It’s that time of year again…

In between — or to go along with — holiday shopping, we’re starting to see 2009’s “top” products, services, applications, etc. being touted.

Yesterday, ReadWriteWeb listed their top mobile web apps and have followed up today with their list of the top 10 consumer web apps of the year.

With regard to the consumer apps, they note that there are hundreds of new ones to choose from but “occasionally, we come across a service that stands out from the pack because it offers a novel solution, disrupts the way incumbent market leaders do business or changes the way we experience the Web.”  Not all the apps are newly launched, but reached a mainstream audience this year.

The mobile web apps heavily feature those for the iPhone as one might expect, but there is a mix of others.

Briefly, the mobile group includes:  Facebook 3.0 (iPhone), Tweetie 2 (iPhone), Twidroid – see image – (Android), Foursquare (Cross-platform), Google Voice, (Blackberry, Android), Spotify (Cross-Platform), Google Maps Navigation (Android), Layer (iPhone, Android), and a couple more.  See the article for details.

Among the top consumer apps are 2 search engines, Bing and WolframAlpha.  A couple of my favorites are included: light blogging site Posterous (here’s an example) and Tweetdeck, which I’ve recently posted about.  Of course, RWW didn’t leave off huge favorites like Twitter and Facebook.  See the article for more apps and information.

This Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey finds that Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported.

People’s use of the mobile phone and the internet is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks.  And internet use in general, and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular, are associated with more diverse social networks.

Key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology.  For instance:

• The extent of social isolation has hardly changed since 1985, contrary to concerns that the prevalence of severe isolation has tripled since then. Only 6% of the adult population has no one with whom they can discuss important matters.
• Although discussion networks have become less diverse, containing fewer non-family members, the survey shows that ownership of a mobile phone and participation in a variety of internet activities are associated with larger and more diverse core discussion networks.
• Social media activities are associated with several beneficial social activities, including having discussion networks that are more likely to contain people from different backgrounds.
• Internet use in general, and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular, are associated with having a more diverse social network. This is contrary to the notion that technology pulls people away from social engagement.
• Most internet activities have little, or a positive relationship, to local activity.
• Internet use does not pull people away from public places. Rather, it is associated with engagement in places such as parks, cafes, and restaurants, the kinds of locales where research shows that people are likely to encounter a wider array of people and diverse points of view.
• People’s mobile phone use outpaces their use of landline phones as a primary method of staying in touch with their closest family and friends, but face-to-face contact still trumps all other methods.
• Challenging the assumption that internet use encourages social contact across vast distances, the survey finds that many internet technologies are used as much for local contact as they are for distant communication.

You can view the full report, either online or in PDF format, here .

Report from Wired: “In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.”

The idea for use of Visible Technologies is to keep track of foreign social media, and “give spooks early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally”, but of course the tool can and is being used internally by companies tracking the “buzz” (e.g., bloggers, tweeters) about their products or companies.

“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” says Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists.  But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations.  Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage.  That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically ‘open source.’”

Read more at Wired.  Adapted image by Crys.  Creative Commons license.

A new Pew Internet And American Life Project study being released today shows that internet users on the whole are becoming more likely to update their statuses online on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  19% of internet users say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others, an increase from 11% last December.

The Pew report, Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009, says that three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.

In addition, the more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status.  For instance, 39% of internet users with four or more internet-connected devices (such as a laptop, cell phone, game console, or Kindle) use Twitter, compared to 28% of internet users with three devices, 19% of internet users with two devices, and 10% of internet users with one device.

The report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the internet.

I’ve been using Facebook more lately as I have mentioned, so these reminders to guard my privacy were timely.

First, remember that over-sharing on the Net, especially on social networks designed to help us build and keep connections, is all too easy and not a good idea.  Be mindful of who can see your information and think about just what and how you want to share it.  For example, ReadWriteWeb asks, “did you know that 30% of today’s employers are using Facebook to vet potential employees prior to hiring?” (they use other networks, as well)  The question of whether information or photos may be detrimental to yourself or friends should be considered before posting.

There are many privacy controls which you should take the time to explore and seriously consider.  RWW recommends these simple precautions when using Facebook:

• Make a Friends list.  Click on “Friends” at the top of the Facebook homepage.  In the left-hand column, click “Friends” again under the “Lists” section.  Now you’ll see a button at the top that says “Create New List”.  Click it and name your list and pick members.  When you’ve finished making lists, you’ll be able to use them when selecting who can see what (or who can’t!) when configuring the security settings.
• Who can see what’s on your profile?  Use the Settings>Privacy>Profile page to decide and choose.
• Who can see your address and phone number?  Are you open to the world?
• Who can find you on Facebook via Search?  Use the “Search Visibility” drop-down box to make your selection.  Choose “Only Friends” for the most restrictive privacy.  That means only the people who you’ve already friended can find you in a Facebook search.
• Stop sharing personal info with unknown applications.  Using Facebook’s default settings, you’re unknowingly sharing personal information (and your friends’ info too!) with various Facebook applications and the developers who created them.  The problem is so bad that the ACLU recently created their own Facebook Quiz to demonstrate how much information an app has access to.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am starting to use Facebook (FB) more.  It is an uphill battle as far as I am concerned because I find the site a poor user experience.  What a clumsy interface!  But it is such a popular social networking place that one can hardly afford to ignore it.

So I have been on the look-out for information on how to use the site effectively and efficiently.  This post from ReadWriteWeb offers some good tips.

You’ll want to let your Facebook friends know what you are doing frequently to maintain good relationships.  Facebook calls this ‘updating your status.’   The terms FB uses seem stilted and arcane to me, but whatever…

Hopefully you will also hear what your friends are doing frequently.  If you have a lot of them, you might find it helpful to group them in what FB calls ‘lists,’ such as “family,” “work friends,” “organizations,” and so forth, so you can filter messages and see the ones you most want to when you are short on time.  It’s pretty easy to do this:  look for the ‘create lists’ link in the left hand column.  You will first have to click on ‘more.’  Did I mention clunky interface?

Brightening up your profile with photos and videos will be appealing to your friends.  It was when some of my FB friends began adding photos that I started to pay more attention and to really enjoy using the site.  Now I need to follow their example and upload some photos of my own!

It’s worth taking some time to explore the many options FB offers.  There is a “Share Bookmarklet” which you can put in your Bookmarks tool bar in order to easily share a link (including videos and music) without opening FB.

There are thousands of apps you might enjoy using.  I notice that many of my friends take quizes, play games, and so forth.  The best tip here is to find apps that best suit you.  You can search the directory for keywords of interest to you.  I joined a “fan” site for one of my favorite TV shows.  I recommend it for those who 1) don’t have enough people they know to talk to about their passion, or, 2) are doing a sociological study.  It’s been fun – and crazy.

I was attracted to this Mashable post about how to update Facebook from other sources.

Although I’ve had a Facebook account for quite awhile, I pretty much ignored it until recently.  Neither had I felt any compulsion to get on the Twitter bandwagon.  Then, in circumstances I won’t bother to describe, I started to get interested in both.  Now I have incorporated both sites into my routine, although I don’t necessarily update or tweet on a daily basis.

I’m finding that many of my Facebook friends are sharing interesting experiences and photos these days, and people whose daily activities I like to hear about are using Twitter; some are doing both.  Combined with my recent acquisition of the MyTouch and some future travel plans, I had reason to begin looking for alternative ways to use both Facebook and Twitter when I am away from my home computer.  Enter Mashable.

The post includes ways to update Facebook from Firefox, from Twitter, using text messaging, and from several Facebook-provided mobile options.  Depending on how you look at it, you have multiple options to keep up your social connections, or, you will find it even harder to break away from them.

It’s no longer a secret that Google is developing an entirely new infrastructure for its search engine.

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search.  It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.  The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results.  But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

Google specifically states that its goal for the new version of Google Search is to improve its indexing speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness, notes Mashable, whose early tests show the new version to be faster and perhaps capable of real-time results.

That’s a good thing for Google since Facebook launched a real-time search engine and bought FriendFeed the same day.  And of course, the recent search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, has put Bing into more prominence and in a position to steal market share from Google.

Mashable says that “Facebook’s blockbuster acquisition of FriendFeed was a lob squarely across Google’s bow.”  FB has 250 million registered users, of which 30 million update their status at least once per day.  Microsoft’s Bing powers web search results on Facebook already, creating the possible development of real-time, social web search results finding their way out onto Yahoo!

“Facebook has a knack for taking the technologies geeks love and adapting them for mainstream audiences.  They did it with the news feed (FriendFeed), photo tagging (Flickr), link sharing (Delicious).”

Gmail Labs is making it possible for us to add more gadgets to Gmail if we choose.  The first thing you need to do from your Gmail is to activate Gadgets by going to Settings, then Labs, and enabling “Add any gadget by URL.”  It’s at the bottom of the list at the moment.  Be sure to save changes.

Now navigate to Settings > Gadgets in order to add new gadgets.  They are all added by copying in a URL and saving your settings when you are finished.  Makeuseof.com has a list of URLs for 10 gadgets you might be interested in.

You probably won’t want them all in your sidebar.  If you are often on your Gmail page and wish you had easy access there to Twitter, too, you can add the TwitterGadget by copying in the URL from makeuseof.com’s post.  I tried it out just to see how it worked and it looked pretty usable.

I already have ways I manage Twitter, however, so I deleted the gadget and looked at the other possibilities.  They include Wikipedia, FriendFeed, World Clock (which I have on my Calendar), Digg, Calculator, Facebook and MySpace, none of which I decided I wanted in my Gmail sidebar.  (If you add several of these, it is handy to be able to minimize them when you don’t need them.)

However, the URL shortener, bit.ly, looked like just the thing — I frequently send links in my gmails and they can be quite long.  I added the gadget (the URL is long: http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/107368512201818821991/bitly-shortener.xml) and found a use for it right in the next message I composed.  Works fine.

I already have the bit.ly URL shortener in my Bookmarks Toolbar, but having this gadget easily at hand in Gmail is great.  By the way, Firefox also has an extension called bit.ly preview so you can see “what lurks” beneath a bit.ly-shortened URL when you encounter one.  You might like to know before you go there.

If you are looking for a job, you have probably tried a number of sources.  Here’s one more — the use of social networking websites.  Dan Schawbel, posting on Mashable, explains why and how to use these ten sites he feels are the best.

Some sites help with crafting your resume, some contain job listings, others connect you with people in your own or related fields.  Having your own website or blog will help you present more of yourself to prospective employers.

Includes:

• LinkedIn
• Plaxo
• Twitter
• Jobster
• Facebook
• Craigslist
• MyWorkster
• VisualCV
• JobFox
• Ecademy