By Caitlin Buckley at Emmanuel College

The literary world has entered the social network stream. Marketers have 140 characters to catch your interest.

Lexie Winslow has social media down pat. Every day, she is the queen of clever hash-tags and witty status updates. She needs to get the most comments and “likes.”

“Learning to write concisely and persuasively has been invaluable in the business world, especially in marketing,” she said . “Social media marketing is all about making an impression in a finite amount of characters!”

Photo Cred: AIS Media

In Boston’s Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade and Reference Division, 24 year old Winslow is the Web Content Administrator. She uses Twitter and Facebook to blog new book titles.

She appreciates the desire to discuss favorite books and the next big hits. Her updates relate to the reader– what sparks their interest, what they want to talk about most. In one line, she invests in the reader as much as she promotes the book.

“I find social media a very forgiving platform, so it’s a good place to try things out and see how the fans react. I put myself in their shoes as a reader, to think of what would entice me to learn more about a book,” Winslow said.

It’s a world in which people want to voice their own opinions. If Winslow does it right, social media provides an organized and exciting forum, friendly to both discussion and marketing. Every day is a little different, so the fresh and stimulating new ideas need to keep coming.

“I think social media is a blessing for the publishing industry,” she said. “Twitter and Facebook especially are so text-based that literary people gravitate to them.”

But there are limits to her expression.

Winslow feels the pressure to make each and every status update interesting. She can’t be too offensive, but she can be a little controversial. There is a balance somewhere in between that keeps readers returning and increasing in numbers.

When she feels lacking in followers and friends, she wins them over by giving them something for their effort.

“Free books usually go over the best,” she said. “Whenever I want to drive up follower numbers, I put together a giveaway.”

Living in the digital age, creativity is important. Marketing has become Winslow’s playground.

For the promotional websites, she creates designs that are easy to follow and visually appealing. She features the newest and most intriguing books on the homepage of the company’s website. Each tweet and status update has a purpose.

There is a sense of accomplishment that comes from clicking that tweet into the web-universe.

“I can feel proud of the products that I share with the world,” she said.

Winslow credits her English degree from Holy Cross for helping her succeed in the professional world. She had a passion for literature in college, and followed that instinct when looking for jobs in book-related fields.

Publishing was the perfect fit.

After graduation, she interned at a smaller publishing house, The History Press. When she received another internship at Houghton Mifflin, she was at a crossroads: internship or graduate school? She chose the internship for experience, over observation in a classroom.

Experience paid off and she was given a job at the company—one that relies on a quick mind and a youthful spark—the essence of social media.

“It’s casual, sometimes silly, and all about instant gratification,” she said, “and I’ve become very comfortable with it.”

The environmental impact of so much online time really boils down to energy usage, which in turn affects the amount of greenhouse gases we pump into our atmosphere. Google, which has been carbon neutral since 2007, has been a real leader in the building of green data centers, even powering them with renewable energy. (Media credit/Jurgen Plasser via Flickr)

The environmental impact of so much online time really boils down to energy usage, which in turn affects the amount of greenhouse gases we pump into our atmosphere. For one, each of us can help by limiting computer time (whether surfing the ‘net or not) and shutting them down or putting them into sleep mode when we aren’t using them (this can be automated via the computer’s power management control panel).

Also, when shopping for a new computer, consumers and businesses alike can opt for models certified by the federal government as energy efficient with the Energy Star label. If all computers sold in the U.S. met Energy Star requirements, Americans could pocket $1.8 billion annually in saved energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to taking some two million cars off the road.

Individual responsibility aside, the creation and management of more efficient data centers by the major online hubs—especially as we enter the age of “cloud” computing whereby most of the software, content and services we look to our computers for resides online and is served to us as-needed—is what can have the biggest impact. Google, Facebook, and Amazon.com are already deeply committed to the cloud computing model, with Microsoft, Yahoo and others following suit accordingly.

For its part, Google has been a real leader in the building of green data centers, even powering them with renewable energy. The company recently released environmental footprint scores for several of its data centers. While the energy usage required to run its cloud services (Google Search, Google+, Gmail and YouTube) seems huge in the aggregate—it used 260 megawatt hours to power its data centers in 2010—it boils down to only 7.4 kilowatt hours worth of energy annually per user. Google reports that to provide an individual user with its services for a month uses less energy than leaving a light bulb on for three hours. And because the company has been carbon neutral since 2007, “even that small amount of energy is offset completely, so the carbon footprint of your life on Google is zero.”

In an April 2011 report entitled “How Dirty is your Data?” the non-profit Greenpeace examined energy sources for the 10 largest IT companies involved in cloud computing, finding Apple, Facebook and IBM especially guilty of getting significant amounts of power from coal-fired power plants. (Facebook had come under fire earlier this year when reporters uncovered that the company planned to buy electricity for its brand new eco-friendly data center in Prineville, Oregon—one of the greenest such facilities ever designed and constructed—from a utility that derives most of its power from coal.) Yahoo, Amazon.com and Microsoft scored best in use of renewable alternative energy sources for cloud services.

In the long run, analysts think that the widespread shift to cloud computing will be a great boon to the environment. A report released in September 2011 by Pike Research, “Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency,” predicts that because of the shift to cloud computing and increasing efficiencies, data center power consumption will decrease by 31 percent between 2010 and 2020.

CONTACTS: Energy Star, www.energystar.gov; Greenpeace, www.greenpeace.org; Pike Research, www.pikeresearch.com.

Google is scheduled to release its social network feature called “Buzz” over the next few days, according to PC Mag. Google describes Buzz as an ambitious attempt to combine the Gmail Web interface with status updates and media-sharing technology, making Google a more complete experience.

Google’s Buzz includes many appealing features, according to CNET. Users can post text, links and photos and can link their Twitter, Flickr, Picasa and Google Reader accounts to their Buzz streams to see information produced by friends on those networks. Buzz also includes a customizable algorithm that allows the user to pick and choose what sort of information and updates are displayed from their friend’s posts.

According to PC Mag, one the greatest strengths of this social network is its ability to separate public posts from private posts. Buzz users will be able to post updates publicly for their followers, like Twitter, but they can also post updates privately, like Facebook, for their friend’s eyes only. Since Buzz is a Google invention, users have access to Buzz using Google Maps via their mobile device. Users get the option of posting their exact locations on Buzz, as well as showing nearby restaurants, stores and other places of interest.

PC Mag states that Google will be gradually releasing Buzz to its users by displaying an icon beneath the Inbox icon on the left panel. Alternatively, users may get a full welcome page when they log in, touting the new feature. There will be an option to either try it out or ignore it and go to the regular Gmail inbox. Although Buzz has several minor advantages over Facebook, only time will reveal whether or not people will be inclined to switch from one social network to another.

Tele-Publishing, Inc, a subsidiary of Phoenix Media/Communications Group is stepping in the ring with Facebook over an alleged patent infringement.

As reported by Universal Hub, the group says it owns a patent for the type of layout that Facebook uses in its user profiles.

Tele-Publishing says their patent was awarded in 2001.

The federal suit, filed in US District Court in Boston seeks unspecified damages, but Facebook’s owners recently settled for millions in a suit brought by ConnectU, for allegedly stealing its creator’s idea. The current lawsuit also seeks an end to Facebook using their patented layout

If Tele-Publishing wins, this could be a game changer for the social networking world. The patent denotes a method by which a user can upload data and images to a server to create a web page.

Cancer is a monolithic enemy of modern medicine. Because cancer is such a large, nebulous collection of loosely related diseases, scientists have found it difficult to pinpoint the specific causes of cancer, which is why you hear about something new causing cancer basically every day on the news.

While many of these discoveries are based on shoddy science, a recent study, which was actually rather elegant in design, has found that a lack of social interaction can lead to increased breast cancer tumor growth, indicating that social environment could play a role, along with environmental and genetic factors, in the determination of the severity of a cancer.

The study used genetically similar mice that are altered so that they develop mammary tumors. Mice were either housed alone or with other mice. The mice kept alone showed greater tumor growth than the mice housed together.

Scientifically, the researchers found higher stress hormone levels in the mice housed alone before there were even measurable changes in the tumor sizes. Even though the two groups of mice were genetically very similar, the stress hormones caused measurable changes in gene expression before there was even any indication that the tumors in the two groups were growing differently.

The researches point out hat they intend to focus further research on researching the specific cell types in which these genetic changes are occurring, and then targeting the pathways that connect the stress hormones to their detrimental effects rather than to suggest that cancer patients should maintain strong social contacts.

Either way, every new thing we learn about cancer is another tool in our arsenal to conquer the disease, and this is an interesting find that gives scientists a new avenue of research.

Image courtesy Flickr/Rick in Rio.

With Twilight mania overtaking the world at large, it was only a matter of time before it made it to the iPhone. The Twilight Saga app offers users a way to connect with each other by “shouting” message board style to discuss the continuing Twilight saga. The app also purports to allow users to gain access to exclusive Twilight related content.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the future if there weren’t some sort of convergence, and sure enough, the app integrates with Facebook and Twitter (What, no MySpace? Twilight fans always struck us at the MySpace type) to allow users to post to their other social networks about Twilight. The app also allows users to select an avatar of their favorite Twilight character. (We wanted Bella’s dad, but that’s not a choice.)

As the release of “New Moon” approaches, the app will continue to be updated with showtimes, movie news, tickets, and and products from the Twilight series. The Twilight Tracker app is available for $2.99.

Every day it seems like there’s another social network you need to keep updating. We’ll freely admit that should you try to keep up with all of them, it can get overwhelming. While there are sites like Friendfeed which aim to collect all of your social network happenings on one website, you’re still tied to your computer to be able to keep tabs on your friends.

But now, Motorola is introducing the Cliq with Motoblur, which allows you to update, post, and read everyone on all of your social networks all on the homescreen of your phone.

Motoblur is Motorola’s first offering built on top of Google’s Android phone OS. Motoblur is the “solution” that allows you to post to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, and last.fm. Content is delivered to the home screen of the phone in different categories to let users better handle the stream of information.

Updates, including statuses, wall posts, and friend feeds from social networks are delivered to the “Happenings” box, while email and networking messages are delivered to the “Messages” box. You can update all or some of your networks from the “Social Status” box, and an RSS feed reader will deliver headlines to your home screen.

The underling Android system allows tight integration between Google’s offerings, including Gmail and Google Calendar, as well as contact syncing with your Google account.

The Cliq phone itself is packed with 3G and A-GPS, wi-fi, a 5 megapixel camera, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a standard headphone jack to let you listen to music or stream last.fm playlists. The Cliq doesn’t have an official release date other than “fourth quarter” from T-Mobile. Definitely looks like something to add to the Christmas list.

Moments after the American public learned that South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson was the one that pointed a finger at the president and called him a liar on national television, the digital race was on to see who would flame Wilson the most, and how big the fire would spread.

The digital world came alive, and Wilson was quickly one of the most “trended topics” on Twitter.

Then Wilson’s website, http://www.joewilson.house.gov/ went down with a placeholder page that said: “This site is down for maintenance. Please check back soon.”

Then he became one of the most Googled terms of the day.

Some people even fired back. According to CNN, some new Twitter accounts were created, with their first and only Tweets being in support of Wilson.

But even other members of Congress went public and digital with their condemnation of Wilson: “Biggest disappointment of evening, the total lack of respect show by one member for the president,” Tweeted Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. “Never acceptable to behave like a jerk.”

According to CNN, South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler capitalized: “Once again a South Carolina Republican has embarrassed our state,” Fowler’s office said, referring to S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s extramarital, international affair. “Never has any member of Congress shown such disrespect for the president during a speech. … Joe Wilson is a poor example of a statesman and an American.”

Wilson currently faces Democratic challenger Rob Miller in the mid-term election in 2010.

The Twitter-verse is getting more and more crowded with sites that want in on a piece of the buzz. For example, there are six URL shorteners supported by TweetDeck alone “" this and URL shorteners are still of arguably questionable value. Who knows how many Twitter clients are available on the App Store. Likewise, we count four services that will tweet a link to a picture. Well, now there’s one more “" but this one’s a heavyweight.

Where to click to tweet an image from Flickr.

Flickr is the Internet’s single biggest photo destination. More users upload, comment on, and download pictures from Flickr than anywhere else. It would make sense that many these highly connected, technologically forward thinking individuals would love to tweet their photos. But until now, their Twitter and Flickr photo services were worlds apart.

Last night, Flickr flicked the switch on their own photo tweeting service, Flic.kr. Now users can click “blog this” anywhere on Flickr, type in their tweet “" keeping it under 114 characters so the picture URL fits “" and Flickr will post to Twitter for them, complete with its own special Flic.kr shortened URL, like this one on our Twitter. (By the way, you are following us, right? Good.)

Our first Flic.kr pic.

Likewise, mobile users can email the photo to their own special email address, putting their tweet in the subject line of the email. Flickr, long the king of publishing APIs, has also published one for this service, meaning it’s very likely you could see Flic.kr integration in all of your third-party Twitter applications.

Of course, if you’re still scratching your head and thinking “what’s the point of Twitter anyway?” this is likely of little value to you and you probably already stopped reading. But for those still with us, Twitter could see a second Oprah-like rush of users join from Flickr, which is only a good thing for everyone else using these services.

Enron blindsided a whole country with its multi-billion dollar collapse in December 2001. People who watched their retirement funds dry up overnight wondered, “Could we have seen this coming?”.

While Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling’s circle of fools shouldered most of the blame, there were many employees in the company aware of shady dealings. Now, scientists studying the emails released after the company’s collapse have found interesting patterns that could have been used to indicate a forthcoming problem in a company. The cool part? The scientist studied only who e-mailed who, and never once looked at the content of the emails.

Mapping a social network.

Using social networks”"not to be confused with social networking itself”" to reach interesting conclusions is nothing new. Researchers have found that you can reliably determine a person’s sexual orientation just by looking at his network of friends on Facebook, even if he has chosen not to respond to the “Interested In” field. Similar techniques have been used to show that everyone in the world really is connected to Kevin Bacon through six degrees.

Using this same concept, Ben Collingsworth and Ronaldo Menezes at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne studied the frequency of emails as well as the connections between those sending them. Instead of finding a drastic change in at the brink of crisis, the scientists found that the biggest changes actually took place a month before.

As workers began to sense danger, they began to turn their social networks inward, communicating more frequently with a smaller group of people whom they presumably trusted more. Instead of the 100 groups of people who were typically in direct contact with each other before, there suddenly became 800.

Of course, further evidence is always needed in science, and this case is no different. The problem is that privacy issues abound; no one likes an email snoop. Should these issues ever be overcome, the tools used to detect these patterns could prove very useful for HR departments in any company in the future as an early warning sign to problems.

The much-beloved social networking site Twitter allows users to keep their friends updated on their whereabouts and activities through status updates known as “tweets.”

Until recently, the most common ways to tweet were via Instant Message, Web, SMS or a desktop application; however, TwitterFone has developed a system that enables users to make a phone call, record their tweet, and let the company take care of the rest.

TwitterFone just launched into private beta and is currently inviting users to try out the service, so I figured I would give it a shot.

My experience with the service has been excellent. The registration process was extremely easy; just visit their website and fill out a form. Within minutes, I was given a number to instantly record my tweet.  Once again, the process was very user-friendly. Twitterers merely dial the number, record their tweet and hung up. The recorded message is then sent to TwitterFone where it is transcribed and relayed to your Twitter account.

I decided to put the service to the test by recording a tweet right when I woke up and got of bed in a voice still clogged with sleep and TwitterFone was able to understand my message without any mistakes. During the day, I decided to record even more tweets while I was out, and the service’s performance and reliability were top-notch.

Overall, TwitterFone is a new, great, convenient way of tweeting without the need to be stuck at your computer or using up valuable text messages for sending status updates. The service is currently free under private beta, but it’s unclear if the company will eventually begin charging users. If you’re interested in trying out TwitterFone, you can apply for an invite at: http://www.twitterfone.com/.

Have you donated a dollar to the Jimmy Fund? Or maybe you surprised a coworker with a cup of coffee? Has anyone fixed your flat tire, or simply asked how you were on a dreary Monday morning, and then waited to hear your answer? These small, yet meaningful acts are what LittleFishBigRiver.com catalogs as random acts of kindness.

These simple acts are the things that bring a smile to someone’s face and don’t have to cost a penny. While it’s important to watch the news and keep up with current events, sometimes we forget the good that does exist, and how much of it there really is in the world.

What started out as founder Scott Kuttila’s New Year’s resolution to make a small difference in the world has turned into a world-wide social network that recognizes small acts of kindness. With the help of friends and coworkers, Michael Clauss and Carlos Recalde of KPMG, began LittleFishBigRiver.com.

You can log in and browse the various acts of kindness that have occurred throughout the day — like cutting 14 inches of hair off to donate to Locks of Love, picking up a piece of litter from the side of the road and offering someone a ride home from work.

Members can create their own profile with photos and journals. You can share your random acts of kindness throughout the day and even click on the "Kindness Top Ten Lists." See what small gestures are making people smile in Boston and Los Angeles or Sweden and Thailand.

The site donates 10 percent of ad revenue to charity each time a member logs in. Members can easily invite their friends and family to join by adding their email to the site. The site will send an invitation to each friend and soon, members have their own small community. The more we share, the more we’ll motivate others to do the same. The idea is that by joining with your family and friends and visiting the site regularly, you are helping charity around the world.

The world may never be, "happily ever after," but with this site, random act of kindness will make others “happy in the moment.” You can start being a big fish in your area and joining LittlefishBigRiver.com and sharing what act of kindness you did today.