Social media is the craze these days.  Within the social media heading lies a category that is absolutely blowing up lately.  The category is known as geolocation and the big players are companies like Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla, and of course, Yelp.

Yelp has recently admitted that it is looking to start testing Daily Deals for its members.  This means that if a retailer in your local area were to work with Yelp, they could offer significant discounts on goods and services for Yelp members.  Other services do this in various ways and forms.  For example, Foursquare has deals with organizations such as Starbucks where you can get discounts for being the mayor or something along those lines.  Other companies like Groupon offer similar opportunities in slightly different forms.  It appears that Yelps offering will resemble Groupon more than Foursquare.

Image provided by zazzle.co.uk

I’d guess that Facebook is probably pretty happy to see the month of May come to an end.  The last few weeks have seen problem after problem for the social media giant, most of them centered around recent changes to their privacy policies and the impact they have on their users.

Image provided by smartphonenation.com

Skype has always been a useful program because it gives you so many ways to stay in touch with people.  Options include calls from computer to computer, computer to landline, mobile phone to computer, mobile phone to mobile phone, instant message from computer to computer and mobile phones.  Of course the mobile phones have to be an iPhone, Android phone or a Blackberry and must have the Skype app installed.

In the last day or two, a new post has appeared on facebook titled “Distracting Beach Babes (HQ)”.  This is malware (intrusive and sometimes dangerous software) and will install infected files on your computer if you click on it.  It is also self replicating which means that if you click on it, it will automatically send itself to the facebook walls of some of the people on your friends list.

Facebook has taken a beating in the tech community and by its members who are frustrated about having to struggle to understand how to control their privacy settings.    In late April, Facebook unveiled its new Open Graph concept which basically opens up the internet to make it more social and more connected for the over 400,000,000 people around the world that use facebook.   Through the Open Graph, web designers can implement links and controls that allow users to “like” websites and content on those sites and link them back to their own facebook profile, thereby making the web a more social place for people to see and share information.  With this rollout came a rework of facebook’s privacy policies that were so complex and difficult to understand that the frustration has become a part of daily conversation.

Ford's socially equipped 2011 Ford Fiesta - courtesy of Crunch Gear

Ford, in partnership with the University of Michigan have geeked out two 2011 Ford Fiesta’s and are putting them on the road to go cross country and engage us via various forms of social media all along the way.

Several Michigan University students worked on an app for their car while Ford worked to equip the other new Fiesta with custom apps that would allow the car to tweet its statuses and to do automatic Check-Ins via foursquare, a global positioning social media application, so you can tell where they are and where they’ve been.  The cars are even connected back to a website that has a real-time gas mileage indicator so that we can see how they’re doing on fuel consumption.

Last week, facebook launched their Open Graph concept in an attempt to make the internet more open, social, and to get users more connected across the web.  The responses have been very mixed.  Many in the tech community suggest that facebooks new direction is a huge breach of privacy and could create problems.  Some in the United States Senate apparently believe this could be a problem too.

Senators Schumer, Bennet, Begich and Franken all have great concerns about the way facebook is headed and have sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, facebook’s CEO, asking him to address the growing concerns of his members over their privacy.

Many technology fans are also big fans of coffee and lotsof us have made Starbucks our coffee provider of choice.  But, how many of us knew that Starbucks was into tech?  Yes, it’s true.  If you’re a tech fan and not getting your coffee at Starbucks, maybe this information will change our mind.