When you see people at the office using such Internet sites as Facebook and MySpace, you might suspect those workers are slacking off. A social-networking site for the world of spying officially launches for the U.S. intelligence community this month. But that's not the case at the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the super-secret world of spying.

Random Acts of Kindness: A Social Site to Create Happiness This site would be a way to do nice things for other people, and get rewarded for it.

Can't help checking your partner's text messages on the sly? You're not alone, with an Australian survey showing one in three mobile phone users are text message snoops, and the consequences can often be heart-breaking.

Our product is an anonymous social network geared towards the college community. The site is centered around a forum where students can vent their frustrations, talk about taboo subjects, or tell stories about their lives. However, as users interact with one another and post their thoughts to their community at large, they have the option to reveal their true identity or request the true identities (verified by University e-mail) to and from people whom they would like to reach out to in real life. It is our hope to connect our users not by their already established social identities, but by their common interests and character.

In the past 2-3 years, there’s been a lot of talk in web software about making applications more playful and gamelike. Now that people have done that - and succeeded - I guess it’s an appropriate time to return the favour.

My first excursion into the word trickle was a productivity article called Trickle Theory. The argument was simple. You can do more than you think with small, consistent investments of your time.

If you believed news reports this week, you’d think that the six-degrees theory — first advanced in a test using the mail in 1967 — had been proven. Microsoft researchers announced that a study of the company’s instant-message traffic in June 2006 showed that the average number of people needed to bridge any pair of users was 6.6. The median number was 7, and the longest was 29.

Most gyms have their own rules about these things. But shouldn’t we as fully functional adults have the common decency to behave conscientiously without the rules? What may seem obvious to some may not be so obvious to others. Trust me – I’ve seen them all. It’s time for a change.

Sized at an estimated $5.6 billion in 2007, Japan boasts one of the biggest online advertising markets in the world – a huge potential just waiting to be tapped by foreign social networks. The world’s two largest social networks, MySpace and Facebook, barely register in Japan.

Video demonstrating how easy it is to social engineer you way into clubs by pretending you're the DJ.