These are my links for January 3rd through January 8th:

• 21st Century Learning: The Art of Building Virtual Communities – With the rise of virtual learning community platforms like Ning and Elgg it is becoming evident that many CoPs are dead on arrival and many others die of neglect early on, in their toddler stage.
• MSNWS Position Paper – Social networking forms an important part of online activities of Web users. Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Orkut have millions of users using them everyday. However, these sites present two problems. Firstly, these sites form information silos. Information on one site is not usable in the others. Secondly such sites do not allow users much control over how their personal information is disseminated, which results in potential privacy problems.
• Five Reasons that Adobe Air is Going to Change the Game – Adober AIR is a runtime environment that allows developers to focus on coding for one environment (AIR), and the Adobe VM will take care of the rest. This allows desktop apps coded for AIR to work seamlessly with Windows, Macs, and Linux (soon)
• Instant mash: empowering communities through the web – From virtual worlds, to CoPs and 'mash-ups' – Kent County Council is using all of these to
  promote knowledge management. Members are now more confident when it comes to using other online resources, like the IDeA’s communities of practice (CoPs).

  Kent has 16 CoPs of its own on the platform, which are all relatively vibrant. There are already 700 officers at Kent who are involved in the CoPs. CoPs provide a safe environment where members can practice their techniques and learn the benefits of online social networking without huge expense or bureaucracy.

• Free Twitter Backgrounds from TwitterBacks.com – Get Your Free Twitter Backgrounds