I've written oftentimes about the exponential importance of social media and the exasperating experience of trying to maintain it all.

How are normal people supposed to deal with MySpace, Facebook, SocialThing, FriendFeed, Twitter, Britekite, their blog, their RSS reader, their personal data, Flickr, YouTube and the countless other software tools that make it "easy" for you to exist online?

The answer: they don't.

There's been a slow rumble about this online, particularly in the past year.

There is an increasing call for a new type of interface design, one that brings all of your media into one place, sitting on your desktop allowing you to seamlessly drag-and-drop media from one network to the next.

Of course, there's not an inherent business model in creating a single interface. At least not for the creator. After all, you're simply creating a conduit for people to access other accounts.

(Although the cable company is just an interface to television programming, they company also owns the cable that runs into your house.)

The OpenID movement t is one that is predicated on finding ways for social networks to interact with each other; however, getting Google, Facebook and the like to agree on a standard "sign in protocol" isn't necessarily an easy issue to fix.

We're rapidly reaching a point, though, when it's going to be necessary to control all of this information in one place…and the company that solves that issue the best is going to create a giant user base in very little time.

I cajole people to read two books -- Groundswell and The World is Flat -- because they each present case studies about companies using technology the right way.

Southwest Airlines is one of the examples oftentimes cited. They are the lone bright spot in the U.S. air industry. While other carriers are reducing aircrafts and cutting back on flights, Southwest continues to grow -- and remain profitable.

Wired has a great 7-point article about why the company has continued to grow, but the one thing they left out was the company's aggressive use of technology. Long before other companies were using online boarding mechanisms, Southwest was -- in the words of Thomas Friedman -- turning its customers into ticket agents by allowing them to print out their boarding passes from home.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly talks about the fuel hedging the company does as well -- a neat trick the company plays to keep its fuel prices as low as possible, which is another part of the flattening world. That is: you fix your supply chain so that your company is spending as little overhead as possible.

This is no easy task. However in the modern world it's important that companies find ways to use emerging technologies to ease the cost burdens.

In other words, Southwest isn't profitable because it's a better air carrier; it's profitable because it deploys technologies in a way that allows the business to run leaner.

For those of us in the technology industry, the decade-long back-and-forth between Microsoft and Yahoo has been fodder for bar room conversations.

The two giants were two heavyweight fighters vying for supremacy over each other as the Web expanded from its humble origins to a full-fledged part of daily life. Yahoo was always the plucky upstart, creating search tools and other Web-applications that increasingly pried market share away from the Redmond, WA behemoth, a fact that made everyone feel a bit better about Microsoft.

Then came Google. Suddenly both companies seemed so much…smaller.

Now their back-and-forth was less a heavyweight fight and more a battle for survival. Few think the two can wage a long-term, victorious fight on its own against Google. But neither wants to cede their respective positions in the tech sector.

Earlier this year, it looked like Microsoft might finally succeed in buying Yahoo, creating a combined search and Web-application business that would dwarf Google. Instead, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang quashed the deal.

That prompted raider Carl Icahn to launch a bid to oust the current Yahoo board, claiming that was the only way to restart acquisition talks (which, for the record, would make Icahn a pretty penny). Yahoo denied this, saying Microsoft was welcome to resubmit a bid whenever it wanted.

This sounded good.

Until Microsoft said today that Icahn's analysis that the company would only come back to the table with a new board was correct.

That makes those of us who follow the tech sector very happy because it sets up a throwback confrontation between old stalwarts: Yahoo and Microsoft.

We've reached a tipping point with IP-based media systems, which is just a fancy way of saying that more people are using their computers to get information they used to get from other sources.

Television is now delivered to computers and cell phones, untethering people from their living rooms. Unfortunately for big media networks, there aren't many good tracking mechanisms that can handle this change in viewing. That makes it hard to get advertisers to pitch in the cash necessary to go whole hog into the market.

NBC hopes its Web-based Olympics' coverage will change that.

NBC hopes its research provides a comprehensive picture of how people are supplementing TV viewership with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones, said Alan Wurtzel, the company's research chief.

There is some data on how people handle online viewing, particularly when it comes to sports. CBS streamed every NCAA basketball tournament game this year and it's been such a successful venture, the network has plans to expand its online coverage.

Understanding how people use digital media these days is more than just a critical issue because there's no set business model right now even as companies move more of their content online. That conundrum -- how to make and distribute money for work streamed online -- was one of the core issues of last year's writer's strike in Hollywood.

If networks can track use -- and put a dollar figure to it for advertisers, there will be a rapid and transformative move to deliver all types of content online.

I'm always sure that a technology has gone mainstream when I get a call from one of my relatives.

I was having a conversation with my uncle today when he mentioned that Google Street View -- a map that has panoramic views of streets taken with cameras mounted on cars -- was getting into some trouble.

Two things struck me:

1. His initial thought associated Google Street View with trouble (you better watch what you do when you go outside); and
2. He thought it was really, really cool

Welcome to the world we live in. The country is completely up in arms about wiretapping by the federal government, but absolutely cool with a company creating a street-level view of our world.

Which is likely to be more invasive? Both.

Which is likely to be less concerning? Google. The reason: we can all use Google Street View. It's not in the hands of a secretive group like the FBI.

Some of the coolest functions on Street View is that you can virtually tour the United States, checking out landmarks to…well…big ass donuts.

Of course, everything isn't worked out in terms of splicing images together. Privacy advocates made Google brush out faces of people, which leads to some interesting -- invisible man -- shots.

But the panopticon is here. We're recording each other recording each other. We're mapping it, taking our real world and creating a better -- searchable -- version of it.

The Web is one of the most vibrant tools for connectivity, but too often we don't think about what it means to exist online.

In the real world, we monitor what people say about us in a variety of ways: water cooler talk, non-verbal communication and friend networks (among others). Online, we tend to believe that we have the same kinds of control over how people perceive us.

That's not the case as marketing companies are finding out.

A recent study found that 53 percent of companies don't have a plan in place for a "marketing emergency" that happens online.

And no company is immune to it, even Web-natives such as Boing Boing, one of the largest -- and oldest -- blog communities.

The site, which has millions of users, is a collection of interested tidbits compiled by four smart tech folks who get tips from their readers. Last year, some post comments were removed and one year later -- just this week -- the blogosphere went crazy (check out the near 1,500 comments the revelation spawned).

Admittedly, the Boing Boing editors didn't expect such a firestorm -- and as a result, they've spent the past several days trying to work out their policy on removing comments. But it's happening in a very public way.

This is not a bad thing, mind you. Just…unexpected for them.

The lesson: no matter how entrenched you are, one slip-up -- particularly when you're presence online is a large part of your identity -- can create serious headaches.

Expert sites have always been a part of the Internet culture.

Back in the "old days" -- the seventies and early eighties -- once the network was available to those who had access to personal computers (or university networks) and a modem, people would share information on message boards or through email.

Collaboration was the name of the game.

Eventually the Web came along and then search engines, giving people an increasing amount of power when it came to finding answers. The message networks still exist (check out Google Groups for an archive of some of them), but people are more likely to Google and answer or ask someone who is in their online social network.

Or so I thought.

Turns out experts are still in demand (with apologies to Andrew Keen, of course). I know this because Ask.com just acquired the Lexico Publishing Group, owners of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com.

The acquisition gives the company 145 million users each month (thanks to the 15 million bump from Lexico) and makes it the ninth most visited site on the Web.

Now this isn't going to help re-invigorate the user groups I once trafficked, but it does create an interesting proposition for those who aren't as well versed in keyword search as those of us who spend too much time online.

Ask.com parses out information in silos (much like Yahoo once did), narrowing effective searches right from the start. (This is different than Google, which doesn't ask users to winnow from the start.)

In other words, it asks you to be the expert about what you are searching for instead of using natural language (like Ask once did) to find information.

For those of us who spend an inordinate amount of time (inordinate, I said, not unhealthy), concerns about privacy loom overhead like a dark storm cloud.

Not the privacy you see: credit card information, medical records.

We all keep a watchful eye on those and anomalies are reported quickly. The real danger comes from the hidden privacy, the data that is collected while we surf the Web, watch videos, read stories and click on links.

Despite assurances and promises from big media companies that our personal data -- that user name, password, IP address -- will never be used or sold, we know that we're standing on the precipice of a very steep and slippery slope.

The fact is most sites have a great deal of data about us. Particularly Google.

And now a federal judge has ruled that the eponymous search giant must turn over all of its user data is has for YouTube, it's equally eponymous video site. The reason: Viacom has sued Google for copyright violation, claiming that most of its growth is due to copyrighted content uploaded.

The only way to figure that out, Viacom said, is to look at exactly who has been watching what.

What's interesting -- as Mark Cuban points out and ReadWriteWeb follows -- is that if its found that Google actively removes pornography from the site, as some have suggested, the company would lose any legal protection it has from Viacom, which could do two things:

1. Put Viacom in control of Google depending on the monetary damages assessed
2. Make your personal data open and available to the major media companies

You know you've made a bad move when your stock jumps 14 percent after you decide to pull out of a potential purchase.

That's exactly what happened today when Blockbuster formally dropped its buyout bid for Circuit City. Shares of the nation's largest brick-and-mortar video rental store jumped 14 percent on news that it would no longer pursue a partnership with Circuit City.

The deal never really made sense to me.

As we move ever-more-digital, it makes little sense for two businesses -- two completely different businesses -- that rely on foot traffic to try to merge. It makes more sense for Blockbuster and Netflix to look for a partnership -- or strangely enough, for Blockbuster and UPS to strike a deal.

Wait, UPS? Huh?

It turns out that UPS is more than just a package delivery service. They also go in and evaluate your internal structures, help you modify them and compete in a global marketplace by streamlining operations.

And they are really, really good at it.

With Blockbuster looking for a way to compete with Netflix, a partnership like this only makes sense. Not one with Circuit City.

For most of us, Google is best way to find information on the Web. We have a question, we type in a keyword and up pops just about anything we want.

Provided we guess the right keywords.

By and large, though, keywords are a pretty good way to find your way around the Web. But search technologists -- and linguists -- have been trying to get beyond the one-step, guess-and-enter world of search. They want to better understand what you are trying to find instead of which keyword matches.

It's called "semantic search" and some of the smartest minds on the planet are trying to figure it out. We're not there yet. Not even close. But big companies are beginning to dip their toes in the water.

Microsoft is close to finalizing a deal with Powerset, a company that uses natural language (e.g. "find me the nearest swimming pool" instead of "pool, Cincinnati, public") to come up with better search results (theoretically).

On the surface, natural language search doesn't sound all that exciting (unless you're a mathematician or a chip designer), but the ability to develop contextual means would make it far easier to find information on the Web. Michael Arrington lays it out very well at Tech Crunch, where they also have an audio interview (with transcript) with the founders of Powerset:

A query such as “who wrote catcher in the rye” using normal keyword search will attempt to find those very words, while with Powerset and natural language search it will analyze what the user is actually looking for, even though there may not be a website that directly spells out “who wrote catcher in the rye”. The technology is all based on analyzing the users intention when searching based on the words they use.

Why the move?

Well as nice as it would be for you and I to have natural language searches, Microsoft has other designers. The company continues to lag behind Google and Yahoo in the search market and desperately needs to find the "new, new" thing if it wants to eclipse its rivals. Whichever company creates the best natural language search will have a leg up in the search wars.