LinkedIn security breach (June 7, 2012), change your password

In case  you have not heard or been informed, as I was not, LinkedIn.com has had a security breach and 6.4 million member passwords were stolen. The theft was publicized on Thursday, June 7, 2012. As of June 10, 2012, all LinkedIn has done is to post a notice on its site that you should reset your password. In my case, the site remembered I was logged in from a previous visit and did not automatically log me out. I'm not sure whether that's a plus or a minus.

RockMelt Web browser invite on its way

Information Today's NewsBreaks features an article by Jill O'Neill titled "Hallmarks of the New RockMelt Browser—Efficiency and Integration" (November 22, 02010). Turns out you can receive an invite if you connect to the RockMelt Inc. Web site through your Facebook account. When I made the connection, I got a response saying "Your spot is reserved. We'll email your invite in the next few days." The developers of RockMelt are Tim Howe and Eric Vishria. RockMelt is based on Google's open source Chromium framework that Google also used to create its Google Chrome browser.

Facebook launches e-mail service

I wonder how th elaunch of the Facebook e-mail service will affect the spam and malware landscape. Here's the SearchEngineWatch.com article about the launch.

Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research exhibition at the British Library

The British Library wants your opinion to count as part of its Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research exhibition. The exhibition runs between October 12, 02010 and July 16, 02011. Parts of it are online, including a selection of current Web sites that offer access to various free databases or new ways to organize research and connect to other researchers such as Mendeley. A selection of social networking and collaborative research tools are available. If you want to tweet about the exhibition, the hashtag is #blgk

If you get it, share it, but why are there no sharing tools on the Social Media Club site?

The Social Media Club was founded in 2006 in San Francisco, California, USA, and there are now chapters around the world. The Social Media Club's tag line is "If you get it, share it." Well, I get it, but I'll be darned if I can figure out why the Social Media Club Web site has not a one social media sharing tool in sight.

My Information Today Newsbreak published on Google Buzz

Update for 02010 03 17:

Bad, bad, bad Google chastens FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour according to PC World as cited by Matt McGee in Search Engine Land.

Original post of 02010 02 22:

My short article on Google Buzz was published today as one of the Information Today Newsbreaks titled "Google Gets Stung by Its Own Buzz."

Google Buzz was launched by Google on February 9, 2010 and immediately generated a hornet's nest of buzzing, angered Gmail customers backed by a dark cloud of consumer privacy protection organizations. Who can resist these metaphors and puns? I was asked to write up the controversy surrounding Google Buzz for an Information Today Newsbreak that should appear on Monday, February 22, 2010. I completed and submitted it on time. This is my second Newsbreak in seven years almost to the day that I've written on Google, the first back in 2003 was on its purchase of Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger and Blogspot.com. The title of that piece also had the word buzz in it: "Blooglelicious—the Buzz about Google Buying Pyra Labs."

Wordnik Launches Smartwords Initiative as Open Standard

Wordnik Launches Smartwords Initiative as Open Standard according to this Information Today Newsbreaks from March 1, 02010. Version 1 of this standard, developed "with help from its first Smartwords partners, including The New York Times, Forbes, The Huffington Post, O'Reilly, Vook, Scribd, ibis reader, and the Internet Archive," is supposed to be released in the summer of 02010. More information is available on the Wordnik Blog about its Smartwords initiative under a post dated February 23, 02010.

Wordnik itself is I think the first online dictionary that fully engages the Web 2.0 environment. Tweets from Twitter that utilize a word you look up are displayed, along with all sorts of other contextual information, including individual comments and tags from registered users of Wordnik. Except for the fact that Wiktionary allows any registered user to directly add content about a word, I think Wordnik has one-upped Wiktionary. Wordnik claims in its FAQ that it will work with individuals to incorporate new words into its "giant databank of English!"

Royal British Columbia Museum joins the sociable world of Facebook

The Royal British Columbia Museum has launched itself into the sociable world of Facebook. A YouTube channel was started in September 2008. Could a blog be next?

BC Government Web site gets social (media)

The main BC Government Web site is now offering social media services through the news releases and other access points. You can share the content through Facebook, Twitter (retweet it), Delicious social bookmarking or e-mail the content to someone. There's also a Goverment of BC YouTube Channel, three blogs, and Facebook and Twitter sites for BC Government content. It would be nice to see BC Government photos on Flickr as well.

Google Social Search Goes Live (original blog post by David)

According to this SearchEngineLand article by Matt McGee, Google Social Search is now live and contains more features than when it originally debuted in Google Labs in October 02009. Danny Sullivan examined the Google Labs offering in his article "Google Social Search Launches, Gives Results From Your Trusted 'Social Circle'" (October 26, 02009).

You need to have a Google Account and be signed in in order to take advantage of this new search results option. The announcement on the Official Google Blog is worth reading as it includes a video introduction.

Did It?, tell the world and share your stories

And on the travel theme, here's a site I read about in a newspaper on September 12, 02009: Diddit.com, is kind of like a 1,000 Places to See Before You Die for social media fans. Diddit is a product of Ludic Labs and as of October 17, 02009 is in Alpha mode.

Get reading at weRead.com

From weRead.com's About Us page; weRead was established in 2007:

weRead is a community for book lovers. Whether you love classics or popular fiction; whether you love Dickens or Dan Brown; is a place where you can find others who share your reading tastes and through them discover new books that you will love.With weRead you can:

* List, rate and write reviews about the books you are reading or have read in the past.
* Browse what other readers are reading and what they are saying about books you're interested in.
* Find readers with similar reading interests as you and learn which books they recommend.
* Have fun with books! And who wouldn't want that?
* With weRead anywhere, you can take your bookshelf with you anywhere! for example, myspace page, blog, homepage.


Only 11 months old, weRead is already one of the largest book community on Facebook with over one million registered users and over 44 million books added.

I stumbled across weRead.com through a link on Lulu.com, a self-publishing platform founded by Bob Young. weRead is owned by Ugenie Inc, a company founded in 2006.

Twine.com unspools itself to the public

Twine.com is now available and open for public signups, that is, it's now officially out of beta.