It's been a momentous 12 months here at LiveJournal. We crossed a capital T at Ten years young. And, like most precocious pubescents, we celebrated turning double digits by publishing our first book! Needless to say, we've experienced some major changes, both inside and out. Before we recap, we'd like to thank you for bearing with us as we've struggled through ungainly growth spurts, identity pangs, and, yes, the occasional blemish. We hope you'll continue to stand by us: We're gaining wisdom with maturity.

Stuff you liked

• Back in February, we placed a call for entries for our ten-year anniversary anthology in lj_turns10. In December (less than a year later!), we officially announced the publication of Live Journal: The First Decade. Featuring an inspired collection of writing, photographs, and artwork from the pages of LiveJournal history, the book has been selected by Blurb.com as a top staff pick! We are proud to have played host to so much talent over the years, and we thank our contributors for sharing their extraordinary work.
• We all love quirky surprises, but not when it comes to managing our account settings. This year we streamlined settings into one central account management area. No more pouring through FAQs to figure out how to control privacy settings, modify notifications, adjust mobile settings, or update contact information!
• Being users ourselves, we realize our own mothers couldn't find us on LiveJournal based on our usernames and userpics alone (*heaves heavy sigh of relief*). But since there are times when we actually want to be found, we created a search tool--Find Your Friends--to help locate people by email address (it's in the Friends drop-down menu).
• Spam counter-attack: The war against vicious malware and spambots reigns eternal, but we've been making serious inroads to ensure your online security. We've established new protocols, such as requiring email address validations. We've grown more savvy about ferreting out suspicious behavior. We've added features, like whitelisting, to help you protect your communities. Our valiant (i.e., overworked) spam avengers (a/k/a the LiveJournal ops team) are standing on red alert so you can sleep safely at night.
• After an intensive beta, we launched My Guests at the end of the year, which lets you see who's been hanging around your journal. A number of you have even discovered secret admirers (not all of whom are creepy)!
• Last, but by no means least, we want to thank our volunteers for providing invaluable support and feedback. Their Herculean efforts enable us to answer your questions more efficiently, identify spammers, reduce abuse, and deliver better features (through tireless testing). On behalf of the staff and the larger LiveJournal community, we are truly grateful for their diligence, intelligence, loyalty, and passion.

You got your fix

• We recently debugged a number of the oustanding issues with the rich text editor so your entries look great regardless of whether you know html. You can read more about text editors here.
• In response to user demand, we brought back international voice posting. For more info on voice posting, read here.
• At long last, we revived TxtLJ with Verizon. For more info on TxtLJ, check out the FAQ.

Paid features you enjoyed

• In December, we introduced My Stats, which provides detailed data on who's been viewing your entries as well as statistics on commenting, RSS requests, friending history, and more. Despite a few early glitches, the response has been extremely favorable.
• This year, we launched and improved Notes (i.e., the feature formerly known as Alias), which lets you add private comments on friends and commenters (it's in the Profile drop-down menu). This way you won't be caught red-faced when you strain to remember details about that wonderful LiveJournal friend who sent you a birthday vGift. For more info, read the FAQ.
• When we first announced View friends pages by date, we thought it would be a quiet, minor enhancement. The rave reaction floored us, which made us all very happy. We gave it a fine tuning in February of 2009, so it's even better!
• How embarrassing! It appears pingbacks have gone back to the shop for service. We’ll keep you posted. We didn't know just much you liked pingbacks until it went in for service. It's back and, judging by your irritation when it wasn't available, this is good news. FYI, pingbacks send instant notifications (via screened comments) whenever someone links to one of your entries on LiveJournal. For more info, read this entry in paidmembers or check out the FAQ.

Mixed reviews

• The search is still on. Some of you have reported getting more comprehensive results for keyword searches using the new Yandex search engine and like the ability to search within content categories (like entries or comments). Others have not been satisfied with the relevancy of search results. Please be patient. We're still tweaking this product.
• This past December, we wanted to try out a new holiday promotion. Given the crap economy, we decided to offer our Paid/Permanent users a stack of $10 coupons to send to Basic/Plus users for paid account upgrades. We hoped you would like it. And some of you did, but many were disappointed that we didn't offer Give More as well. We want to thank you so much for letting us know. Your input will help us plan better in the future. Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users can continue to send out coupons through January 15th. Coupons can be redeemed through January 31, 2010.
• We were pretty excited about Your Journal Your Money, which allows Paid/Permanent users to earn extra cash by displaying Google ads to Basic/Plus and logged out users. A number of you tried it. Some of you really like it. Others, not so much. (Just FYI, Paid/Permanent users who do not participate in this program will not view ads on journals. Participants will see ads on their own journal, but won't see them on other journals unless they specifically opt in.) For additional details, visit here.
• We relaunched m.livejournal.com, our mobile app. While it offers a nicer UI and enhanced functionality, some of you think we can do better on load times. Like most of us, it's a work in progress. You can customize your mobile settings here. For more info, please read the FAQ.

Missing Inaction

• We shudder to bring up the neon purple elephant squatting on our heads, but, yes, we didn't give you those a la carte userpics. We've been making radical improvements to our backend in order to support them. But no excuses. We know you want them. We cringe every time you mention them. We're sorry we dropped the ball on this, and we promise to do our best to get them to you in 2010.

Stumbling points

• Back in early August, we experienced outages related to a series of DDoS attacks. We are proud to report that we were down a total of one hour over the course of a few days. We thank our heroic ops guys for getting us up sooner and more consistently than any of our less fortunate social networking friends. We apologize for leaving you temporarily stranded.
• A couple of months back, we offered a free, unrestricted vGift, which induced a snowflake cookie avalanche. This resulted in backed up/delayed notifications, which, in turn, led us to reboot systems, rendering scrapbooks unavailable. It took a while to shovel free. Apologies for the inconvenience. We learned a valuable lesson that should keep us calamity-free in the future (fingers crossed while knocking on wood).
• That darn Best Buy ad. First off, we're sorry about the audio auto-play (we got it turned off as quickly as possible). While it's true that we'll continue to show this type of ad to accounts that normally see them (never to Paid/Permanent accounts), we'll make sure the sound defaults to off moving forward. We promise to do our very best to keep ads to a minimum on LiveJournal, while keeping a roof over Frank's head.

Full steam ahead!

As we plunge headfirst into the next decade, we want to take a moment to look back and thank all of our employees, both past and present, who have worked so hard to create our unique and magical universe. We couldn't have made it this far without you: Your contributions brighten our path everyday. We also want to extend our heartfelt appreciation to each and every one of you. Whether you've been around for ten days or ten years, your humor, intelligence, talent, and creativity are what makes this the most vibrant global community on the Internet (the best place on the Web, in our humble opinion). Here's hoping that 2010 will be the greatest year yet! We thank you for joining us as we embark upon another glorious decade of LiveJournal history!

Google hat am Dienstag am Firmenstammsitz im kalifornischen Moutain View das erste in eigener Regie gefertigte Smartphone mit dem Namen Nexus One vorgestellt. Seit Dezember waren zwar wiederholt Informationen über das Android-Smartphone in den einschlägigen Medien aufgetaucht, vermutlich nicht ganz ohne Zutun des Suchmaschinenriesen selbst, die ganz große Überraschung blieb aber aus. Das gilt auch für viele Ausstattungsmerkmale des rund 130 Gramm schweren Nexus One, das wie das erste Google-Phone G1 vom taiwanischen Hersteller HTC stammt.

Erstmals hat HTC eines seiner Smartphones mit einem AMOLED-Display – bislang eine Domäne von Samsung – ausgestattet, das kräftige Farben und hohe Kontraste verspricht, im Sonnenlicht aber kaum noch lesbar sein dürfte. Der 3,7 Zoll große kapazitive Touchscreen bietet eine Auflösung von 480 × 800 Pixel, für viel Rechenpower sorgt der Snapdragon-Chipsatz von Qualcomm, dessen Prozessorkern mit 1 Gigahertz getaktet ist und von einem leistungsfähigen Multimedia-Signalprozessor sowie 256 MByte RAM und 512 MByte Flash-Speicher unterstützt wird. Über einen microSDHC-Slot lässt sich der Speicher um maximal 32 GByte erweitern, ein 4-GByte-Medium will Google mitliefern.

Hier weiter:

2amtomorning
If you find yourself at the crossroads of insomnia and insanity, this is the place to channel those demons that keep you sleepless. Vivid pictures, poetry, ruminations, and confessions from the nether hours between dusk and dawn. Originally formed to celebrate the city at night, there's a strong urban theme.

green_future
Dedicated to promoting global sustainability, this community offers a forum for discussing current environmental news, research, and issues with tips on how to make positive, pro-active changes to reduce carbon impact. You'll also find information on how to get involved in eco-activism and learn about events near you (i.e., act local; think global). Offering a wealth of data on earth-friendly products and practices, you'll be inspired to don an organic bamboo cape and save the planet.

wtf_sexism
Self-described as "a little community with a lot of rage," you can soak up impassioned vibes and read blistering exposes detailing sexist attitudes in the news, pop culture, and science! A must-join community if you are, or love, a feminist. (NB: the topic of whether a "man" can be a feminist is outside the scope of this spotlight, but will probably wind up on the Writer's Block.)

Unter dem Titel: Bundespolizei und Union machen Dampf bei Nacktscannern, läuft bei heise.de gerade die Berichterstattung zu den "Bodyscannern" an.
Wie vorab schon vermutet, fallen deutsche Politiker jetzt reihenweise um und fordern den Einsatz der Scanner auch an deutschen Flughäfen. Einig sind sich auf einmal alle darüber, dass diese Dinger so schnell wie möglich kommen müssen... komme was da wolle.
Um es kurz zu machen, die Dinger werden also nun eingekauft und eingesetzt nur, was passiert eigentlich wenn der nächste Reisende seinen Knallfrosch im Allerwertesten transportiert.
Genau dahin können die Bodyscanner nämlich nicht gucken.

Was werden uns deutsche Politiker dann wieder auftischen, was werden wir dann unbedingt benötigen um ein "Mehr an Flugsicherheit" zu erreichen.?
Wird dann jeder Flugreisende einer Kernspintomographie unterzogen.?
Wartet im Tarnsitbereich dann vieleicht ein lecker Rizinusöl-Trunk auf die Flugreisenden, mit anschliessender Darmentleerung im gläsernen und Kameraüberwachten Klo.?
Oder wird in Zukunft nur das Flughafenpersonal mit dem Zeigefinger geschmeidig in jede Körperöffnung der Flugreisenden gleiten um dort nach verborgenen Dingen zu fühlen.?

Das wird doch alles nichts...

Hier geht es zum heise-artikel... die Diskussion läuft dort gerade an und ist stellenweise belustigend.

renaissance2010
Turning to photography as a creative outlet during a valiant fight with breast cancer at age 34, renaissance10 survived and set up a photo contest to help raise funds for the Lavender Trust, a nonprofit that provides information and support to younger women with breast cancer. In the first two years, the competition brought in over £65,000 (that's $107,260.73 U.S.!), with entries from 130 countries last year. Renaissance10 recently joined LiveJournal to meet other passionate photographers and find supportive friends.

curiouscupcakes
Holy buttercream frosting! If you have a sweet tooth for sugary goodness or a wandering eye for whimsical confection, this is pure ecstasy iced in deliciousness. Hailing the beloved cupcake as the artisinal canvas of choice, you'll enjoy recipes, photos, and bountiful tips to bake up a batch, whether your taste leans toward French classics or funky and flavorful.

mission101
With New Years in the offing, it's an ideal time to reflect on past accomplishments, make peace with disappointments, and refocus the lens on future goals. This community welcomes you to create a bucket list of 101 things you plan to accomplish in the next 1,001 days. Offering support, guidance, and inspiration, this is a great way to jumpstart those pesky resolutions.

Transparency International hat wegen der Schweinegrippe-Impfung schwere Vorwürfe gegen die Pharmaindustrie erhoben.
Die Krankheit sei dabei in voller Absicht «katastrophenmässig aufgebauscht» worden und habe sich jetzt als «Papiertiger entpuppt», sagte Anke Martiny, Vorstandsmitglied der Anti-Korruptions-Organisation der deutschen Nachrichtenagentur DAPD.

Bei der Schweinegrippe habe ich den deutlichen Verdacht, dass es im Wesentlichen den Anbietern der Impfstoffe genützt ha,

sagte Martiny. Damit werde das Vertrauen der Menschen in Impfungen ausgehöhlt, die ja grundsätzlich sinnvoll seien. Sie äusserte sich auch kritisch über Verbindungen von Mitgliedern der Ständigen Impfkommission, die die Schweinegrippe-Impfung empfohlen hat, zu Pharmaherstellern.

In diesem konkreten Fall hätte von der STIKO der Nachweis erbracht werden müssen, dass Interessenkonflikte keine Rolle spielten, von Anfang an hatten externe Experten Zweifel an der Sinnfälligkeit dieser Entscheidung.

Korruption im Gesundheitswesen kostet nach Schätzungen von Transparency Milliardenbeträge. Von den rund 250 Milliarden Euro im deutschen Gesundheitsmarkt könnten drei bis zehn Prozent durch Betrug und andere Arten der Wirtschaftskriminalität verloren gehen, sagte Martiny mit Blick auf Vergleichsdaten aus anderen Ländern. Es ginge somit um Beträge zwischen 7,5 und 25 Milliarden Euro. In dem Zusammenhang kritisierte Martiny vor allem Ärzte und ihre Vertretungen. Den seit 2004 vorgeschriebenen Antikorruptionsstellen verweigerten sich «fast alle» Kassenärztlichen Vereinigungen.

«Die Ärzteverbände kennen doch ihre Pappenheimer, sie könnten in Problemfällen durchgreifen, sie tun es nicht, weil sie sich als Standesorganisation für ihre Kollegen begreifen»

meinte Martiny.
Deshalb seien die neu eingerichteten «Clearingstellen», die «Fangprämien» bei der Überweisung von Patienten aus Arztpraxen in Krankenhäuser verhindern sollen, auch der «grösste Quatsch des Jahrhunderts». Diese Stellen gebe es ja schon. «Die tun aber leider nicht das Notwendige», sagte sie.

Im Herbst hatten Berichte für Aufsehen gesorgt, wonach Ärzte Geld dafür bekommen, dass sie Patienten in bestimmte Kliniken einweisen. Die Dimension des Problems blieb damals unklar. Martiny verwies darauf, dass es solche «Kick-Back-Zahlungen» nicht nur zwischen Ärzten und Krankenhäusern gebe. «Noch problematischer sind die Überweisungen der Ärzte untereinander, vor allem zu Laboren oder Röntgenpraxen, ausserdem die Verbindungen zwischen Zahnärzten und Dentallaboren, Orthopäden und Schuhmachern und ähnliches», sagte sie. «Wenn nur ein Prozent dieser Überweisungen zweifelhaft ist, dann bedeutet das insgesamt Milliarden-Verluste im System.»