Twitter appears to have quelled recent hacker attacks, and fully restored service for all of its micro-messaging fanatics -- for now.

That not all tweets are created alike should be obvious to Twitter users. That a full 40% of all tweets are "pointless babble" might come as a surprise. Or maybe that a full 60% aren't comes as more of a shock.

Two well-heeled entrepreneurs are backing a startup intent on facilitating easy access to Twitter. Dubbed TweetDeck, about 10-15% of all tweets are already sent via the third-party service.

Msnbc.com has acquired a local new site named EveryBlock, reports, well, MSNBC. The Chicago-based site, which already offers news and information down to the neighborhood level in 15 cities, allows users to type in their address, neighborhood name or ZIP code to view nearby news coverage, blog entries, civic data, photos, and the like.

Overtaking AOL, Gmail is now the third largest Web mail service in the U.S. with 37 million unique visitors -- compared to 36.4 million for AOL, according to comScore. Yahoo Mail still dominates with 106 million monthly unique visitors, followed by Windows Live Hotmail with 47 million unique visitors.

Turns out AOL's New York offices are just like those at any youthful interactive shop buzzing with new and inspired Web products and services for an audience of about 76 million unique visitors.

In what can only spell more trouble for news publishers already drowning in a sea of à la carte aggregators and connected content sharers, the Huffington Post has tapped Facebook Connect to make news consumption that much more modifiable. "HuffPost Social News," so-called, lets readers create a highly-customized and community-connected news pages on Huffington Post itself. Users of the new service have their choice between a dedicated page on which to play editor, and a module positioned on every HuffPo page showing what their Facebook friends are posting on their own HuffPost Social News page.

Life just wouldn't be the same without AOL laying-off hundreds employees every few months. But rumors are swirling -- or Swisher-ing, you might say -- that the recently restructured, and soon-to-be independent, company might being holding onto its pink slips for the foreseeable future.

Might Illinois Governor Pat Quinn's decision to ban sex offenders from social networkers have been a bad move, and actually make the world a more dangerous place for kids?

So, what hotshot executive is going to fill the void recently left by Google head Eric Schmidt on Apple's board of directors? In all likelihood, someone already on a first-name basis with Steve Jobs.