If you want to discover the current trends on Twitter, and the reason they are trending, What the Trend tells you what and why.

Two types of messages drive What The Trend – short phrases and hashtags.

The site gets its trending information using the twitter API, then What The Trend members pitch in, to say why they think the items are interesting, providing a short description of it. Then, What The Trend staff moderate the descriptions and send them back out in their own feed. That feed runs on many other sites, including Twitter.

Tweeternet will keep an eye on it and it we think it is valuable, we may decide to run it at Tweeternet too.

The current top 10 things trending, as I write this are:

Currently Trending on Twitter, According To What The Trend

• Katie Couric
• #sincewebeinghonest
  people are being honest.
• #thingsthatpissmeoff
  people disrespecting my personal space.
• #iLoveWhen
  Things, people or activities you love.
• NHS
  NHS patients will be able to get free treatment almost anywhere they want – public or private – under radical reforms unveiled.
• TAYLOR WON
  Taylor Swift wins Entertainer of the Year at the ACMA.
• Pet Shop Boys
  The Pet Shop Boys will support Take That on their upcoming Progress Live tour.
• Kate Bush
  Singer Kate Bush says she is ‘likely’ to release new music this year.
• Alan Titchmarsh
  One Direction are going to be on the show 3/4pm tonight.
• Martin Luther King
  The third Monday in January is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the US, a national holiday remembering the famous Baptist preacher and civil rights pioneer.

Twitter updated their website last week and there is now a vulnerability.

The Exploit

The exploit takes advantage of the Javascript function on MouseOver. It allows the links to launch popup windows, and some users are being directed to spam and porn sites.

This exploit only affects users who are on the twitter.com website, so anyone using a third party website or a software application, is not affected.

Twitter released a basic acknowledgment of the flaw and says that it’s working to correct it. “We’ve identified and are patching an XSS attack; as always, please message @safety (Twitter’s official security account) if you have info regarding such an exploit,” the company wrote in a tweet.

XSS is shorthand for Cross Site Scripting. This Twitter Exploit should be resolved quickly.

Tim Martin is a Technology Specialist, Follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/tsmartin75 or on Twitter @tsmartin. For more of Tim’s news articles, visit tech-rewind.com

The previous notification format, that told you about a new follower, looked like this:

Bob Calvert (talkwithheroes) is now following your tweets on Twitter.

A little information about Bob Calvert:

Now, since July 15th, the new, more compact format provides more information. Now included is a mini bio for the person following you, their location and the number of lists they have.

TheGoToSite @TheGoToSite Southern California

Bio Thousands of pages of military-veteran resources and information including jobs, schools, benefits, news and more. Something for everyone.

1,533	42,623	46,6155	2
tweets	follows	followers	lists

This is a nice improvement. I like it because it helps me decide immediately if I should take a closer look now, or just wait until later, as I often do.

Sadly, it isn’t true. The sender isn’t twitter at all, but a spambot, sending you a virus-infected file, in zip format.

So delete the message and be sure it is purged from your mailbox.

Here is one of the messages, so you can see what it looks like:

Your friend invited you to twitter!

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question:

What are you doing?

To join or to see who invited you, check the attachment.

The app displays browsing trends, the ability to see top tweets, find popular users, and check out public tweets in the same geographic location as your iphone. The main focus of the app is the discovery of interesting, relevant information. Twitter says signup is quick and easy, with no visit to the twitter web site needed to create an account.

I will be testing this app on my iphone over the next week.

The post said the engineering blog is an important resource.

Twitter had blogged about some changes impacting requirements related to authentication, that developers need to know.

One major problem for any developer is that there are often too many “important sources,” and often, new sources appear, and not everyone knows they exist.