• Is your social network built enterprise tough?

  You don't have to look further than the uprisings across the Arab world to recognize the power of social tools, and this transformative power applies to business as well. But for an enterprise social network (ESN) to be genuinely useful, it needs to go beyond the "Facebook for enterprise" model.

• How Facebook aims to reinvent hardware

  Facebook used to be a company just like many others: It would buy servers, racks and other hardware from vendors like HP and Dell and rent out co-location space from vendors like DuPont Fabros and others.

• Facebook 'Trusted Contacts' lets you pester friends to recover account access

  Facebook Thursday said it’s making available globally a feature called "Trusted Contacts" that lets users select three to five friends who can help users recover account access such as if they forget their password.

• Is Twitter broken?

  Twitter, the increasingly popular micro-blogging service, has come under quite a bit of criticism in the past few weeks. Users of the platform, which describes itself as an "information-sharing network" are struggling with what to do about false information being spread around.

• EFF: Trust Twitter -- but not Apple or Verizon -- to protect your privacy

  Verizon and MySpace scored a zero out of a possible six stars in a test of how far 18 technology service providers will go to protect user data from government data demands.

• The ABCs of VoIP

  Given the importance of telephone systems, refreshing the technology can be daunting. However, for small and midsized businesses who consider upgrading from a PBX to VoIP, the benefits are clear and, with proper planning, the implementation is not very frightening. Consider these three steps:

• Opinion: How do you manage your social networks?

  I recently decided, somewhat randomly, to experiment a bit more with social networking. I was on LinkedIn and at some point the service asked me if it could access my Gmail contact list.

• Online video a must-have for these four businesses

  Adding video to the company website can set retailers and other businesses apart from the competition -- and ultimately boost the bottom line.

• Opinion: The Petraeus scandal and computer ethics

  Last week Gen. David Petraeus, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, resigned in response to what has turned out to be a much bigger scandal than it first appeared.

• Wikipedia celebrates a decade of edit wars, controversy and Internet dominance

  Wikipedia and its users are planning more than 300 celebration events across six continents for the 10th anniversary of the free, online encyclopedia that has become an Internet juggernaut by spreading access to information with a model that lets anyone edit its articles.

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  5 open source VoIP softphones to watch

  The steady rise in people using IP telephony to communicate -- for personal and business reasons -- has led to the development of a number of different VoIP "softphones" that can be used on a PC or notebook.

Whitepapers about unified communications

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  Forrester: The Unified Communications Journey

  The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) movement is a testimonial to the increasing influence end users have to force IT to design, develop and deploy a flexible set of UC capabilities. Learn how end user choices in mobility and visual collaboration should factor into vendor consolidation strategies and UC road map architecture.

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  Case study: Robinson Legal integrates an all-in-one unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solution

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  Case Study: Keeping information on the move: Clearswift protects Maman, the logistics experts

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  Unified & Collaborative Communications