At one point last week as I was scrambling to put together the list of recipients for Dunkirk Systems’ holiday cards, I needed to go to LinkedIn to look up a couple of contacts. When I arrived at the social networking site I saw a familiar face, a wizard image LinkedIn puts up when it takes the service down for maintenance. When I went back after the maintenance window, I was pleasantly surprised to see more familiar faces.

If you have a LinkedIn account and you visit the home page, you can see updates to people in your network. As I have previously stated, this is a highly valuable feature of LinkedIn as you can find out changes for contacts, including if they have a new job. Now these changes include if a person has added a photo to their profile. The accompanying image is a partial screen grab from my own LinkedIn home page, showing networking guru Jason Jacobsohn recently added a photo to his profile.

This is a good step forward for LinkedIn, and as competition heats up from other social networking sites like Facebook, I am eager to see what other changes they will make.

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It’s always interesting when the media analyzes thyself, and even more interesting when itself is the news.

I was watching the 10 pm news on WLS-TV, ABC7 in Chicago last night. The anchor, Ravi Baichwal, was segueing to a field reporter when I heard a loud bang and Baichwal looked to the side in shock. And so the field reporter began her segment. When it came back to the news desk, we the viewers were told an SUV had crashed through one of the windows of the street-level studio on State Street, across from the famed Chicago Theatre.

As of this writing no reason has been given for the crash, which eyewitnesses said was deliberate. There were no barriers on the sidewalk in front of the studio to prevent such an incident, though temporary jersey barriers were put in place today. Though this could have been a much worse crime, nobody was injured and the driver was arrested on the scene. Baichwal handled the situation like a professional, though he was mere feet from it happening. He advised viewers that the newscast going forward would be “fluid” and you couldn’t expect anything better despite the circumstances.

You can see the replay of the incident on ABC7’s Web site and photos of the boarded-up studio window I took tonight, one with Baichwal behind the desk once again. I am sure more permanent barriers will be put into place, and they will also be in place when WBBM-TV CBS2 moves into its own street-level studio just a block away next year.

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After getting an invite from a friend to follow him on Twitter, I decided to dust off and start using the account for the service I created a long time ago. My Twitter Id is thehotiron and you can view my page and subscribe to its feed at twitter.com/thehotiron. Or just look for the Twitter widget on the side of The Hot Iron.

Twitter is a social networking service where people can log any text at anytime you want. It can be used to share information with others as well as applications for group dynamics and business.

Do you use Twitter or not, and why?

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There’s less than 24 hours left until Christmas arrives, and you still need to get someone a gift. As they use the Internet, why not get an Amazon Gift Certificate?

Amazon Gift Certificates can be redeemed for anything from Amazon.com. The recipient enters the code when they check out to apply the gift certificate value. They make a great gift for anyone – including yourself for doing more of your shopping online.

Merry Christmas!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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