Microsoft has been busy over the last year. It was during E3 2009 that Microsoft blew everyone away with what was then dubbed Project Natal.

Since late last year, Twitter has included location as a key part of its API. Earlier this year, it was  rolled out to twitter.com as well. But those locations have been abstract cities or areas

Earlier today, a story started going around the blogosphere about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg trying out an iPhone for the first time. At the time, the assumption was that this was an iPhone 3GS, since the iPhone 4 isn’t out yet.

Yesterday, I wrote a column contrasting the attitude towards ‘content’ displayed by old and new media. My conclusion was that, in the Internet world, quality, originality and exclusivity are fast becoming irrelevant.

Today, Google Earth released a new edition of its desktop app which hikers, runners and cyclists are going to love. They call it Google Earth 5.2.

Facebook introduced a new promotion of its Credits virtual currency last week: users could get five free credits in exchange for installing CrowdStar’s new Hello City simulation game. Those who have earned those points may have seen a followup email from CrowdStar since then. The email contains a link that users can share with their friends, who can then earn 5 Credits themselves from adding the app

Yahoo has just released some statistics for what they’re seeing from people doing searches with Yahoo on the iPad. The results are a little humorous. According to this post , “ the top searches over the last few weeks tended toward the thrifty and economical .” That seems a bit odd considering that the iPad is a $500 to $800+ device that, while possibly the future of computing, is hardly a must-have right now in tough economic times.

With a massive membership of more than 250 million gamers, one of the biggest challenges that social game company Zynga faces is keeping up its growth. One of the secrets to its succes s is the ability to use its existing hits (Farmville, Texas HoldEm Poker, Mafia Wars, etc.) to cross-promote new games and help launch those games.

Back in January, I wrote about a new Q&A service called Formspring.me that allowed users to have their friends “ask them anything”: sign up for a profile, and anyone can submit a question that you can choose to answer at your discretion. At the time the service had around one million users. Fast forward six months: the service now has over 12 million accounts and users have asked each other 700 million questions.

Microsoft has been touting its Kinect interface for the 360 all morning, and it’s clearly being marketed as a family-oriented device. They demoed quite a few games, covering a lot of territory; gaming rags are already whispering that this is where much of the MS development muscle is going to be applied for the foreseeable future