Twitter storm reporting program.
• Social Media Today | Social Media Policies of 113 Organizations – With companies searching for and developing standards for social media usage, many of them have come up with social media policies of their own.
• Top CMOs on Twitter – These are the top 63 Chief Marketing Officers around the world who 1) provide useful content and consistently engage with their followers on Twitter, 2) truly "get it" when it comes to the best ways to use Twitter and other forms of social media, and 3) were active on Twitter as of January 7, 2010. Please let me know if I have missed any CMOs who have 500 or more followers. After the review and confirmation process, he/she may be added to this list, which is updated regularly.
• The Dawn of Facebook’s People-organized Web – GigaOM – In 2010, Facebook is setting out to structure a social layer of the web, indexing web pages and objects by harnessing what its users say about them, including whether those users like them or not, and what they tag within them.
• Apple And Verizon: Are Two Star-Crossed Lovers Ready To Consummate? – Apple and Verizon. Two star-crossed lovers.

  A few years ago, when Apple originally set out with the idea of giving the iPhone to one carrier exclusively in the U.S., they first went to Verizon. But the network balked at some of Apple’s demands, which at the time of complete and utter carrier dominance in this country, must have seemed like a joke. So instead, Apple with with AT&T, and the rest is history.

• Anxious Yahoo BOSS Developers To Speak With DOJ About Microsoft Deal – In July 2008, Yahoo announced a radical new product called BOSS, or “Build Your Own Search Service” that lets developers tap into Yahoo’s core search index with an unprecedented amount of flexibility. Now, in light of the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal that was announced last summer, the future of BOSS is uncertain. That’s bad news for the many developers who have built projects on the BOSS APIs, some of whom are building businesses off of the service. Now, after being met with months of silence and uncertainty, some BOSS developers are taking action: they’ve scheduled a conference call with the Department of Justice to discuss their concerns.

These are my links for January 8th:

• Apple Seizes 16 Domain Names From A Guy In One Fell Swoop – When you own domain names associated with the trademarks of a large company, more often than not, they’re going to file a complaint with the ICANN UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy). And more often than not, they’re going to win control of the name. Such was the case yesterday with 16 names related to Apple that one man happened to own.
• Pioneer to Bring Pandora to Your Car Radio … For $1,200 – Pandora and Pioneer — manufacturer of car audio systems — are partnering to bring Internet radio to your car.
• Qualcomm Chip to Power Verizon iPhone [RUMOR] – Qualcomm’s CEO Paul Jacobs has openly expressed interest in inserting a Qualcomm chip into Apple’s popular iPhone. New rumors reported by TheStreet.com indicate that Qualcomm’s endeavors were successful: A Qualcomm chip will power a new version of the iPhone on Verizon in the summer.
• DASH: Sony Reveals Pocket Internet Device – Sony has revealed details about their Internet device at the CES – Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Read on find out more.
• Vimeo to Launch Support for 1080p – In case 720p wasn’t enough for your gorgeous, transcendent works of motion picture art, Vimeo will begin hosting 1080p videos by the end of this month.
• The Rise of Digital Music & The Return of the Record – According to the report, sales were up 2.1 percent in 2009 from 2008, with consumers snagging 1.16 million digital tracks (an 8.3 percent increase from ‘08) and 76.4 million digital albums (a 16.1 percent bump). In fact, 40 percent of all music purchases in 2009 were digital.
• Tweetdeck Infiltrates the News Room – Sky News — a 24-hour UK news site owned by News Corp. — is changing up their entire newsroom to focus more on Twitter.
• Boxee Beta Goes Public and Boxee Box Specs Revealed – Today on the company blog, Boxee revealed the specs for the Boxee Box and announced that the Boxee Beta is now officially open to the public.
• Near Me Now: Google’s Mobile Homepage is Location Aware – Go to Google.com in your iPhone or Android browser and you’ll see a small new addition to the homepage: a tiny Near Me Now option below the search box. The new functionality turns your location into an automated search query and makes finding or learning about places in your immediate vicinity a no brainer.
• Bra Color Facebook Status Updates Go Viral, But Why? – Facebook is quite the colorful place today. An odd meme — bra color status updates — has made its way around the network, but no one really knows how or why the what-color-is-your-bra meme took off.

These are my links for January 6th through January 7th:

• HootSuite Now Lets You Update Your WordPress Blog – HootSuite, the popular Twitter app geared towards businesses and power users, has just issued yet another update to their web-based client, featuring the ability to post to the WordPress.com blogging platform, URL and content previews, and trending topic explanations.
• iTunes Browser Previews Now With Actual Music – Back in November of 2009, Apple finally rolled out a web browser preview for music in the iTunes catalog. It let you view the albums page, see all the songs included on the album, their length, as well as price for individual tracks.
• Graphic.ly Creates the Digital Comic Book Store – During Microsoft’s keynote at CES 2010 this evening, Steve Ballmer showed off a very cool mobile and web application called Graphic.ly, a platform that aims to be the ultimate digital content delivery system for the publishing world.
• 2010 Census Turns to Facebook to Maximize Impact, Reach Young Adults – As the year 2010 gets underway, so does the federal Census in the United States — only this time around it has gone somewhat digital, incorporating Facebook and other digital media to spread the word about being counted.
• HOW TO: Erase Your Online Past [HUMOR] – These days, it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep a good name unbesmirched. Surveys indicate that as many as half of hiring managers use search engines to screen job applicants, and 1 in 10 have rejected potential employees because of damaging information on the web. Even if there’s no one out to get you, it’s likely that you’ve left your own e-trail of embarrassment: FacebookFacebookFacebook photos, blog comments, cached web pages, YouTubeYouTubeYouTube videos — all these things can provide the world with evidence of your previous poor judgement and wrongdoing.
• Echofon 3.0 Gets With the Twitter Times – You have plenty of options when it comes to using Twitter on your iPhone. But Echofon just made a big move for your attention by releasing version 3.0.
• Video: Google’s “F*ck You iPhone” Phone. The REAL Google Phone (Satire, NSFW) – As we’re all well aware, Google released the Nexus One yesterday, the first supposed “Google Phone.” But it’s hardly an iPhone killer. For that role, Google has something much more sinister in mind. Meet the “Fuck You iPhone” Phone.
• “Inspired” By Formspring, Tumblr Launches Nearly Identical “Ask Me” – Popular microblogging service Tumblr has just launched a new feature called “Ask Me."
• The Oscars of Twitter: Shorty Awards to Honor Creators of Short-Form, Real-Time Content – Last year, SawHorse Media, a Twitter aggregator that pioneered the concept of lists, put together the Shorty Awards. This contest and ceremony was intended to "honor the best producers of short, real-time content."
• 5 Great Blogs For Funding Advice – ReadWriteStart – The best advice we can give you is to know your audience. You don't try to sell booze to pregnant women, you don't make God-jokes in Utah and you don't get a term sheet without tailoring your pitch. Investors are already blogging about what they want from potential portfolio companies, so if you're looking for funding you should be reading their blogs. While we know there are plenty of useful investment-related blogs, here's a list of five to get you started.

These are my links for January 4th:

• Make Video Encoding Easy and Affordable With Encoding.com – Encoding.com is the leading SaaS provider of studio-class video encoding services. It scales instantly and supports all popular media formats.
• Yahoo to Unload E-mail Provider Zimbra on VMWare – As Yahoo continues to refine and redefine itself, it’s been offloading and shuttering some services in an effort to slim down (RIP Geocities!). One of the divisions that’s been on the auction block since September is Zimbra, an open-source e-mail company Yahoo acquired in September 2007 for $350 million.
• 5 Superb Social Media Tools for Musicians – Musicians take notice
• Eric Schmidt: The Baddest Man On Twitter – Stop what you’re doing right now (reading this) and go look at Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s latest Twitter profile picture. Now look closer. Yes, it appears he’s wearing a flak jacket, also known as a bullet-proof vest.
• An Inside Look At A Twitter Style Guide: 140 Characters – We’ve all seen Twitter grow into the company that it is now, but what was it like when it first started — back when it was still called Odeo, and Twitter wasn’t in existence. As we know, Twitter was spun off from Evan William’s company Odeo, into what we know now as Twitter, the social networking service where you post short messages in 140 characters or less.
• Nothing to celebrate on Public Domain Day 2010 in the US – What child has not sat starry-eyed around the fire, dreaming of the goodies to come on January 1—Public Domain Day? The thought of new books and movies and music coming out from copyright is enough to send sugarplums dancing through heads, unless you live in the US in 2010. In which case, you have nothing to celebrate, since nothing is entering the public domain this year.
• Pearl Jam Gives A Song Away For A Tweet – Regular readers may know my affinity for Pearl Jam. The band, which released a new album, Backspacer, last year had a series of promotions with MySpace to promote the album. Now they’re turning to Twitter for some more.
• 4 Ways for Augmented Reality to Get Past the Hype – GigaOM – With 197 million augmented reality-capable smartphones set to be in the global market by 2012, up from nearly 91 million in 2010, the building blocks are falling into place for people to merge digital information with their view of the physical world. But while we’re just getting to the point that normal users can see the promise of augmented reality for themselves, there’s still a long way to go.
• If You Tweet, He Will Come: Mayor Cory Booker Shovels Snow for a NJ Resident – As the snow piled up on New Year’s Eve, Jersey resident Ravie Rave didn’t call a snow plow service to take care of her 65-year-old father’s walk — she tweeted at Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
• CES 2010: What to Expect [VIDEO] – What to expect from CES 2010. From the team at Mashable.com

These are my links for December 30th through December 31st:

• Digg Takes a Dip In Traffic, Half The Size Of Twitter – But its latest growth spurt stopped in September, 2009 when it peaked at 32 million unique visitors worldwide, according to comScore. In November, its worldwide visitors were down 15 percent to 27 million, which is about half the number of people who visit Twitter.com. Digg was passed by Twitter back in March (see chart below).
• In 2009, Social Media Overtook Web 2.0 [GRAPHS] – While its definition is not yet etched in stone, most believe it describes a new type of media and communication that creates a world conversation and dialogue. Instead of being fed news (a one-to-many dissemination approach), everyone is welcomed to be a content creator and to generate a debate around that content. While its focus is the web, it goes beyond it as well.
• Digg to aggregate what’s trending on Twitter and Facebook – Holy Kaw! – Looks like Kevin Rose may have found a way to steer the Digg ship back on course with a site overhaul that rumors say will include an aggregation of what’s hot on Twitter and Facebook.
• FCC Chairman’s Facebook Account Compromised – The New York Times’ Bits blog is reporting that FCC head honcho Julius Genachowsi — the man in the middle of the net neutrality initiatives and the Google-Apple disputes — has fallen victim to the fraudulent activity of scammers on Facebook.
• Facebook: 5 Predictions for 2010 – Facebook has been around for more than five years, but it hit critical mass and exploded in 2009. As the new decade begins, the fallout is blowing over the entire web. Facebook Connect is everywhere, in case you hadn’t heard. We’re talking 60 million users on 80,000 web sites
• Facebook App’s Password Data Breach Turns into Lawsuit – Facebook and MySpace app maker and advertising network RockYou isn’t having a great December. Earlier this month, 32 million passwords were compromised by a hacker going by the alias of “igigi.” That’s more than half of RockYou’s monthly active users.
• The Androidification of Everything – GigaOM – A few days ago, Antonio Rodriguez, a Boston-based entrepreneur and founder of Tabblo, emailed to let me know that he was leaving Hewlett-Packard to go do something new. Rodriguez sold Tabblo to HP in 2007 and had been working on some cool stuff at HP, but now he’s decided that it’s time for him to head back to the startup ecosystem. We met when he was trying to get traction for Tabblo, but we have stayed in touch since, musing over the future of devices and user experiences. (Antonio chronicles many of his thoughts over on his blog.)

These are my links for December 30th:

• Zynga CEO Mark Pincus On Charlie Rose – Charlie Rose welcomed Zynga CEO Mark Pincus on his show last night for a 15 minute interview. Pincus says 60-70 million people a day are playing social games on Facebook and MySpace, and 1%-2% are willing to shell out actual cash to enhance gameplay. Mobile social gaming is still small, just 5 million – 6 million/ day, he says. But mobile is a fast growing platform.
• Evernote Reaches Two Million Lifeloggers, Half Of Them Are On The iPhone – The idea of a life recorder that captures every moments of your life on video is still a bit of a tech fantasy, but an early version of the life recorder already exists. It is called Evernote, the popular iPhone (and now Android) app which lets you record your memories by snapping geo-tagged photos, making voice notes, or just text notes and making it easy to search through them. Evernote does not yet support video recording other than as an attachment (for premium subscribers), but when that becomes more practical it will.
• 10 Things You Need for Your Social Media Road Trip –
• Palm Pre and Palm Pixi Headed to Verizon? – The Palm Pre is headed to Verizon sometime in early 2010, but now BGR is reporting that the Palm Pixi will be coming to Verizon, too.
• Hot PCB – Printed Circuit Board Design, Fabrication, and Assembly Industry Blog » Blog Archive » When a Tweeter becomes a Twiddler – We have all experienced that moment where we open our email again even though we just minimized it and there was nothing new. Or we have refreshed our facebook/twitter to see if anything new has popped up. Or we’ve closed a browser and out of habit opened it up again even though there is no need. Or you end up staring aimlessly at your monitor wondering “what can I do?”
• SEOmoz Decision Making Flowchart – SEOmoz caused a stir this week by publishing a “study” that allegedly showed NoFollow tags were still effective in sculpting the flow of PageRank.

  This of course flies in the face of what Matt Cutts has said on the issue, and the data in the study doesn’t seem to actually be all that solid. But hey, why let that get in the way of a good link bait post, right?

• Twitter API Is Becoming Far More than Just an API for Twitter – Webmonkey – Twitter’s API has spawned hundreds of mashups and third party software apps, but now it’s growing even further — outside sites have begun mimicking an API to piggyback on Twitter clients.
• Web Designer – Defining the internet through beautiful design » Blog Archive » What has blogging done for the quality of writing on the web? – IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to read much of the IT press these days without coming across an article about Twitter, how it’s going to save the world, and how it isn’t. I don’t want to add to that discussion here (except maybe I already have) but its soaring popularity got me thinking about how easy it is to get one’s voice heard on the web these days. Twitter is a special case – technically it’s micro-blogging – and it is typically used to provide short updates on what people are doing there and then. But it is a form of blogging, micro or not, and it is blogging in general I think I have a problem with. Wikipedia defines a blog as “A type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
• Is Social Media Killing Your Business? | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing – Social media for the small business is a catalyst, a tool, a way to create awareness and deeper engagement – it’s not a way to take orders.
• 10 Questions for Brian Williams – TIME – Brian Williams doesn't get Twitter. Calls it a time suck and a waste of time. He misses the point completely and it's really sad.

These are my links for December 29th through December 30th:

• LEAKED: New Details and the Price of Google’s Nexus One – The Nexus One, also known as the Google Phone, has been causing a stir this month after details began to emerge about the project. Earlier today, we learned that the phone will likely be revealed on January 5 at a Google press conference (which we will be covering).
• The Complete National Geographic Collection on a Hard Drive – National Geographic, the legendary yellow magazine that’s been an important part of many a young nerd’s childhood, has been around since 1888. Even if you have a very large room dedicated to storing the magazine, that’s a lot of issues.
• Facebook to Seppukoo: Die! – Remember Seppukoo, that nifty little service that lets you kill your Facebook identity? Well, Facebook doesn’t appreciate the idea.
• Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Journalists – Navigating the journalistic seas this past year has been a particularly challenging/exciting task. As many a publication foundered in the economic benthos, others rode the wave of new technology into previously uncharted waters.
• Comedy Duo Hopes Social Media Power Will Secure Slot on Showtime – Undoubtedly, social media is a powerful force. It can be used as a way to spread breaking news, organize political protests or energize campaigns, and, of course, to promote various brands and individuals. But can social media help a TV pilot ascend from reject bin to series pickup? Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo — the stars and creators of Ronna and Beverly — sure hope so.
• Weather Channel Marriage Proposal: Touching With a Chance of Viral Status [VIDEO] – First Twitter, then Foursquare, now the Weather Channel? People are broadcasting their wedding proposals all over the place these days.
• LinkedIn’s New iPhone App: The 3 Worst Things About It – Business social network LinkedIn made a major upgrade to its iPhone app tonight but coming from a service with such incredible potential, there remain some major disappointments.
• Twitter 2.0: API Rate Change Could Lead to a World of New Apps & Features – One of the best things about Twitter is its wildly creative ecosystem of applications built by people outside the company. Those apps have been constrained, though, by technical limits imposed on retrieving data from Twitter. Those limits are just about to be raised much higher and developers tell us that a whole new world of applications and features may become possible.
• Google’s 2009: A Glimpse of the Web’s Next Decade – In 2009 the web as we knew it changed dramatically. Twitter graduated to become a media darling and a mainstream communication staple. Facebook became the most significant social network of this day and age. And Google changed the way we search.
• 10 Things to Do Before the New Year – Whether you work for someone or yourself, things tend to slow down for many of us in the final two weeks of the old year. What better time to do a little business sprucing? Here are ten things to do before the New Year to feel invigorated and ready to whatever comes your way.

These are my links for December 28th:

• Former Morgan Stanley Coder Gets 2 Years in Prison for TJX Hack | Threat Level | Wired.com – The two great friends talked every day and shared information about all of their exploits — sexual, narcotic and hacking — according to prosecutors. Now another thing they’ll have to share information about is their experience in federal prison.
• Torrent Search Engines Unlawful, U.S. Judge Says | Threat Level | Wired.com – The operator of a popular BitTorrent search site said Monday he will likely challenge last week’s landmark decision by a U.S. judge declaring such sites unlawful and no different from conventional peer-to-peer piracy services.
• Piracy Surcharge Set To Force 40,000 Households Offline | TorrentFreak – Earlier, ISP BT predicted that operating an anti-filesharing scheme in the UK would cost £365m a year. Now the government has admitted that not only will broadband customers have to foot a £500m bill, but that burden will prove too great for 40,000 households – who will have no choice but to give up their Internet connections.
• Top 7 Disruptions of the Year | Epicenter | Wired.com – Technology is like a dog; each year of it seems like the equivalent of seven human years — at least when you get to the end of it and realize it’s only been 12 months since that now indispensable service first launched.
• Code That Protects Most Cellphone Calls Is Deciphered – NYTimes.com – A German computer engineer said Monday that he had deciphered and published the secret code used to encrypt most of the world’s digital mobile phone calls, saying it was his attempt to expose weaknesses in the security of global wireless systems.
• Palm Pre Users Rejoice: webOS 1.3.5 is Coming Today – Here’s a nice Christmas present for Palm Pre users: According to Sprint’s website, a new version of Pre’s operating system, webOS 1.3.5, is due to go live today.
• Facebook more than doubled its number of users this year | Technology | guardian.co.uk – Even by Facebook's standards, the past 12 months have been remarkable. The site cemented its position as the world's favourite social network, reached the verge of profitability and even exerted its influence over the race for the Christmas No 1.
• Twitter’s List Of 370 Banned Passwords – Twitter appears to have learned from its security scare earlier this year and seems to be taking password security more seriously than most Internet services.
• 5 Reasons to Learn Social Media | Search Engine Journal – Have you ever noticed how many bloggers and social media marketers just tell people that they should go out try social media? How you shouldn’t worry about learning social it? That you’ll learn it on the fly and everything will be fine.

These are my links for December 28th:

• HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy – Just having a policy isn’t good enough — you need a plan to put it in place. Here are five areas to discuss when implementing a social media strategy.
• Google’s AdMob Acquisition Meets Opposition from Consumer Groups – Is Google simply buying its way into the mobile advertising market via its $750 million acquisition of AdMob? That’s what two consumer groups allege in a letter sent to the FTC today, as the organization continues to review the deal.
• What Social Media Can Do For Your Business | Social Media Explorer – There are still a number of business people, executives, owners and more, that have doubts about social media as a business driver. Part of that skepticism has to do with the fact the medium is quite new and participating in it requires a different approach from traditional marketing efforts. Part of it has to do with the fact that social media thinkers and advocates have never been very good at illustrating a definitive tie to business success through their medium of choice.
• Social Media Today | Social media needs fewer rockstars, and more rockstar ideas –
• Social Media Today | Long Tail Fans…Television’s Survival Might Rely on Hyper-Local Coverage Online – MediaPost recently reported that Akamai Technologies CEO Paul Sagan warns that television is about to experience the major impact that print and music have already felt. Akamai Technologies facilitates more than one-fifth of the world's Web traffic so they have a good view on the subject. What will cause this transformation? The article states that, “the ability to match high-def TV picture quality with Internet interactivity is creating a sea change for online video that will begin rippling through the television industry in 2010. Only TV station owners that leap to the new arena, playing the strength of their hyper-local connections, will survive.” Otherwise they will feel the same big impact form the Web that music and print have felt.
• Social Media Today | Twitter Economics – With a $1 billion valuation, Twitter is becoming, according to Co-Founder Evan Williams, an information network, a practically priceless exchange for connections, information, and the resulting activity that ensues.
• Social Media Today | Seven Reasons You Should Care About Disclosure on Twitter –
• Social Media Today | The More Than RSS Market – Richard McManus of RWW notes the continuing decline of RSS Readers, suggesting the market is largely dominated by Google and in disarray. Five years ago there was a perception that this was a hot category. An underlying standard was freeing up new atomized content and conversations that could be pulled and curated. Bloglines was acquired, and new clients were popping up weekly.
• Social Media Today | Twitter Economics – With a $1 billion valuation, Twitter is becoming, according to Co-Founder Evan Williams, an information network, a practically priceless exchange for connections, information, and the resulting activity that ensues.
• What Small Business Needs to Do to Get Ready for Mobile Marketing Now | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing – Mobile marketing has taken far longer to evolve than people imagined, but I believe we are on the doorstep of an evolution in marketing that will rival social media in terms of impact.