By simply opening your profile and selecting privacy settings from the ‘My Account’ tab at the top of the page you can view all your privacy settings immediately.

Setting your profile to”friends only” can stop your profile being shown on google and other search engines reducing the amount of information you share online. It’s certainly sensible these days to only add details to your social media profiles that you really don’t mind sharing with the world, as you never know, the world just might be looking.

For more information on Google Buzz read the Wall Street Journal site article which goes into great detail about the development of the new social networking competitor.

You guessed it, it is an automated response. Check out this link to find out how.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5842327_setup-twitter-autoresponder.html

How about that for efficiency!

Check out this video from the BBC. Interesting stuff:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8586008.stm

So what do this mean for the typical business owner? Well they suddenly need to think about how to put together an online marketing plan. Do you sign up to Facebook? What about online PR? Should you start Pay Par Click advertising or create a Banner Ad? What about Blogging, RSS or Feeds?

All of a sudden, an understanding of a variety of new technologies is critical to taking advantage of the online marketing opportunities. No longer can you simply write a new plan and then carry it out. You need to either take on an Online Marketing Manager or find a suitable company to manage it all for you. Outsourcing your online marketing might be the right way forward as you would be taking on the expertise of a number of specialists and at the same time, drastically reducing the monthly outgoings required.

Either way the new technologies cannot be ignored, perhaps the first step is to start talking to someone who can help to shape the online marketing plan and to focus on the right places online to start marketing.

Sadly it appears that the Rubitone is not intended to be a commercial product. Probably a few licencing issues. The original Rubik’s Cube is rumoured to have sold over 350 million cubes worldwide since its launch. Bit of a shame really, we could see the Rubitone easily outselling the Pantone mugs!

So, if you find yourself in a conundrum and you don’t want to run another algorithm, you could easily give your old Rubik’s Cube the Rubitone treatment with a few left over Pantone chips. In a colour of your choice of course.

Sticking with the iPhone, the iPhone apps continue to expand, there seems to be an app for almost anything now with over 50,000 available to download at the app store. The Apple WWDC conference in San Francisco was a perfect opportunity to show off the vast array on offer with a collection of cinema displays mounted together, each one crammed with app icons pulsating when purchased.

The youtube clip below illustrates the huge numbers of apps that are currently being downloaded.

We would describe a blog as – “an online journal that is regularly updated with content and built on a platform with automated syndication”. In simple terms, consider a blog to be the equivalent of an online diary or bulletin board that is very easy for web users to access.

Blogs can be hosted with blog software or can be hosted by a blog host company. The downside of a blog host company is that you will not get the benefit of SEO (search engine optimisation) for your website.

Blogs and search engine marketing marry extremely well. Search engines have historically looked for content rich websites that are updated frequently, blogs provide the perfect solution for this, provided they are updated regularly. Search engines like keyword links, which blogs can provide. Assuming of course that they are written with keywords in mind. Search engines also like unique and popular content, so it is fairly safe to assume that if your blog is topical then visitors will want to read it!

In a nutshell, active blogs can rank well in search engines, provide quality links back to your main domain, and expand your traffic and presence on the web. So the question is, what are you waiting for?

Just recently, whilst searching for a hotel in the Lake District, new Lake Windermere, I was taken on a journey across a number of websites reviewing content and ended up on www.activehotels.com. The web 2.0 content there was extremely helpful in understanding a lot more about the resort, the facilities and the hotels available there, right down to reading reviews from people of a similar demographic and their thoughts about not only the hotel itself but about the specific rooms that they stayed in.

This was followed up by a quick call to the hotel to check availability of the exact room that we were interested in. Not only did we manage to book that room but we got a significant discount off the prices on the internet!

Without doubt we will be leaving our review on the very same website in the hope that other visitors will benefit from our comments. Hotels are just one example, but web 2.0 content could be used in any industry from automotive to telecoms, any website should consider the opportunities offered by this new wave of interactive web content.

Not to be outdone, Warburtons have started a new ad campaign, said to be costing in the region of £22million. Together with TV ads, press ads will roll out in Women’s press and Sunday supplements with the emphasis on ‘fibre’. A microsite has also been created with a fibre calculator amongst other things. Below is the latest TV commercial entitled, ‘welcome to the family’.

Who will be left with the crumbs?