​Map enthusiasts and social media aficionados, rejoice! A website and iPhone application that is officially launching today is taking the concept of mapping to a whole new interactive level that might forever change your physical and virtual existence as a New Yorker.

In all seriousness, though, this thing's pretty cool -- CityMaps, a one-stop shop map site and iPhone app, integrates hyperlocal data with all kinds of social media functions so that users can browse around and make plans based on real-time information coming from across the city.

Here's how it works: The map, which aims to include the name and location of every storefront on every block, is connected to Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and all the other cool networking sites kids are using these days. CityMaps users can browse what's around them, find out what other people have said and are saying about these establishments, and get info on what kinds of deals or events these businesses are having at that moment. All in a user-friendly, visually-intuitive format!

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​Yesterday, the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York City, released its annual "Attacks on the Press" report , which paints a grim picture of the deaths, imprisonments, and censorship of reporters across the country. The report says that, in some ways, the findings are more troubling than ever, and today, news broke supporting the need for greater attention on threats to the free press: two journalists covering Syria died pursuing a deadly bombardment of a central city.

Just last week, Anthony Shadid, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times, also died in Syria, due to an apparent asthma attack.

This latest news fits into a larger landscape of increasingly complex challenges for reporters internationally, which the CPJ's full report available online describes in great detail.

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​Conservative Christian males and liberal atheist females are being targeted -- on Facebook, at least.

According The New York Times, these kinds of digital details are increasingly valuable to office-seekers than ever before.

As we all know, Facebook thrives off of tracking our web patterns, analyzing our likes and dislikes and then selling these details to advertisers.

A Facebook profile, in this sense, is our consumer profile and, in the recent election cycle, it has evolved into yet another form: our voter profile.

More and more, presidential hopefuls, including Barack Obama, are using a marketing staple of the information and Facebook age known as micro-targeting.

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​New York State senator Diane Savino, a Democrat representing Staten Island and Brooklyn, had some important breaking news to share with the media today. Her personal Facebook page has hit the 5,000-friend mark (a "social media milestone," it seems), which is where Facebook cuts you off. Followers have been urged to instead "like" her other page. The release:

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​Breath a sigh of relief, social-media-driven future masters of the universe reading this while debating whether to put on your Harvard or your Northwestern sweatshirt! Harvard is back in business! Horrifyingly, last year the esteemed university had fallen in the rankings, no longer at the top of the list of "most talked-about U.S. universities," failing to meet the high standards expected of it. But according to a new survey, Harvard is back to the number one position on the list, just in time for back to school! What a relief for incoming freshman, who surely were concerned their college experience was never going to compare to what everyone had been saying on Twitter and Facebook.

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Collecting your data to serve you better.

​If you're on Facebook, you've likely seen the panicky message that's been circulating, warning that the social networking behemoth has started publishing all your phone contacts for everybody to see:

"ALL THE PHONE NUMBERS IN YOUR PHONE are now PUBLISHED on Facebook! Go to the top right of the screen, click on Account, then click on Edit Friends, go left on the screen and click on Contacts. Then go to the right hand side and click on "visit page" to remove this display option. Please repost this on your Status, so your friends can remove their numbers and thus prevent abuse if they do not want them published."

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One more reason to think twice about your wall posts.

​You thought it was bad when you got a friend request for your mom. But in retrospect, stakes were low -- at worst, you maybe had an awkward conversation about those keg-stand pictures. Now, things are more serious: The cops are on Facebook. And Twitter. And all your social media.

The NYPD has created a new unit to catch people plotting crimes on social media as well as those bragging about their unlawful acts afterward.

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Remember Rick Astley, the ginger-haired crooner with the boyish face and sultry dance moves from the '80s? Whoever is manning the White House Twitter sure does. When today's White House correspondence briefing was dubbed not "nearly as entertaining as yesterday's," they responded quickly, succinctly, and Astley:

​"Something more fun" being the video after the jump, of course:

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The 2012 Cherry Blossom Centennial Stamp

​Yesterday, the dying government institution that is the United States Postal Service made one last attempt at staying relevant by offering sneak-peeks of new 2012 stamps over Facebook and Twitter. They will post a new stamp every weekday for some undetermined amount of time. The USPS social-media person must be too old to appreciate the irony in trying to save snail mail on the interwebs, or maybe the Postal Service has finally realized that the only young people who are going to buy stamps are irony-loving hipsters.

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​Google has launched Google+, a social networking service they hope will compete with Facebook and eventually destroy it and reduce Mark Zuckerberg to the sniveling street urchin he once was. Google+, which can only be accessed by invited guests as of today, has stressed its focus on privacy, an issue many users still complain about with Facebook. What else is going on with Google+? Is it easy to use? What kind of features does it have? What does it smell like? Let's take a look.

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