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The New York Times has launched a public testing site called beta620 where it will try out new web experiments, some of which will eventually "graduate" to become full-fledged New York Times products. The site launched with seven projects, including instant search, richer community tools, and an HTML5 Web app for the NYTimes Crossword Puzzle.

The site's welcome post says beta620 "will also be a place where Times developers interact with readers to discuss projects, and incorporate community suggestions into their work." This audience-friendly approach is a stark reversal from the company's past approach to web innovation.

Security researchers are warning of the newest Facebook threat, something they're calling "likejacking," a Facebook-enabled clickjacking attack that tricks users into clicking links that mark the clicked site as one of your Facebook "likes." These likes then show up on your profile and, of course, in your Facebook News Feed where your friends can see the link and click it, allowing the vicious, viral cycle to continue.

Imagine if the tens of millions who give time and money to tending their Farmville game were instead working for social change. A team of Hollywood's elite talent has been working with an army of advisors for six years to create a game building infrastructure that will make it so.

Armchair Revolutionary is a social gaming and strategic crowdsourcing concept that's based on real life social needs. The games are designed to connect the real-time Web to real-time social change.

The New York Times confirmed today that beginning in early 2011 the company will adopt a paid model for its Web site, NYTimes.com. The move comes at a time when much of the newspaper industry is searching for a way to stop the bleeding brought on by the Internet and the accompanying smaller revenue streams that online advertising produces.

Many fear that putting content behind a paywall will just drive readers to other sources, but perhaps the Times' approach will help to combat that issue.

According to internal sources, the New York Times may soon be charging users for its online content.

In a move that would bring the publication parallel to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, the New York Times seems to have settled on a system that would allow online readers to sample a certain amount of content before being prompted to subscribe. This decision would be a landmark in the ongoing cultural debate on whether online content should be free or not and could represent another fundamental shift in how users expect to access and consume news, depending on which news organizations follow suit.