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A company called SocialShield has launched new technology aimed at keeping children and teens safe on social networking sites like Facebook. Using patent-pending "Safety Engines", the service scans a child's social networking profile to look for inappropriate, dangerous or otherwise suspicious content or behavior. When it finds questionable material, parents are alerted immediately via email.

A report yesterday from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that online ad revenue is on the verge of surpassing print ads - an inspiring milestone for new media and convergence. However, the PwC survey was based on combined figures across all online media outlets; are individual news outlets having success detaching themselves from the traditional print ad revenue addiction? The Financial Times, London's version of the Wall Street Journal, says it has leveraged its niche market and will see print ad revenues dip below direct payments made to the paper this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Online tracking firm Quantcast has just released new data that shows mobile operating systems' current market share in North America, with the newly renamed "iOS" (originally called "iPhone OS" - the OS powering the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch) in the lead...by miles. The Apple mobile OS dominates its competitors with a huge chunk of mobile market share, at 60%.

But don't let these numbers fool you. It's not how much or how little of the mobile landscape each OS has claim to, but how fast this picture has changed over the preceding months. The real winner here is Android, the OS whose rapid gains have come at Apple's expense.

Social photo-sharing site Flickr has, at long last, added some much-need social networking integration to its online service. You can now simultaneously post your photos to Flickr and Facebook. Only photos you set as "public" will appear on your Facebook Wall, however, as the new sharing options respect your photos' privacy settings.

But don't be confused if you start seeing double-posts of Flickr photos once you enable this new feature: this supplements, but does not replace the native Flickr sharing you may have configured earlier via Facebook settings.

The Hulu rumors resurface once again. This time, two sources have been cited by a Reuters report confirming, for what seems like the thousandth time, that indeed Hulu is poised to roll out a subscription service. And like the sources quoted last month by the L.A. Times, this will start soon - perhaps even within the next month or two.

The only new information in today's report is that this supposed paid version of Hulu may now be making its way to other devices, including Apple's iPad and Microsoft's Xbox 360.

The Chinese government released a new white paper on Tuesday detailing the country's official position on Internet policy. Coming three months after the very public dispute with Google, which resulted in the shutdown of Google's China-based portal, the paper offers a revealing look back on Chinese Internet history as well as where the country stands today.

Not surprisingly, China still supports the so-called "Great Firewall" approach to controlling and censoring Internet content, but it also oddly mentions Twitter as a favorable development for Chinese Internet citizens. Why is that odd? Because China routinely blocks Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networking services from being accessible to Chinese citizens.

Yahoo has announced a series of changes set to roll out this week that integrate Facebook's social networking service into various Yahoo properties, including Yahoo Mail and its homepage. Also included in the announcement is news of a refresh for Yahoo Profiles. Originally launched in 2008, the new profiles will be accessible at pulse.yahoo.com (whenever Yahoo gets around to making that URL live, that is.)

With all these changes, we wonder: Did Yahoo finally pick a new direction? And is it "social network aggregation?"

A new mashup lets you track the BP oil spill news using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more, all from one interface. Called "Oilaholic," the site serves as a one-stop shop for everything oil spill-related, including the latest tweets, the live video cam feed from uStream, the latest Facebook news and Flickr photos, the hottest headlines from Google News and elsewhere on the Web, a real-time "leak meter" feed (which is incredibly disturbing), and a live chatroom for venting your frustrations after you look at the leak meter, plus links to useful resources including government agencies, volunteer efforts, phone numbers to call and more.

Since the device's release 2 months ago, many have praised the iPad for its media consumption capabilities while admitting that media creation is not its strong suit. It may not be the best device to compose a day's worth of emails, but watching video and reading books and news on the large touchscreen is certainly a compelling experience. Feeds are one of the most efficient ways to quickly consume large amounts of information from the Web, and feed reading service Netvibes is bringing their popular Web-based experience to the consumption-friendly iPad.

The Google Mobile team unveiled a new type of search results today: Android and iPhone native apps. It's a great idea, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

Try searching for terms like "Bank of America app," or "download Shazam" on your Android or iPhone and the app store's top search result will appear at the top of the page. Unfortunately, I tried deliberately searching for a long list of specific apps and types of apps but didn't get the new kind of results in very many cases. This will have to change in time, the opportunity is just too big.