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Our lives are becoming increasingly digital and more focused on reputation than ever before. Job applicants aren’t just subject to a couple of calls to listed references and a quick check of past employment. Now, human resource managers are doing background checks, running credit scores, and even Googling their prospects.

Yes, many HR managers now put prospective employees into search engines to see what comes up. You can learn a lot about a person by just putting their name in Google and hitting the search button.

The trouble is, what appears and what is actual may not be the same. The truth is subjective on the Internet and what is displayed as how it is may not be what it really was. A friend of mine, for instance, was horrified to find himself listed as a member of a Neo-Nazi group ñ right on the first page results of a search for his name.

Of course, the person they were referring to wasn’t my friend, but they had the same name. Do you think a prospective employer would have known, though? Worse yet, what if the article had been referring to him directly, as a smear (or even honest reporting mistake)?

This happens and it happens more often than some people might think.

Your online reputation is a valuable commodity. My book, Do It Yourself Online Reputation Management, covers this and shows you how to make your reputation on the Internet appear rock-solid to anyone who checks it. As my co-author Herb Tabin says, “All of us are a brand now. Whether you like it or not, you’re name and reputation are a brand that you present to people when you meet them online or off.”

Making sure that Brand You is all that it can be is easy. Similar to cleaning up your dirty (and inaccurate) credit history on your credit report, scrubbing the dirt away from your online reputation is easy to do and only requires a little knowledge and persistence.

You don’t need specialized knowledge or skills, but you do need to know where to go and what to do in order to remove bad references from search engines, websites, and so forth. Luckily, that knowledge is easy to get and anyone can utilize it to make their online reputation pristine.

Introduced in October 2009, Microsoft’s WebsiteSpark is a program designed to help Web professionals and startups gain access to design and development tools and licenses as well as training and support.  From Microsoft’s perspective, of course, they gain access to realms that normally only Linux has enjoyed: the bootstrapping startups and webrepreneurs.

With the advent of other software tools that are also targeting the strengths of Linux, like Windows Server 2008 R2, the Seattle Giant is definitely moving towards gaining back their lost market shares.  The good news is that by doing so, they’re opening up a huge door for small businesses and startups who otherwise would have had to either not use Microsoft’s software or would have had to spend precious resources (large sums of cash) to buy them.

Through its trifecta of startup and entrepreneurial tools (BizSpark, DreamSpark, and now WebsiteSpark), MS is definitely jumping whole hog into the next generation of IT businesses.

WebsiteSpark is aimed at website developers, app builders, and hosting providers.  The program is in three parts: software deployment (Windows Web Server and SQL Server), training and support (from Microsoft experts/engineers), and marketing exposure (through MS Partners).

Any small company or startup with 10 or fewer employees and that specializes in website development or app building (or related) can qualify.  The program costs $100 for three years, at which time your company can either license the products wholly or choose a scaled down version.  Best of all, the $100 isn’t due until the end of the three years.

A ton of hosting providers (over 200 now in 30 countries) and tens of thousands of startups worldwide have jumped on board so far.

My friend Aronado Placencia hosted interviews on WebsiteSpark at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year.  Here is one of them:

In business and to the public, Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) and Steve Jobs (founder of Apple Computers) are are bitter rivals.  In reality, they’ve been conducting a secret, well-hidden love affair that has lasted decades.  In fact, the two met before either the Seattle Giant or the Bitten Apple were even conceived.

As you can see here, the two were good friends in college and it is believed that their secret affair may have begun at this point.  At the time, gay love was not considered socially correct and the two likely covered their tracks for this reason.  Later, of course, the “head to head” competition between their two companies would serve as a marketing bonanza, so the secrecy was likely kept in order to foster that paradigm.

Recently, however, the two moguls have been seen together many times publicly and not always just for business.  It may be that they’re tired of the charade and have decided to slowly introduce their secret to the world.

During a recent interview, hints were dropped as Gates mentioned his “quiet” home life and Jobs has been seen visiting Seattle, Washington in his private jet more than once.

Now the two men can be seen, without escort, having dinner together and possibly a lover’s quarrel at an exclusive restaurant in San Francisco:

It’s likely that the two supposed rivals will soon be coming out of the closet.

Possibly as soon as April Fools is over.

Twitter has once again changed their home page.  Announced officially on the blog, the changes took place throughout Tuesday for most users.  The new page is more dynamic in its presentation, giving a continually evolving list of “Top tweets,” some trending topics, and the ability to hover over most things on the screen to get larger versions or more in-depth information.

Grudgingly, it appears, Twitter is admitting that their service is not just about status updates anymore.  It’s a little deeper than that.

In somewhat clunky English, Frederic Lardinois at ReadWriteWeb explains some of the changes and then questions Twitter’s explanation of themselves (which now appears on the front page).  It’s obvious that the home page is all about user conversion.  Twitter’s biggest problem has been converting new users into regular users and the service enjoys a very high dropout rate.  By better explaining how Twitter works and what it’s all about, they obviously hope to retain more of those dropouts.

That analysis seems to bear out as ComputerWorld’s Juan Carlos Perez based an entire piece on considering just that.  Like him and Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch, I like the new look of Twitter’s home page.  Most regular Twitter users rarely see this page anyway, so gearing it towards newbies is a good idea and something that’s a long time overdue.

In fact, unless you log out, it’s hard to see the new main Twitter page as users are normally redirected to their own main feed screen.  A lot of us interact with Twitter through third-party software or devices as well, putting us even further removed from their home page.

So the new improvements are definitely better for new users who, if they stick around, will make for a better community overall.  So what’s not to like here?

The iPhone Goes Down

This year’s CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacking contest proved one thing: nothing is safe from concerted hack attempts in today’s digital society.  No iPhone, Web browser, or much of anything else is safe, it turns out.  Hackers turned out in droves to the CanSecWest event in Vancouver for the annual Olympic Games of Hacking (as it were).

Two Europeans tore into an iPhone and not only did they get through all of the security features (the phone was fully patched), but they managed to pull the entire SMS database including erased messages.  ZDNet broke that story with a highlight of how it went down.

Famed hacker Charlie Miller was there to once again show that no matter how much they do to upgrade it, Safari is not a browser safe from attack.  This year, he did it without even having access to the machine it was installed on, getting into the MacBook Pro from afar, according to CNET News.

No browser is safe, it turns out, as a German student demonstrated by hacking both Firefox and IE8 as well as Safari (though not remotely, as did Miller). Incidentally, the aforementioned iPhone hack took place via the Safari browser.  Fair warning to Safari users.

The whole Pwn2Own event is put on by TippingPoint, who gives cash and other prizes to participants for the best hacks and explanations of their exploits.  These are then shared with the vendors who make the devices and software in order to bolster security.

Most of the prizes at this year’s event were in the $10,000 and $15,000 range for top takers.  In return for their prizes (and fame), participants are required not to disclose details of their techniques.

Monday afternoon, Google announced on their blog that they have moved their China-based search efforts to servers based in Hong Kong and have removed all censorship filters.  Visitors from China to Google.cn will now be treated to unfiltered, open search.

The move is in retaliation for both hack attempts on Google’s server facilities and core services in China, allegedly by Chinese government sources, and for the Chinese government’s snubbing their nose at Google’s claim to be following the law and being attacked for it anyway.  To counter this apparent open-season on U.S. companies by the Chinese government, Google is no longer following China’s laws regarding Internet censorship and is now turning the firehose of open ‘Net searching onto teh Chinese people.

At least until the Chinese government blocks Google.cn entirely.

So Google.cn now redirects to Google.hk (Hong Kong).  So far, the Chinese government has stuck with it’s “indignation” pose treating the whole affair as if Google is a stubborn step-child that won’t behave.  In an official announcement via the state-run news agency Xiahua:

“Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks.”

Meanwhile, in a further move against China, Business Insider notes that Google now has an “Evil Meter” on their site which shows what the Chinese government is blocking so far.  It’s labeled a service availability notice for Chinese surfers, but it’s been dubbed the Evil Meter by others.

Expect that Evil Meter to be all red Xs by this afternoon.