ziomal.biz

In cyberspace, no status update is too small to share with friends, family and strangers, including this: In Franklin, Tenn., an office worker reports that he just shuffled over from his desk to the couch. A biker in Orange, Calif., is headed to Starbucks. Elsewhere in California, someone just got coffee up his nose. You might think no one would care -- but on the Internet someone might. Thanks to "microblogging," the slightest bits of detritus from people's lives are steadily flowing into the maw of the Internet.

So, you've got an online image control crisis. Now what? In response to the growing threat of online image crises, businesses have sprung up that address exactly that problem. They work to repair your online image using a variety of tactics, including putting more positive information out there to show up high in search results, removing offending information, and building their client's personal or corporate brand. "It's really a new industry," said Tom Drugan, CEO of the reputation repair company Naymz.

Our reputation is one of our most valuable possessions, determining in large part where we work, how much money we make, whom we date or marry, and many other aspects of our lives. The Internet, however, has made protecting, maintaining and defending our reputations difficult. Photos from college parties, blog posts by ex-boyfriends or disgruntled employees, court records: they're all out there, free for the Googling. And unlike the days when our reputations were confined to a relatively small group of friends or acquaintances, our digital reputations spread instantly around the world.

Well, the Fourth of July is just a few days away, and all good citizens of the nation we call America must naturally be thinking of the birth of this great land. Not content to be just great, our founding fathers wanted independence as well, and that value is still held dear today. Indeed, one might argue that there are few areas of society today in which that's more true than the open source community. After all, what is Linux if not a technology that enables independence -- from Microsoft or any other proprietary technological world?

Well, summer has officially arrived, and what better way to celebrate than by enjoying some fine Wine? Yes, for those who stopped paying attention over the last 15 or so years, Wine 1.0 is here! Time to get those Windows apps running on Linux at last! The excitement could be felt all across the Linux blogs -- particularly on Slashdot, where more than 600 comments had appeared by Friday. "There is a congrats to the Wine peeps in order," wrote TheNetAvenger. "Even if Wine translation doesn't last forever, it is meeting a lot of people's needs now."

Given the heavy proportion of males in the Linux world, we here at LinuxInsider have trouble resisting any topic that brings females back into the picture. Imagine our glee, then, when we spotted mention of a recent Newsweek article titled "Revenge of the Nerdette"! Indeed, some of us fairly fell off of our pink leatherette chairs. The article, which was published last Monday, argues that it's increasingly being viewed as possible for women to be both geeky and sexy, and for attractive girls to be good at math and science.

There's nothing like a good battle to liven up the conversation on the Linux blogs, and that's just what happened last week thanks to the resurgence in the controversy over OOXML. Following appeals by South Africa, India, Brazil and Venezuela, the fate of OOXML -- and indeed standards-making in general -- is far from clear. "I think OOXML will cause the greatest wave of change to how national standards bodies conduct themselves that we have seen in the last decade or two," wrote IBM's Bob Sutor on his blog.

In Apple news this week, the iPhone frenzy continues ... or perhaps it's just getting started. The company continues to snag partners left and right all over the globe ahead of the next-generation 3G iPhone, which a lot of Apple watchers predict will be announced June 9 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Predictions, tidbit news and iPhone sleuthing are all over the blogosphere. Meanwhile, Apple is still a computer company, too -- the Mac maker released OS X 10.5.3, the latest update to its Leopard operating system.

Almost nonstop, the uncensored opinions of Chinese citizens are popping up online, sent by text and instant message across a country shaken by its worst earthquake in three decades. "Why were most of those killed in the earthquake children?" one post asked Thursday on FanFou, a microblogging site. "How many donations will really reach the disaster area? This is doubtful," read another. China is now home to the world's largest number of Internet and mobile phone users, and their hunger for quake news is forcing the government to let information flow in ways it hasn't before.

It must have been a chilly week in hell last week, because the unthinkable appears to have happened: A Windows PC has been announced that will be cheaper than a Linux one. That's right, folks: The Windows XP version of the Asus Eee PC 900 will sell for $599 in Australia, while the Linux version will cost $649, according to APC Magazine. Should we expect pigs to take to the air at any moment? Have we entered the Twilight Zone? Or is there something more to this than meets the eye? The Linux blogs were abuzz with debate and speculation.