In case you have been missing having to tear your hair out over Facebook’s privacy settings and policies, fear not, because with Facebook’s new “Instant Personalization” setting, you can tear away. Six months ago we reported on Facebook’s then-new ‘open graph’ with “social plugins”, or ‘social graph’, that followed you around to sites like Pandora and Yelp. This appears to have evolved into, or spawned, Facebook’s “Instant Personalization” where, explains Facebook, the goal is “to give you a great social and personalized experience with every application and website you use.”

Ok, now this is really cool. You can now get notices of new articles which show up at your favorite websites sent to your cell phone via SMS text message, as part of Yahoo’s free “RSS by SMS” alert service.

Toshio Yamamoto is a man who knows his ramen, and we’re not just talking that cheap American Oodles of Noodles stuff.  And everyone else’s ramen too.  The 49 year old engineer eats ramen 5 days a week, and records his reviews of each one for ramen posterity’s sake on his website

Move over, Match.com, eHarmony and PlentyOfFish.com – the Federal government is getting into the online dating and relationship space, with their very own online dating site called TwoOfUs.org. The Two of Us.org site includes advice on dating, relationships, and marriage. Perhaps once the Feds are able to bring their own relationships with the opposite sects more into harmony, and stop the acrimony and one-night stands in their own house (and senate), then we will be able to take a Federal dating advice site more seriously.

The Obama administration has launched a new website at Recovery .gov to provide the American people with greater transparency when it comes to how the government is spending tax revenues. Created under the House American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (HARRA), the website will help to provide insight into how the funds being made available by the Federal government for economic recovery are actually being spent.

inSpot.org is a website which lets you anonymously notify someone by email that they have been exposed to a sexually transmitted disease (STD) such as a venereal disease (VD) or even HIV / AIDS. Even if they haven’t.

Regardless of one’s politics, or political party affiliation, one can’t deny that Barack Obama has done a pretty good job of using the Internet. Barack Obama’s website and other Internet fund raising efforts have raised him more than $200 million – again, that’s just Internet-raised donations! Now, amid heightening speculation that threatens to reach fever pitch, Obama is signing people up in droves to be able to receive a text message announcing his choice for his vice-presidential running mate, with his “First to Know” Internet campaign.

We all know about spam, spyware, viruses and phishing. But these pale by comparison with (and indeed are the supporting cast for) the mother of all Internet incursions: extortion of online businesses.