"Facebook is proud to play a part in promoting peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other. By enabling people from diverse backgrounds to easily connect and share their ideas, we can decrease world conflict in the short and long term."

They’ve already narrowed down the playing field to 9 competitors, separated into 3 teams, and have just opened up the final selection process to you. You can visit the site, watch team videos, and vote once per day on your favorite between now and November 6, 2009

New average ages of social media users: Twitter 31, Facebook 33, LinkedIn 39, MySpace 26

Google has bowed to user’s privacy concerns by launching an online tool that lets its account holders know how much of their personal data the search giant holds.

You probably wouldn't check in here if you were staff... would you?

The UK's first £1,000 domestic, single journey rail ticket has been described as "scandalous" and "appalling value" by opposition MPs.

The main purpose of this exploratory qualitative research is to examine how people assess the veracity, trustworthiness, independence and balance of online content and services. A secondary purpose is to explore how perceptions about the presence or absence of online regulation may underpin or influence peoples online behaviour.

online activities such as social networking, sending e-mails and blogging can lead to larger, and (perhaps even more importantly) more diverse social networks.

The main purpose of this exploratory qualitative research is to examine how people assess the veracity, trustworthiness, independence and balance of online content and services. A secondary purpose is to explore how perceptions about the presence or absence of online regulation may underpin or influence peoples online behaviour.

online activities such as social networking, sending e-mails and blogging can lead to larger, and (perhaps even more importantly) more diverse social networks.

A new project gives you an overview of what's being talked about by the Twitterers you follow, through the medium of a personalised newspaper

The Berlin Project is merging traditonal print, radio and television coverage with online social media tools making the coverage extensive and instant. Along with ‘traditional’ equipment, the team of reporters will have mobile phones [and other gadgets] with applications allowing them to stream live video and audio onto the web. By using Twitter, AudioBoo, and Qik, among other tools, they’ll be keeping both the baby boomer and the web-savvy generations informed with up-to-date, accurate coverage.

My post to the Headshift blog was included on social media today - over 1000 views in less than 24 hours, and more than 45 retweets. Nice...

Stephanie Migot writes in to let us know how UK law firm Wragge & Co has decided to set up a special "cyber tracing" team, whose job it will be to scour the internet for anyone making negative anonymous comments about any of their clients and then take action.

Region by region look at who is, and isn't, doing social media in the UK

Nice visualisations based on the photos contained by images posted on flickr

"...to update the people of his community in Monrovia during Liberia’s civil war, Alfred J. Sirleaf started the “Daily Talk” in the year 2000 . His “News Room” is nothing more than a plywood shack and his publication, large fold-out chalkboards facing the street. Every morning he updates the boards with aggregated headlines and top stories scavenged from around the city. He posts symbols such as UN helmets and other such items relating to the main story topic to entice readership and help with the folks who can’t read. The New York Times has reported that it is “the most widely read report” in Monrovia."

"I caught up with Cohn at the Knight Foundation’s conference earlier this month. He won a $340,000 grant from Knight last year to develop a local news site that relies on small donations from readers for individual projects by freelance reporters. Since November, the site has funded and published 20 stories that you can read here."

"CDC Emergency Preparedness and Response: increasing the nation's ability to prepare for and respond to public health emergencies..."

To prevent identity confusion, Twitter is experimenting (beta testing) with a 'Verified Account' feature. We're working to establish authenticity with people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis. Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!

"And all this means that our people need different skills — and it also may mean that we need different kinds of people. Just as we thought the key to survival in the new age was learning how to make a podcast, the earth moves again and now a key skill is organizing people. Dan Barkin from the News & Observer and Robin Hamman from the BBC talked about that as people in the room wondered of Robin: Are there any more at home like you? Where do you come from? Where do we find you’s? And I wonder how we train them out of journalism school. "

"I’ve already blogged about what an ecosystem approach to conflict early warning and response entails. But I have done so with a country focus rather than thinking globally. This blog post applies a global perspective to the ecosystem approach given the proliferation of new platforms with global scalability."

"Patrick Philippe Meier, an expert in crisis mapping, believes a global superorganism for disaster response is in the works, which would consist of a combination of the following services. Some of them are in design phase, but none of them is consciously interconnected at the present time..."

exclusivity, rather than inclusivity, is what makes many web communities work well

Fancy making an iphone app? It's easier, and cheaper, than you think...

A tourist's attempt to find the owner of a lost camera by identifying the holidaymakers in the photos has attracted the attention of more than 180,000 people on Facebook.

I like the geographic listing of politics blogs on the right - finally the BBC learns to link

Researchers at IBM and MIT have found that certain e-mail connections and patterns at work correlate with higher revenue production

Gripe sites...

First iteration of bing's twitter search...

Some nice examples of small businesses using social media

Some cool designer stuff here for kids - "Nubie is a one stop shop for all things modern for your little one. It showcases fresh high-quality designs for kids of all ages enabling families to create that cool and contemporary look from one source."

Some nice examples of travel companies using twitter

Article includes some great examples of how not to use twitter

"This sounds like a very interesting technology and it may have other applications - like sharing business information in meetings," says Robert Caunt, a consumer electronics expert with London-based market analyst CCS Insight. "But I'm not sure sharing photos is what it will be best at. After all, photo printer sales are still fairly strong."

Presentation with screen shots of mBuzz, a social media monitoring tool

Interview with Vodafone's eForum outreach programme in the UK

The interesting bit is the list of services at the bottom that can help brands monitor and engage via twitter...

Yahoo-owned GeoCities once boasted millions of users and was the third most popular destination on the web. Yahoo, which acquired the site for $3.57bn (£2.17bn) in 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, said sites would no longer be accessible from 26th October.

"A lively ongoing conversation is taking place on Twitter (Twitter) about where the publishing industry is headed. With digital media overshadowing its legacy media counterpart, publishers are struggling to figure out pricing, digital rights issues and how to market digital content. These are similar to the struggles the music industry has faced over the past few years. "

Video and transcript of an internal meeting to discuss the digital future of the NY Times...