This is one of the weirder and more interesting logos to show on the Google homepage : in disco neon lights, Google celebrates the anniversary of the first laser. Wikipedia explains (footnotes removes, my emphasis): <<A laser is an electronic-optical device that emits coherent light radiation. The term "laser" is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation . (...) The first working laser was demonstrated on May 16,

Posted by great scott! This week, Rand discusses a few essential strategies to consider when adding a blog to your site. If you want your blog to be readable, enjoyable, and able to generate links and traffic, give this installment of Whiteboard Friday a look. SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-Blogging for Higher Rankings from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo . Do you like this post?

Yahoo just announced they will be partnering with WPP to provide access to their advertising inventory to the clients and agencies associated with WPP. The agreement involves the use of WPP's recent acquisition, 24/7 Media. The press release (below) suggests Yahoo will give direct access to available inventory to the clients and agencies partnered with WPP.

The results of our poll on how Online Marketing Blog readers use Twitter are in. We had over 220 responses, which isn't a bad sample considering this blog is fairly niche with a modest sized (and very smart) audience. Below I've listed the poll results and a few comments on each. (39%, 87 Votes) Sharing links to items of interest to your network - Not surprising since the speed of reach on Twitter is so fast. As soon as you find something interesting that's linkable,

Facebook was onboard with Google's new Friend Connect - until they looked a little closer at how the technology works. Then they suspended Google's access to Facebook. On the Facebook Developer's blog post " Thoughts on Privacy " it says: We've found that it [ Google Friend Connect] redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge,

Posted by Nick Gerner I've been reading some of the papers from AIRWeb '08 , the recent web spam conference, and I came across one called, " A Few Bad Votes Too Many? Towards Robust Ranking in Social Media ." What was really interesting to me is that the authors quantify the effects of vote spam in "thumbing" systems (like the one we have here at SEOmoz), and that they rank the usefulness of different features in ranking questions and answers.

In our last release of Live Search for Windows Mobile we snuck in a little feature that allows users to send feedback directly to the engineering team. Since then, we've received tons of messages from users, many of which have been requests for new functionality. So what's the moral of the story? Ask, and you shall receive. Here's the list of some of the cool stuff we've built in response to user feedback.

In the world of landing page testing there are two common mathematical approaches: A-B Split testing, and parametric Multivariate testing. A subset of Multivariate testing is known as "Design of Experiments" (DoE) and is also called "fractional factorial". A common fractional factorial approach is called the "Taguchi Method". Some online marketers consider A-B Split testing to be kind of wimpy, and endow fractional factorial methods with an almost mythical quality.

Usually a missive with an Internal Revenue Service return address is about as welcome as a dusting of poison ivy. Offer a little stimulus, however, and taxpayers can't wait. How have they loved the IRS in the past month? Let us count a few of the searches: " 2008 tax rebate checks tax return " (+14,579%), " government rebate checks 2008 " (+13,085%), " tax stimulus checks " (+5,798%), " federal tax rebate " (+652%), " 600 dollar tax refund 2008 " (+566%),

Part of your search engine optimization strategy is the study of analytics particularly when it comes to where your visitors are coming from and what search terms they are using to find you. I know some search engine optimization consultants keep a daily watch on sites to track exactly what effects their actions are having on the sites they have been optimizing. It seem that, for about a week, Google analytics had problems with their databases and data displayed was incorrect.

When you're looking to attract media attention to your press releases, you'll want to be sure that you are aware of the dual role that bloggers have in promoting your business. The first role is as members of the media; when you want to attract media attention, you'll want to be sure that you are thinking about all members of the media - including those who are involved as bloggers. Therefore,

There is a discussion at WebmasterWorld forums about Yahoo sending visitors to country specific versions of their homepage. So if you try and go to Yahoo.com from England or Germany you end up at the country specific version of the Yahoo homepage. Google has been doing this for a long time, interesting that it has taken this long for Yahoo to catch on and drive local traffic to their many country specific sites. Could this help international search numbers?

There you have it, Yahoo Board's Chairman Roy Bostock responding to Icahn's letter to the Yahoo board nominating 10 members of the Icahn's proposed Yahoo Board Members. In the said letter Bostock reiterated Yahoo Board's stand that the current members of the Board remain the best and most qualified group to maximize value for all Yahoo! stockholders. Bostock then recounts the events that transpired the past months between Microsoft and Yahoo,

Yahoo's Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock fired back a reply, on behalf of the beleaguered board members Carl Icahn has been trying to replace, stating Icahn had a "significant misunderstanding of the facts about the Microsoft proposal and the diligence with which our board evaluated and responded to that proposal". Icahn had sent an open letter to the board informing them of his intended proxy fight, Kevin Newcombe reported earlier today. Bostock's letter read: Dear Mr.

Facebook was onboard with Google's new Friend Connect - until they looked a little closer at how the technology works. Then they suspended Google's access to Facebook. On the Facebook Developer's blog post "Thoughts on Privacy" it says: "We've found that it [ Google Friend Connect] redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge,

The Rolling Stones were the first official Living Legends to join the program that connects luminaries with the YouTube community - they asked for questions , you heeded their call, and now they've responded with gusto. Here's a sneak peek: The questions submitted to the band came from old fans as well as new recruits, and ranged from Zapterazor 's query about internet piracy (which he asked dressed as a pirate) to Banteron 's probe into Mick Jagger's voodoo past .

The U.S. government charged a mother who allegedly used MySpace in a deadly hoax that drove her daughter's 13-year-old classmate (pictured here) to suicide with conspiracy. Missouri resident Lori Drew, after her daughter's schoolgirl fights with neighbor Megan Meier, 13, created a fake MySpace account to pose as a boy and flirt with Meier. When Drew began using her online identity to taunt Meier, the girl hanged herself.

It's a good problem to have, right? Well, not always. Last week I pointed you all to Mike Stelzner's video about making money with white papers . White papers are educational documents that contain "under the radar" persuasive elements that lead people to buy stuff, and Mike is a master at them. There's a lot of money in white papers' both for freelance writers and for small business owners.

Ahhh. The time killing game of beer pong. For those of you who have never played beer pong (or have so severely lost that you no longer remember playing), this is truly a game of whit and fortitude. All you need to play is a ping pong ball, plenty of beer, and a few cups. Team up, take turns throwing the ping pong ball at your opponents cups (filled with beer of course), and every time you land in the cup the opposing team drinks the beer. As a favorite game among techies,

Three weeks after announcing SearchMonkey and opening it up for a limited preview, Yahoo has finally made the Yahoo search results development platform open to all. To refresh our memories, Yahoo search monkey as an open ecosystem has three components: Site owners share structured data with Yahoo!, using semantic markup (microformats, RDF), standardized XML feeds, APIs (OpenSearch or other web services), and page extraction.