Apparently, Friday Dec. 18th 2009...
Twitter was hacked by a group calling themselves the "Iranian Cyber Army" leaving a rather unimportant message as users were redirected to an alternate web page.
The DNS folks; (the people that maintain Twitter's Domain Name Server records); say "...it ain't our fault!" as someone seemed to actually log in with the right credentials and made the changes. Where they obtained these credentials is still up in the air.
Might have been one of the Twitter Admin guys getting their email, (or entire computer), hacked. (tsk tsk tsk)
Anyway, only lasted for about 90min but I'm sure more than a couple people freaked out not being able to Tweet their meat. 
Who said that??
In a Forbes article, it was reported that Google will now incorporate Twitter, MySpace and Facebook into their new real-time search initiative. This is going to be pretty interesting for marketers; as it adds a new level of competition to staying on the cutting edge of a chosen niche.
Here's the article...
http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/
Perfect position for Google to be in with only the organization of the Internet's information and not the creation of it, huh?
In an article published by Forbes Magazine on 12/03/09, the U.S. Senate is reported to have grilled the three credit card companies regarding their practices and policies about post transaction fraud.
"Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D. W.Va., wants to turn the spotlight on an often overlooked participant in some of the Web's shadiest schemes: credit card companies.
In an open letter sent Thursday to Visa ( V - news - people ), MasterCard ( MA - news - people ) and American Express ( AXP - news - people ), Rockefeller demanded that the companies provide information on the safeguards they have in place to prevent and respond to the hidden fees charged by a small group of grey market companies that make misleading offers to consumers on hundreds of seemingly reputable e-commerce sites."
Although we provide integration with a variety of transaction gateways, we try to encourage our Customers to mostly use PayPal because of their security measures built into their operations. Your Customers never give their CC information to anyone other than PayPal for any transaction they conduct through the PayPal system with vendors that accept PayPal.
Vendors can tout that their Customers have absolutely no need to worry about the security of their CC information. This will become one of the more strong selling points for vendors to their Customers in the coming years; as eCommerce grows to its projected velocity.
All companies listed in the U.S. Senate's investigation are companies that take CC information from their Customers directly. Pretty soon, any site that asks for a Customer's CC information will automatically raise a red flag in the Consumer's mind.
Better get that PayPal account registered!
Dealing with a Client lately made me think. This Client has an “IT” contract with me but is continuously asking me questions that are more and more related to “Marketing”. Of course I’m nice about my answers, but I gotta say that in the back of my head I’m saying, “Gee, dude! You hired me for IT not Marketing — maybe I need to charge you more money?”
Yet, it is dawning on me more and more that many of the ‘Marketing’ questions he’s asking me are based on the technology available to him; which can arguably be more than what he’s be privy to normally due to having “me” as his IT consultant. Yet, I think we’re way too early in the new tech game for anyone, (meaning current and/or potential Clients), to recognize that there is a difference between straight IT consulting and IT Marketing consulting.
Not to mention IT Management consulting or IT Accounting consulting or …
Seems the more that IT becomes the mainstream of business, the more the IT Consultant has to know about all the other departments and how they work. hmm.. maybe I should be charging more money! 
Heard about GoogleWave, yet? Yes? No? Know what it is? What it does. Well, here’s a lay-man’s term version of an explanation.
Heh; don’t worry dude… I’m waiting for my invite, too.
I knew I liked the man for a reason. Seems that even with all the adversity he’s been subjected to; Obama is a man of focus. He understands that America’s stability relies on the Small Business.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/17/obama-sba-loans-entrepreneurs-finance-sba.html
“$15 billion, coming from the U.S. Treasury Department, will be used to purchase securities backed by the SBA-guaranteed loans in an attempt to jump-start the secondary credit market for small businesses. Banks that offer SBA-guaranteed loans have hit a lending wall in recent months, as the secondary market is frozen, so banks can’t get the old loans off their balance sheets to free up capital for new loans.”