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Apple and Google are warring giants in the internet medium and Apple has made both a strategically and tactical advance recently. While traditionally, these two companies have not had an overlapping market competition (Apple is hardware, Google is software), Apple just bought an up and coming company called Siri. Siri has created a program that, more less, is a type of search engine. It has a more pragmatic intention than the straight internet search query. For example, you can ask Siri to make dinner reservations in Austin for two at an Italian restaurant tonight, and it will find a restaurant, pick the time, and make the reservation.

In all, this is a unique purchase for Apple, who has been making advances primarily in the hardware arena. By purchasing this company, it is making a statement about its intentions in entering the field of searches; a domain dominated by Google in this country.

Presumably, Apple will be including this new functionality to the iPhone and iPad. It will act as sort of a “personal assistant” and will likely be added in a new update down the line.

It won’t be too long before iPhone and iPad users will be torn between searching for a place to hang out on a Saturday night by either using Apple’s new searching tool, or going about it by loading the Google application. It will be interesting to see how successful this push is, how embolden Apple will become in taking on Google, and how Google responds.

Think of all the ways you can fired. The economy takes a dive, a new manager comes in and wants to shake things up, an angry customer exaggerates in a complaint, the company is bought out, the bosses want to send a signal the others…and these are only a few of the ways in which you can get fired without having done anything wrong. Well, unfortunately, the constant interaction with the world through social media sites adds yet another layer of complexity for the employee who’s trying to dodge the axe whenever they can.

For starters, even getting a job could be complicated by one’s Facebook or Myspace account. In 2008, 20% of employers admitted to searching a potential hire’s Facebook account prior to hiring. By 2009, that number doubled. It cannot be taken for granted that your next employer won’t search your account through the hiring process. Is your social media account ready for that level of scrutiny?

Getting fired, or otherwise seriously reprimanded, for posting seemingly innocuous information on your social media site can, and does, happen. A professor at Stroudsburg University was letting off some steam through sarcasm when she posted that it was a good day and that she didn’t want to kill a single a student. She was put on a leave for a month. Three Nebraskan prison guards were fired, when one posted a remark about beating an inmate and the others commented. A stadium operations worker for the Philidelphia Eagles was fired, after posting that the Eagles shouldn’t have let their safety sign for the Denver Broncos. And, one 16 year old, was fired from her administrative job when she posted that her job consisted of little more than shredding and scanning paper.

A grey zone exists concerning what is wrongful termination when it comes to an employee and their online interactions. Until lines become more clarified, it’s best to just think twice before venting about work online.

Google’s quarterly earnings were up more than most predicted for 2010. It appears that simple direct ad sales are to take the credit. The internet is still a good place to advertise, and the big players in the game are still seeing positive results. But they aren’t the only ones. An industry wide survey, including all of the small players as well, has showed bottom line increases since 2008.

Interestingly, as Google is often cited as the king of online ad sales, it does not have advertising on its home page like their rivals, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Of course, it’s all part of the marketing position of Google to go this route. Their homepage is probably the most valuable cyber real estate around. Keeping it free of adspace is a welcomed change to users who don’t like being bombarded with dynamic media ads the others employ.

Despite this criticism, however, these dynamic ads are working; for clients and for sites that place them. AOL specializes in offering very flashy, catchy ads on their home page. This is very attractive to advertising gurus who love to explore their creativity. MSN chooses a more subdued option, with simple direct-response type ads. This has been very successful for both MSN and their advertisers. YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, focuses primarily on entertainment ads, usually of upcoming movies, TV shows or musical artists. Yahoo has turned into the go-to place for generating an ongoing, branding campaign. It’s not as direct-response centric as MSN.

All of these sites, and many secondary and tertiary sites that offer ad space, provide a vast landscape for companies to seek run an ad campaign. Knowing the demographics and psychographics of the users who visit these hub sites, and knowing how these sites best interact with their users, can greatly increase your success in creating a successful online ad campaign.

Wordpress is an open source, content management system used to build websites much like Joomla is. However, it is blog centric while only recently expanding its functionalities while Joomla has been across the map since its inception.

Just recently, Wordpress users began to show signs of panic when errors and unexpected redirects on their blogs began affecting their sites. What happened? Apparently a small group of hackers took advantage of a security oversight and, well, that’s all that’s necessary.

As Joomla enthusiasts, we’d like to take this moment to illustrate how Joomla is superior as it hasn’t been so thoroughly hacked. However, Joomla too is an open source CMS and even it needs a high level of scrutiny to avoid such tampering.

Of course, within the tech community, this story was given probably a bit more attention than it deserved. Wordpress CEO, Matt Mullenweg, made comments that can be reasonably be described as “damage control,” but there is truth that the degree of the problem is not catastrophic.

Hackers are part of the online world. As programmers, we cannot ignore them, only deal with them and do our best to limit their ability to cause damage. All site owners should take cautionary measures to make sure their databases are protected and their websites can be restored at anytime.

There’s no question that social media sites are not only on the rise, but becoming the juggernaut of internet site traffic altogether. In a non-scientific poll taken by myself yesterday at a coffee shop, eight out of eight laptops open were, and at one point, all on Facebook…even my own. Whereas it’s easy to describe our lives as either pre- or post-internet, it’s now getting to a point where another delineation begins; pre- or post- Facebook.

With Apple moving swiftly into the mobile media world, with the iPod, iPhone and now the iPad, Microsoft has found itself neck deep in the ground, clawing feverishly to maintain a presence in this marketplace with Apple’s foot firmly putting weight on its head. If the iPod went on a 50% sale, it would be enough create lines at the Apple store around the building it resides, regardless of size. If the Zune went on a 50% sale, it would be forgotten by the time the reader read the next headline on CNN.

However, Microsoft isn’t one to go out without a fight. They just released the Kin, a social media-friendly phone catered to a hip, 20’s something demographic. It’s a sliding phone with a touch screen, which isn’t bad if you’re into that sort of thing. Unfortunately, a touch screen that’s half the size of the iPhone doesn’t exactly cause jubilation in someone like myself who already struggles with getting the screen to react properly to my finger movements.

Perhaps the real deal killer in this phone is that it doesn’t support third party software. You know, all of those fancy applications, like this, are not created by Apple. They are created by other companies using their platform to provide more functionality to users. It’s the same way Facebook elevates itself from Myspace, but allowing third party companies to develop applications to run on their platform. Microsoft did not take this route with the Kin.

This means that, unless Microsoft buys a company that creates the software for the phone, or develops it themselves with its many subsidiaries, the Kin will be a dormant tool, unable to fluctuate with innovation as swiftly as the iPhone. I suppose Microsoft has managed to take another deep breath, but Apple’s relentless efforts to bury them in this market has not been thwarted.

You’ve heard of flash. All of those cool looking websites with animations that fly up when your mouse over the image are done using flash. The programmers who build such animations, and then implement them into a site, do so with Adobe’s software, titled Flash.

Now, imagine you’re Adobe, and the media is seen flocking in admiration of two of the hottest internet-browsing toys, the iPad and the iPhone. Now, imagine Flash doesn’t run on either. Would you be upset? Well, they are, and it’s understandable.

It’s difficult to say why Apple decided to ban flash from these platforms, except for the opinion of Steve Jobs that he thinks its not an effective developer’s tool. Indeed, from a programmer’s perspective, flash is inundated with problems. The reason we don’t use it is because Google cannot read the flash, and it is therefor very unfriendly when it comes to search engine optimization. It seems like a game of chicken is festering.

Adobe, with CS5 on the horizon, has some of the most utilized tools in the digital development world and Apple, the fastest growing hardware developer that displays the many creations from the Adobe suite, are now standing toe to toe with each other. It appears that Apple is in the process of bulking up to Adobe in the hopes of winning some sort of power play in a negotiation. What that negotiation is, though, is not presently evident.