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Online privacy is a hot topic.

In March, Miriam Metzger will present at the CITS Faculty Lecture Series about Privacy 2.0.

While some may argue that in the era of TiVo and digital cable, shared experiences are decreasing. A new product from Microsoft called PhotoSynth may be one way for a new kind of shared experience.

The PhotoSynth software can assemble a collection of digital snapshots taken at a certain place into a 3D environment that you can pan and zoom through.

CNN created an amazing PhotoSynth of the inauguration.

Twitter continues to grow and grow!

CITS now as a Twitter account as well. Follow UCSBCITS.

A few recently Twitter highlights:

- The Pew Internet and American Life Project released new data this week:

"As of December 2008, 11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others."

Academia.edu is a social network site that aims to show "academics around the world structured in a 'tree' format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations" and enable "academics to see news on the latest research in their area - the latest people, papers and talks".

There is a genealogy-like setup to show adivsors and advisees.

More interesting, however, is the news feed feature that shows upcoming conferences and new publications.

Could this work? Will it catch on? Time will tell. It could certainly be useful.

Facebook now has 150 million users. "If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria."

So is there anyone left that isn't on Facebook? Farhad Manjoo of Slate says: "There is no longer any good reason to avoid Facebook. The site has crossed a threshold—it is now so widely trafficked that it's fast becoming a routine aide to social interaction, like e-mail and antiperspirant."

Slate has an article on the netbook craze. Netbooks are $200-$400 laptops designed for websurfing.

Simple devices designed to do one thing well (a la iPods) are growing in popularity.

For better or worse, our personal computers serve many purposes. For those of us that write for a living, using our PCs to write on while also running many applications which are fun (and/or distracting) can be very challenging.

Yelp is a popular site for reviewing businesses and services. But after one customer of a chiropractor has been threatened with a lawsuit, will users be less inclined to put up reviews? The article also points out that the chiropractor himself may now be a target of discrimination by individuals that disagree with the lawsuit. The reviewer has created a website to generate funds for his defense.