As a business (big or small) one of the best tools for reaching customers is social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The ability to send information to your market and create a community of followers is a resource that every business should take advantage of, but how do you know if your use of social networking is making an impact?

A new Web site called Klout aims to assist individuals and businesses with information on how effective their use of social networking is. By signing up for a free account, users can enter their Twitter username and receive a ranking and report on the effectiveness of their Tweets. The report displays data based on retweets, trending topics and provides advice on how to make more of an impact.

Despite the fact that I am always campaigning for the importance of getting your business on the major social media networks, I still find myself surprised from time to time by some of the people I stumble across on the World Wide Web.

My mom is on Facebook, as is her sister, on a very regular basis. Some of the kids in my 9 year old son’s class have their own MySpace pages. And an astronaut, using newly installed broadband internet access, is tweeting from the International Space Station.

Starbucks has provided nearly every corner of America with a cup of coffee and beginning July 1 they will also be offering free WiFi.

The coffee chain has provided WiFi access for a cost and recently began offering two hours of service to card members. But in an effort to respond to competitors who have long been offering free access to the Internet, Starbucks will begin giving customers (and those within the signal) unlimited access.

While there are differing views on the value of traffic from social networking sites, the bottom line is that visitors referred from any of the top two social media sites are more valuable than any other traffic, including organic search results on Google.

People spend time on sites like Facebook and Twitter for the sole purpose of sharing information with people they are close to or feel are important. When a visitor hits your site from paid or organic search results, there is a bit of apprehension about what they will find and whether or not they can trust what they find. Amongst friends and family, though, trust is high and recommendations from these peers will be valued more than those of anyone else.

The internet age has produced many ethical debates, including what information bloggers should disclose when receiving payment for writing positive reviews on certain products.

Bloggers are often seen as unrestricted and unprofessional voices on certain subjects, offering readers an independent and opinionated voice on subjects ranging from culture, religion and politics. However, several companies are hiring bloggers to write positive reviews of their products and it has brought up the question of whether a blogger should disclose that they are being paid to promote a product.

Apple’s new electronic tablet the iPad has been touted as many things. It’s a video player, personal computer, game console and even an electronic reading device. But if your primary desire in a tablet is to read books and newspapers the iPad may disappoint.

The main difference between the iPad and most other e-reading devices such as the Kindle and Nook is it lacks E Ink technology. Devices like the Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noddle’s Nook use E Ink technology to display text and pictures. That technology creates a paper like screen where the words are read just like the ink words of a physical book.

The past decade has seen Google become a verb and it’s an action that most people have performed on themselves at some point in the past.

Nearly 57 percent of adult internet users confessed that they have entered their name into a search engine, according to a new Pew Research study titled Reputation Management and Social Media.

Smartphones such as the iPhone have been growing in popularity over the past several years and that growth has shifted into high gear in 2010, according to a recent International Data Corporation study.