If you’re residing in Antarctica, chances are you are an employee of the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). If so – and according to the letter recently sent by the USAP to its employees – you should not be using any P2P or BitTorrent applications because they’re…well, dangerous. The letter starts with an example that assumes that pretty much everything P2P users do is pirate games, and that they don’t use any kind of antivirus protection.

Being the huge fan of Google tools that I am, when it came to choosing an RSS Reader, it was obviously an easy decision. I stayed with the Goog, and opted for Google Reader. And naturally given my predilection towards junkiedom over apps, addons, and extensions (oh my), I have to get my customization on. So I have gone off in search of the finest, funnest ways to enhance my tools to make them all that they can be (short of having them enlisted. The following are my tips for improving Google Reader.

Retweeting is a big business. Just ask Tweetmeme , the popular service that tracks the most shared stories on Twitter and provides the popular retweet buttons you see on many websites including Mashable. They have experienced rapid growth , with impressions of their button reaching over ten million people. They are the undisputed king of retweets. The retweet market’s about to get messy, though. Tweetmeme’s about to get a new challenger, and this one doesn’t intend to play nice.

Retweeting is a big business. Just ask Tweetmeme , the popular service that tracks the most shared stories on Twitter and provides the popular retweet buttons you see on many websites including Mashable. They have experienced rapid growth , with impressions of their button reaching over ten million people. Read the rest here: ReTweet.com to Launch at Noon, Declares War on Tweetmeme

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 by Steven 0 Add a CommentFor those of who pay for our television and find ourselves hopelessly addicted to the Mad Men story line, we got quite a surprise when we noticed that a future episode of Mad Men — air date 08/30 — has already been downloaded and is ready and waiting in our iTunes queue.Yes you read that right. The Mad Men season premier was Sunday evening, and most of us tuned in to watch Out of Town debut on AMC.

For those of who pay for our television and find ourselves hopelessly addicted to the Mad Men story line, we got quite a surprise when we noticed that a future episode of Mad Men — air date 08/30 — has already been downloaded and is ready and waiting in our iTunes queue. Yes you read that right. The Mad Men season premier was Sunday evening, and most of us tuned in to watch Out of Town debut on AMC. Now just two short days later those of us with a Mad Men Season Pass on iTunes, have a future installment, My Old Kentucky Home .

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 by Steven 0 Add a CommentAn interesting thing happened in the past 24 hours or so: two major news stories were broken on Twitter. By itself, that’s not very remarkable; news breaks on Twitter all the time. But usually, when news first appears on social media channels such as Twitter, it’s the type of broad-reaching story that affects a lot of people on the ground. Things like wildfires, earthquakes, and riots.

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009 by Steven 0 Add a CommentWhen United Airlines workers destroyed Dave Carroll’s guitar in 2008, he tried everything to get fair compensation. After being denied, he promised that he would write three songs and post them onto YouTube. The result was that United Breaks Guitars, the first song, became a viral sensation. It surpassed 3 million views in 10 days and is now just shy of 5 million.

CTwittLike is a new and interesting Twitter application that lets you view Twitter as someone else, with all the Tweets from the people he/she follows. For example you can enter Oprah  and see her Twitter stream the way she sees it. It’s straightforward and easy to use, just enter the twitter account name and the application will display all the latest Tweets from the people that person follows. Check out CtwittLike @ www.ctwittlike.appspot.com (via Mashable ) New: Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter .

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that runs Wikipedia, today launched an official iPhone application: Wikipedia Mobile. According to Ben Parr at Mashable, “…the free app does exactly what you’d expect it to do: access Wikipedia. The focus, according to the Foundation, is “on being very simple and very fast.” The entire thing is community-built and open-source, [...]