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The healthcare industry is falling behind when it comes to adapting to social media technologies and strategies. Professionals have even estimated the gap to be as big as 10 years. While other industries are fiercely engaging in conversations with customers and users, Doctor Offices and Hospitals have been more than cautious when approaching social media, with the vast majority of them completely avoiding it. What they don’t realize is that healthcare is really not that different from all other industries; patients are still talking about their experiences with hospitals and physicians and the conversation is going on strong without them.

The domain BobbiChristina.com was registered by a porn star executive on the day of her mother’s death. Talk about disrespect!

While the world was mourning the loss of one of music’s greatest figures of the 90s, more than 325 related domains were registered in less than 24hrs according to domain registrar GoDaddy. Most of the domains registered were looking to monetize on the death of the singer with examples such as: whitneyhoustondiedat48.com, whitneyhoustonheartattack.com, or whitney-houston-legacy.com.

The tales of Social Media blunders by brands in 2011 are well documented. Three that come to mind are: 1) the Chrysler Twitter oops that was more the fault of the marketing company employee who thought it wise to insult the citizens of Detroit; 2) Charlie Sheen, who I realize is not really a brand, but the damage/attention that was the result of what outsiders viewed as a very public meltdown was an interesting examination of the social impact of Twitter; 3) and finally there was the poor choice of comedic timing displayed by Gilbert Gottfried when discussing the Tsunami in Japan, which happened to represent approximately 75% of Aflac’s (the former employer of former spokesman Gottfried) business.

For years now, cybercriminals had gotten comfortable and pretty much taken over the control of the .ru Top Level Domain (TLD). According to ZeuS tracker, the .ru TLD was the most common TLD associated to criminal activity online. Because nobody likes having their TLD associated with online scumbags, the Coordination Center for TLD RU finally decided to step in and cleaned their reputation by setting up new terms and conditions for anyone to register a .ru domain.

For sports fans, the proliferation of athletes and their respective clubs (to say nothing of the sports media personalities) who are actively engaged in Social Media has been a revelation.  Most, if not all, of the clubs in the top leagues around the world have official Facebook pages and Twitter accounts where fans can go and find out the latest news, engage in a discussion with other supporters, or, more so the case with Twitter, connect directly with the team’s stars themselves.  Some clubs also have their own official YouTube channels which allow fans to watch match highlights or interviews or even get a ‘behind the scenes’ look at the club that was previously restricted to journalists and team officials.  The phrase ‘being one with your favourite team’ has never been so truthful.

Mashable.com has recently reported that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have put their differences aside and come together to create DMARC.org – the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. It will provide consistent authentication results across their email services: Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL.

With the economy continuing to be in a vulnerable place and the unemployment rate still a concern for everyone, many people are worried about how they are going to make ends meet.  Financial experts have warned us about the dangers of living beyond our means, but sometimes unexpected and unfortunate things happen like losing a job, car trouble which may require a new (and expensive) transmission or an unexpected illness or injury may have occurred.  At the end of the day you are responsible for making sure funds are available to carry out your financial commitments.  Sometimes, those of who find themselves in this predicament will turn to other means to supplement their income or to provide just enough money to get by.

Have you ever received a phone call from a person claiming to be from Microsoft? Well, Microsoft has now started to warn people that they may receive a call from scammers claiming to work for Security Departments of various well known organizations such as Microsoft.

**UPDATE: Lamar Smith, the chief sponsor for SOPA has released a statement on Friday January 20th indicating he is pulling the bill "until there is wider agreement on a solution". This decision comes after a heated couple of weeks where supporters and protesters had heated arguments and culminating on yesterday's blackout and several congressmen dropping their support for both PIPA and SOPA. 

Need to research something on Wikipedia? Tried Reddit? You have probably found out by now that those sites and as many as 7,000 others are on “virtual strike” today January 18^th to protest against SOPA. Need a refresher course on what SOPA is? Click here for a small summary.