media outlets

Almost every worker has done it: gotten in a little Facebook updating, personal e-mailing, YouTube watching and friend calling while on the clock.

Such indiscretions often went undetected by company management everywhere but the most secure and highly proprietary companies or governmental agencies. Not anymore.

Firms have become sharp-eyed, keenly eared watchdogs as they try to squeeze every penny's worth of their employees' salaries and to ensure they have the most professional and lawsuit-proof workplaces.

In a move to broaden its reach across the Internet, Twitter on Monday announced a new feature that lets users send and receive 140-character messages while surfing the web. Dubbed @anywhere, Twitter's latest service gives sites like Amazon.com, AdAge, Bing, Citysearch, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC, The New York Times, Yahoo and YouTube the ability to stream the millions of daily tweets Twitter users send every day.

3QD friends Sam Anderson in New York Magazine:

by Manisha Verma

Twitter Inc. is turning Japanese. Or at least trying to.

The popular microblogging service on Thursday launched a Japan-based mobile version, hoping to penetrate a country where other U.S. social networking sites including Facebook and MySpace have failed to capture much ground.

Japanese is Twitter's sole foreign language platform so far, and the company's efforts here indicate it's serious about making it in Japan.

Some of the world's most prominent technology companies are offering suggestions to publishers on how they can charge readers for news online.

IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. -- a company some newspapers blame for helping dig their financial hole -- responded to a request by the Newspaper Association of America for proposals on ways to easily charge for news on the Web.

In its latest cost-cutting move, The Washington Post's owner is scrapping an experimental Web site that provided more news coverage about events happening around the neighborhoods of a Virginia suburb.

LoudounExtra.com will be shut down as an independent Web site this Friday, with some features moving to WashingtonPost.com. The site was focused on Loudoun County, Va. -- an area located about 25 miles from Washington, D.C.

Sumedha Senanayake

Sumedha Senanayake

Matt Mazur