Yahoo! News & Articles

For the longest time, Google (news, site) has expressed disdain against black-hat search engine optimization methods. These include keyword-stuffing, redirects and all sorts of underhanded tactics. Recently, though, the spotlight has been pointed toward so-called content farms, which are essentially websites with large collections of articles that are supposedly of low-quality, and designed specifically to monetize on-page advertisements.

There has been a lot of noise in the past week made by the EU who says three major search engines are holding onto search data too long. A new release from ConverterTechnology ensures safe migration to Office 2010.

With the launch of Office 2010 out of the way Microsoft has turned its attention to improving its email service Hotmail and document sharing abilities. There have also been a number of releases to improve data storage, not least of which is NetApp's new offering for SharePoint 2010.

Back in October, Yahoo made the bold choice of releasing more features, like an open strategy platform. Now it's starting 2009 by bringing Internet content to TV.

Social Media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here's the week's top stories, in scan-friendly format.

This Week:

• Windows Live Becomes Social Media Hub
• Mince Your Facebook Friends for a Free Whopper
• New Twitter Services to chew on: Tweetbacks and TwtApps
• Digg Persists in Making No Money
• MySpace and Yahoo on your TV
• Twitter still can't handle MacWorld 

Windows Live Becomes Social Media Hub

The walls between the social platforms continue to fall away. Steve Ballmer has just announced a new Windows Live feature which will give you status reports and allow you to interact with your various Social accounts through your Live email. ElectricPig reports on the new Microsoft initiative:

"The announcement... means that you’ll be able to log in to the new Windows Live Essential suite with one password and have all your updates from everything from Twitter to Flickr, and more than 50 other social networks now including Facebook amalgamated on one page. Think of it as an RSS feed to see what your friends are up to."