These are my links for January 12th:

• Ok You Luddites, Time To Chill Out On Facebook Over Privacy –
• Google Now Tracking The Flu, City By City. So Far, It’s Been A Mild Winter. –
• Foursquare Follows The Facebook Model, Takes Its Game To Harvard –
• "Google" Is Word of the Decade –
• Amtrak to Add Free Wi-Fi on High-Speed Trains –
• Teaching entrepreneurial journalism « BuzzMachine –
• Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Microsoft’s Plan to Save Windows Mobile –
• Google Seeks a Deal on China Book Scans | Loretta Chao | Voices | AllThingsD –
• Google Adds Data Storage to Google Docs | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD –
• Google Says Attack From China Was Aimed at Dissidents – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com –

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 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 23rd through December 24th:

• Why B2B companies should be using social media | Socialmedia.biz – Many B2B com­pa­nies ask me whether social media is right for them. This post is all about why social media and B2B go hand in hand.
• Social media & startups: It’s a different ballgame | Socialmedia.biz – I get asked a lot: “How do I make money off social media?” Uhmm, well, you use the magic wand of online web awe­some­ness, obvi­ously. Or maybe not. We have all read a mil­lion arti­cles point­ing us toward tools we should be using, things we should be con­sid­er­ing, and the best prac­tices we shouldn’t ignore. We get it: Social media is valu­able. I think by now we all under­stand the impor­tance of social media as a vis­i­bil­ity engine and viral mes­sage maker. It can be used to enable con­ver­sa­tions, announce infor­ma­tion, put out fires, and so on.

  It can do a lot. But it has lim­its. Ohhh buzz kill.

• 7 tips to increase your online media literacy | Socialmedia.biz – t’s become a tru­ism that we’re all media cre­ators now, from blog­gers and pod­cast­ers to the most wet-behind-the-feathers Twitterer.
• 5 ways to increase the reach of your blog or RSS feed | Socialmedia.biz – You may be los­ing out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve the reach of your RSS feed or blo
• DDoS Attack Takes Down Amazon, Wal-Mart – If you’ve been doing some last-minute Amazon holiday shopping on Wednesday evening, you’ve probably noticed that Amazon’s website was sluggish and, at times, completely down. The same fate greeted Wal-Mart, Expedia and a number of smaller sites. The reason? A severe DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the servers of Neustar, the company that offers DNS services to many major companies under the name UltraDNS.
• The Pirate Bay Goes Retro for Christmas – Remember how one of the most popular torrent sharing sites, The Pirate Bay, looked back in 2003? Today, you have a chance to refresh your memory, because the pirates have gone retro, changing the layout of the site to the way it looked back then, when the Internet was innocent and there was no pile of lawsuits on The Pirate Bay’s desk.
• Fun Stats: 28% Of Sites Use Google Analytics; 5% Have Facebook Or Twitter Links – # 28% of sites have Google Analytics on them
  # 12% of sites have AdSense
  # 5% of sites have EITHER a Twitter or Facebook link but…
  # 2% of sites have BOTH a Twitter or Facebook link
• Disney Wants Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg On Its Board – GigaOM – Disney’s board today nominated Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to be its thirteenth member. It’ll be put to shareholder vote at the next Disney annual meeting, scheduled to be held March 10, 2010.
• Add Clickable Links In YouTube Videos Without Using Annotations – While it is possible to add hyperlinks on YouTube videos via the built-in annotations feature, the only problem is that you cannot link to external websites from YouTube videos – that links should either point to a video hosted on YouTube or to a video search page that’s again on YouTube.
• 2010: Year of digital distraction? – CNN.com – The "real-time Web" is booming. From Twitter to Facebook to new search engines that discover information posted just seconds ago, it seems the 2010 Web will be fueled by our desire for instant gratification.
• Mall of America Tweets Holiday Parking Updates – It may not be rocket science, but it is pretty cool: The Mall of America is using Twitter to tweet parking info for last-minute holiday shoppers hoping to avoid the ever-annoying quest for a space.
• Marketing in 2010: It’s All About the Data –
• Digg’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009 – It’s the end of the year, traditionally a time for self-reflection. While many of us are making our New Year’s resolutions and looking back on what we accomplished, a lot of social media companies are sifting through their data and sharing what was hot in 2009.
• FTC Inquiry Hinders Google’s Acquisition of AdMob – When Google formally announced their plans to acquire mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million, they didn’t expect any regulatory interference to impede upon the processing of the deal. Unfortunately they were wrong.
• 3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010 – 2009 saw a proliferation of online charity events, competitions, and “friendraisers” that spilled across Twitter and Facebook and filled email inboxes everywhere with more requests for money than any Nigerian prince could ever hope to make. And while it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing — anytime someone gives money to feed the hungry instead of buying another digital potato seed in Farmville, global karma rises, if even just by a little — this focus on using the web as an ever-more elaborate means of getting people to fork over cash misses the much bigger opportunities just over the horizon.
• BREAKING: Twitter Buys Mixer Labs to Boost Location Features – Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams has just announced on the company’s blog that they have acquired Mixer Labs, creator of the GeoAPI.
• Is Hiring a Ghostblogger a Bad Thing? – At any given time, there is usually an ongoing debate in some blogging circle about whether ghostblogging is a good or bad thing. I say it depends on how you’re using the term, and how you are using your ghostblogger.
• Google News Will Not Accept Single Author Blogs – I put in an application to submit our blog to Google news, but it seems Google news will not include sites that are written and maintained by one individual!

This is the Link Report for November 8th through November 12th:

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

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at What the duck? Aflac gets quackin’ on Facebook | Social Business | ZDNet.com – Whether or not you are an Aflac customer, you’ve at least once tried to mimic the Aflac duck’s quacking of “Aflac” at the end of its commercials. After its commercial success, Aflac has taken to Facebook with a two-fold approach: increase its brand awareness through a fan page for the famous Aflac Duck and through a presence in the “Causes” application on Facebook for the Aflac Cancer Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the same city in which the company is headquartered.