Though the Internet had a breakout year 2006, it wasn’t all birthday cakes and butterflies for everyone. Companies, institutions and philosophies came head to head every other day trying to exert some sort of control over it. And most of them failed miserably.

People only really like villains when they’re imaginary characters. How many of us secretly rooted for Jack Nicholson’s version of the Joker, or thought Johnny Ringo was really, really cool? But that only makes for great tension in fiction. In reality, we want to see the villains crushed.

When it comes to researching topics and reporting breaking news in the Web 2.0 world, one has to be careful to avoid falling into the trap of monotony. Sometimes, the news isn’t all that exciting, but it’s often the people associated with the story that makes all the difference.

The year 2006 was a major year for all things Internet related. In fact, it might remembered as the year the Internet exploded. Record broadband adoption, major government attention, and the advent of video and social media made it, to borrow from VH1, the Internet’s best year ever.

Some mild rumors have been surfacing about the potential for Google purchasing online productivity suite provider ThinkFree, a South Korean company that offers ThinkFree Online with Microsoft Office file format compatibility and other features.

Wouldn’t it be great to use a search engine that shows results tailored to what you want and what you need?

A search engine company with a sci-fi name and a bare-bones website “received $7 million in a Series A funding round from Clearstone Venture Partners and Opus Capital Ventures” earlier this week. The company, known as “Spock,” describes itself as “the world’s largest people search engine.”

While online holiday shopping in the US remains robust things are different north of our border in Canada. Canadians lead the world in broadband penetration, time spent online, electronic banking and bill paying. Clearly they are an Internet savvy country but when it comes to making online purchases Canadians prefer to buy at a store.

Richard MacManus stumbled on AskX.com, a testing user interface for Ask’s search engine.

With all the drama on the Internet this year, it was difficult to narrow down the villains list. But the heroes list was harder to make – mostly because there’s nothing more subjective than a hero. Subjective or not (and it’s not not), there are a few clear standouts, as far as we’re concerned.

Ah, the raw, unyielding power of Web 2.0. My friend, Lee Odden, learned his Top Rank blog site was banned from Digg. He discovered this unceremoniously and is justifiably angry.

Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have changed the Internet and are now changing the mobile society as well. A new report from ABI Research titled Mobile Social Communities says that social networking is going to have a major impact on mobile phones.

If you have too many friends, you have no friends, the great architect I.M. Pei once told me. His opinion clearly isn’t shared by Marc Freedman, who describes himself as the “LinkDaddy” of the LinkedIn network.

The need for efficient control within the company network to safeguard assets and maintain productivity has fallen hard onto the shoulders of system administrators everywhere.

Here are a couple of tips to speed up your Windows XP computer and help keep you protected and secure online.

Spam made a big comeback in 2006 according to a report from IronPort Systems, a gateway security provider. The report says that the increase in volume was due to advanced image based spam, which is usually ten times larger than text spam. Because of that digital data sent tripled.

The deal between Microsoft and Novell that will promote SuSE Linux to Windows customers proved too much for Jeremy Allison, who has cited it as his reason for departing Novell and its SuSE Linux team.

Everyone has a social bookmark tagging button these days; Del.icio.us has updated its usual button to be more functional, and renamed it as well.

Thanks to John/Rick for drawing my attention to this great post from Fred Wilson.

Google has added two more links to its expanding “More” box that pops out of its search engine tabs.

Which one of these methods is the most effective when it comes to search engine marketing? Is it a “one or the other” technique or is a successful SEM campaign dependent on prudent utilization of both techniques? These questions have been brought to the forefront thanks to a brewing disagreement between parties supporting each side.

Seattle was hit bad by violent winds and power outages over the weekend, and Microsoft’s employees blogged their experiences (in many cases only after days of waiting for the power to return). Todd Bishop has a rundown.

Wikis have been a hot topic this year, and most of the stories about them have been both positive and optimistic. Everybody likes wikis, a lot of individuals (and businesses and organizations) want them. But a recent open peer review experiment at the scientific journal Nature has failed, and some people are now second-guessing the model.

When you create a new site design, you should always remember a few key points. If you don’t, not only is it bad for search engines, but also visitors.