Whether it was to work in a more viable industry, or just a change to an area where his skill set could be more profitably employed, Brent D. Payne - the well branded face of online optimization for the Tribune is now Director of Search and Social Media at 435 Digital, the company announced today . If the Tribune that owns newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times and the Baltimore Sun,

Film director Michael Moore has offered to help bail out Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, and provide him a server to continue hosting his controversial site, not because it is one of the top searched terms at Google this month - but because he sees the site as a necessary free speech forum, he wrote at Huffington Post . In an article Moore wrote for the Huffington Post, he stated "So why is WikiLeaks, after performing such an important public service,

Many website owners use CMS to generate their sites - so Search Engine Watch Fourms has added a special place for you to get and share information about optimizing them, Hopefully you will find it a handy reference. I have reached out to Joost deValk aka Yoast to help out, so the information will be very accurate and invaluable to those new or advanced users of a number of CMS programs. Come join us at SEW CMS and SEO and add your contributions.

I realize that some of the information Google is offering at TeachParentsTech provides invaluable simple instructions to bring people up to speed on online things many take for granted, but their presentation does seem a little ageist. Why not just call it Tech For Dummies? Click to read the rest of this post.

Webmaster Tools has added some major improvements to the information they provide on search queries and inbound links to redirected pages. You can now see if a link to a redirected pages has been passed - but not the juice passed - and drill deep into search queries to individual pages, the Webmaster Tools blog reported . Click to read the rest of this post.

The impact of a Federally regulated Do Not Track registry has search engines and other online advertising vendors scurrying to self regulate. What steps are these online players implementing and why is the question. Click to read the rest of this post.

If you have a Gawker account and use the same username and password for all your online activity, you better hurry and change them as hackers accessed the Gawker servers making off with about 1.5 million username and passwords, Gawker admitted. "This weekend we discovered that Gawker Media's servers were compromised, resulting in a security breach at Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin, and Fleshbot. If you're a commenter on any of our sites,

Guess Saturday Night Live is counting on the hackers from 'Anonymous' - the group that has attacked Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and others - having a good sense of humor. The sketch involving Julian Assange in prison is below.

One person died and two were injured when two bombs exploded in Stockholm Sweden yesterday just minutes after the national news agency TT and Swedish security service Säpo received an email containing an audio attachment criticizing "anti-Islamic cartoons and the war in Afghanistan," the New York Times reported The content of the email had not been released by either group, but an "editor at the Swedish news agency Tidningarnas Telegrambyra, Dan Skeppe,

The Venezuelan Vice President Elías Jaua has asked his country's government to pass a law that would allow regulation of the internet and create one central access point for all distribution of the internet. "The bill also proposes allowing the government to restrict access to websites if they are found to be distributing messages or information that incite violence against the president. Chavez frequently accuses the opposition of plotting to kill him,

Google has a 300 person phone room dialing for dollars, selling local businesses their Boost and Tag services, Greg Sterling reported . Click to read the rest of this post.

Seems protesters love using Twitter to coordinate their group movements - but the U.K. students who rioted over the tripling of university fees Friday added Google Maps to their efforts. Click to read the rest of this post.

The CEOs of Microsoft and Twitter had breakfast Friday morning starting the rumor mills of what impact a merger of the two companies could have on the web and the search industry. Click to read the rest of this post.

Online security company Amorize has found malware in ads served by Google's DoubleClick ad serving platform, Wired reported . "The malware infects users who visit a page where an infected banner ad is displayed. It's installed as a drive-by download, meaning that users don't have to click on the ad to be infected, they just have to visit a website when the ad appears on the page." Click to read the rest of this post.

Twitter has over 175 million members, yet a recent survey has found only 8% of American adults use the social network, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. One wonders if this survey by Pew will have an impact on the amount of money companies spend to attract users of Twitter.

Automotive information site Edmunds.com tested four possible redesigns for their homepage and found users much preferred a simple minimalist homepage similar to the approach used by Google. "Site visitors were shown one of four Edmunds.com home pages, each created using a different design strategy. One prominently featured dramatic car photos, while another was more task-oriented. The third contained simple graphics and fewer choices,

The Chinese government does not want its citizens watching dissident Liu Xiaobo get his Nobel Peace Prize today, so they have blocked news sites such as CNN, BBC and the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK. Liu is serving an 11-year sentence for "inciting subversion" - criticizing the government, the UK Guardian reported. Click to read the rest of this post.

The morning news reported the predator targeting sorority pledges through Facebook chat was arrested. The Today Show, that reported on the story last week , announced the arrested of the man who had been 'terrorizing' the women. "The first communications seem harmless, yet are obvious attempts to gain trust. Subsequent chats get creepy, with requests for naked pictures, followed by threats to reveal secrets and commit violent acts," Fox News reported .

During a week when censorship of WikiLeaks ' publishing of US government cables is being discussed and people suggest the founder Julian Assange be killed, UNESCO announced the US will host World Press Freedom Day next year . Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg stated: "Every attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time." Interestingly,

Twitter seems to be changing the explanation of how their Trending Topics are chosen following the hacking of sites that have given roadblocks to WikiLeaks . Mastercard and Visa were among sites facing serious DDOS attacks yesterday following their involvement with WikiLeaks. Click to read the rest of this post.