The Obama administration on Friday released a roadmap for building a U.S. cyber-security workforce, and testing the government's success at raising public awareness of computer threats. "Currently, there is no definition of what it means to be a cybersecurity professional," Nextgov.com notes. The draft strategic plan therefore sets forth a way to measure the results of federal and private sector workforce development efforts. The National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, or NICE, a branch of the Commerce Department, developed the proposal this past spring to bring some order to the new frontier of cyber-security training, agency officials said at the …

Mobile Q&A app Opinionaided just raised a $4.3 million Series A round led by SoftBank Capital and BlueRun Ventures. "If you've never tried it, you simply must (I insist)," writes Vator News' Faith Merino. "The process is simple and straightforward: Users can connect via Facebook and post a question along with an associated image, select the age and sex of the users they want to query ... or keep it within their own intimate circle of friends." In addition, Opinionaided just announcing the release of version 3.1 of its iOS app, which features a revamped user interface and …

Yahoo this week updated its image search with a new layout, viewer, and Facebook integration. "The new layout for image results has three tabs at the top for Top Results, Galleries, and Facebook," reports PCMag.com. "The first shows the standard Web results, the second lists related galleries on Flickr, Yahoo News and OMG, and the third shows results from your Facebook friends' photos if you've connected your Facebook account to your Yahoo account." Also worth noting, Yahoo image results are now presented in a grid of equally sized squares, while, as with Google and Bing's image search, hovering …

"Angry Birds" creator Rovio Entertainment Oy is reportedly in talks to receive funding that would value the company at about $1.2 billion. The Finnish game maker is considering taking a strategic investment from a company in the entertainment business, sources tell Bloomberg. While rejecting similar offers from large institutional investors in the past, Rovio may take the funds to fuel its expansion. "The company plans to make an 'Angry Birds' movie and open offices outside of Finland, and is seeking to capitalize on the popularity of its brand in countries such as China," reports Bloomberg. Likely investors include …

Faced with mounting criticism over using members' names and photographs in ads, LinkedIn has agreed to alter its recently launched "social advertising" feature. In a blog post, LinkedIn said it has been "listening" to user complaints, and "could have communicated" its intentions with the new ad feature more clearly. "As a result, it said, it will change how the advertisements appear," Computerworld writes. "If a LinkedIn user 'follows' a company or service on LinkedIn, the ad feature can display the user's name and photo in advertisements for that company." LinkedIn said its goal was to deliver more useful …

Particularly in niche areas, investors clearly believe there's room for more daily deal services. Zulily, which specializes in baby and children's products, just announced a $43 million venture capital round led by Meritech Capital Partners, GeekWire reports. Having now raised $53.6 million, Zulily has already outgrown three office buildings and ballooned from two co-founders to 240 employees since it was founded just 22 months ago. "And now Zulily is putting a little extra rocket fuel in the tank," GeekWire writes. "Meritech, along with existing investors, such as Maveron and August Capital, obviously think that Zulily has what it …

How are consumers coping with social media overload? The New York Times counts the ways. As the paper reports, one young New Yorker tries to limit her social activity to Twitter and e-mail, though she has been experimenting with Google+ since its recent debut. Meanwhile, "the most active and organized users of social networks have daily routines for grooming their digital identities," NYT explains. "Generally, these routines rely on automation and syndication." For that, consumers are resorting to sites like Ping.fm, OnlyWire and Hellotxt, which let them post the same content across multiple networking sites with a click …

Last month, LinkedIn notified users that it was making some changes. "Basically, the professional networking site now allows third parties -- people, products or services you have recommended on the site -- to use your name and photo in ads unless you opt out of a default setting," explains The Los Angeles Times. "It also allows LinkedIn partners to send you promotional content as part of a marketing or hiring campaign -- again unless you opt out of the default setting." Same goes for third-party applications that have access to your data on LinkedIn unless you opt out. LinkedIn …

Amounting to a partial redesign, Twitter this week introduced two new "activity-centric" features, Mashable reports. The changes, "designed to help users more easily discover what's happening on Twitter in relation to them, are reflected in two new tabs on Twitter.com: '@[username]' and 'Activity.'" The @username tab replaces the mentions tab, and is more of a personal notifications dashboard. The tab will now include tweets directed at users via @replies, highlight "favorited" tweets and retweeted tweets, and include new follower notifications. Meanwhile, the Activity tab's purpose is similar to activity notifications that appear in Facebook's News Feed. The tab …

Domestically, Google lost share among online searches in July, while Yahoo -- yes, Yahoo! -- gained, reports Bloomberg Businessweek, citing new comScore data. Google's share of the U.S. search market declined to 65.1% last month from 65.5% in June, while Yahoo's rose to 16.1% from 15.9%, according to ComScore. Microsoft, meanwhile, was unchanged at 14.4% "Google typically displays more summer seasonality than other search engines, given its high usage among students in the academic world," Douglas Anmuth, an analyst with JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, wrote in a research note. "The company, which gets most of …