Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told the Washington Post today that trees will have no fears from newspaper publishers as all media will be eletronic. Funny to see someone with such influence on our lives be so far off the track. Guess it is a long time since he used public transportation, Unless Microsoft is working on some method of running cars using paper and give the world electronic readers to stop them from wanting newspapers.

CNN/crime nailed one Google search crime story but missed the other. CNN caught the man who murdered his wife and daughter but missed the sex offender practicing medicine in Florida. Neil Entwistle, the British husband and father who did a Google search on " how to kill with a knife " four days before the slayings of his wife and daughter, was convicted today. The jury found him guilty of two first-degree murder charges, possession of a firearm and possession of ammunition.

Search engine marketers in the US tend to look West when trying to spot new SEM trends. As Frederick Jackson Turner first observed back in 1893, the frontier has always had a significant influence on American perceptions. But, if you stare into the sunset too long, you might not see the other "new frontier" North of the Canada-United States border that's also shaping search engine marketing trends. While Search Engine Strategies Toronto ended last week,

Like a politician making campaign promises, Google has announced its involvement in the launch of the "Internet for Everyone" campaign. Unlike politicians, we actually know what the campaign is all about from the title and there's a higher chance of Google carrying out this platform than politicians keeping their promises. The "Internet for Everyone" campaign is based on four principles: Access, Choice, Openness, and Innovation. Yup, that sounds like Google.

It's no secret that Twitter has been struggling lately. At any given moment, the social chat platform can go down, preventing a plethora of Tweets from being broadcast to the socially adept. But that hasn't kept the company from getting another round of funding, and help from friends in high places. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is investing in the social network using his personal venture investment company, Bezos Expeditions. Meanwhile,

IDC has released new projections for global internet ad spending. This year, they expect internet advertising to reach $65.2 billion, which accounts for roughly 10% of all ad spending. And despite current economic woes, spending will continue to increase. By 2011, the worldwide spend is expected to exceed $106 billion. Earlier this month, IDC released data showing that online advertising was up 23.9% in the first quarter of 2008 over the same period in 2007 .

Today, Publicis announced the launch of their new digital advertising initiative, VivaKi. And Yahoo wasted no time sending out a press release regarding the new partnership with Publicis, perhaps in an attempt to compete with the news of Google's Ad Planner . But with Google already having its own agreement with Publicis , Yahoo is really just playing catch-up. Yahoo's partnership is a dizzying array of product integrations between the two. Let's dive in: First up,

Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Microsoft and Yahoo were talking again. I was immediately skeptical. Recently, All Things Digital had called out TechCrunch as conducting piggyback reporting instead of doing their own heavy-lifting. While I thought that was a bit harsh )All Things Digital is a project of the Wall Street Journal, and quite frankly - who has their connections?(, it came as no surprise that TechCrunch would attempt to break a big story. Still,

How many maps would a mapmaker make if a mapmaker could make maps online? Google will soon have the answer. Today Google launched Google Map Maker, a new product that enables users to contribute and edit Maps data for regions around the world. Building a map is a complex process that's made easier by a worldwide geo-wiki. Google Map Maker promises to be an easy-to-use tool to build high quality maps of neighborhoods, cities and countries. Map Maker allows people to add,

SpyFu, a site that allows you to see what the competition is up to online , has announced the expansion of its search engine analytics services to the UK. SpyFu says it's the first service to offer comprehensive data to the UK. Here's the data that will be available through SpyFu UK : Natural search competitors Paid search competitors Competitors' Keywords Competitors' Cost per click Rankings SpyFu launched in May 2007 and says it already sees 1 million visitors per month.

Earlier today, we brought you news of Google's new media measurement tool . The official announcement has been published on the Inside Adwords blog. The new tool will be called Ad Planner )yes, there is a space between the two words(, and is in a private, invitation-only beta. You can request an invitation , if you're interested. Ad Planner was developed for media planners in the hopes of creating a better connection between advertisers and publishers.

Search engines are the preferred method of researching a product they're considering purchasing, according to data released by Opinion Research Corporation. 63% of those surveyed say they consult online news, blogs, and consumer feedback before making a purchase. And if you've been tempted to abandon organic based on the "SEO is dead" debate , you may want to think again: 70% go online to find information on brands, especially for travel, leisure,

Google's Conversion Optimizer was released in January and was designed to streamline the AdWords bidding process. Now, Google has announced that the tool is supported by AdWords Editor and Adwords API . In order to use Conversion Optimizer, you must have AdWords Conversion Tracking enabled and have accrued 200 conversions over the past 30 days. Conversion Optimizer uses several factors to determine an optimal CPC bid based on the maximum CPA set by the user.

Yahoo! has licensed Urban Mapping's Urbanware: Neighborhoods, which contains data for 40,000 neighborhood boundaries covering more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns. The agreement will help Yahoo provide geographically-targeted results based on actual search behavior. "Urban Mapping's neighborhood boundary information helps us offer our users access to more complete and relevant content," said Bob Upham, Director of Business Development for Yahoo! Geo Technologies.

Google is planning to launch a media planning tool which will aid advertisers in targeting audiences, according to published reports . The tool will be free and feature audience measurement data. While geared specifically towards advertisers, though web publishers will have access as well. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that a separate tool will be launched to show how web users respond to online ads.

Google is the world leader among search engines and even Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has conceded Google's won the search game. But most people don't think of Google as an offline information service - until they try GOOG 411 . Canadians now have their chance to experience GOOG 411. Not French Canadians, though. Google has launched GOOG 411 in the Canadian market only in English.

USA Today recently asked Google's Matt Cutts for tips to help sites rank in their search engine. Cutts offered up 5 tips plus a word of advice in implementing the tips. Here they are: Spotlight your search term on the page . If you want to be found for your keyword , make sure that term is on the page you want to rank. The term should be at the top as well as peppered throughout your copy. Fill in your "tags.

Russia's most popular search engine has officially announced plans to open a labs office in Silicon Valley. This news began to leak last week with the departure of Yahoo SVP and General Manager of Search, Vishal Makhijani . Makhijani will be President of Yandex Labs in the Bay Area, and will report directly to the CEO of Yandex. Yandex says it sees about 1 billion searches per month. Last month, Google saw 6.8 billion searches, while Yahoo saw 2.2 billion ,

If you want to see how your site is doing compared to the competition, then the new Google Trends for Websites is yet another option to conduct your research. Following the lead of sites like Compete.com and Alexa , Google Trends for Websites allows you to see a graph of traffic to the sites you designate. But Google Trends for Websites is only adding to the confusion caused by Compete and Alexa . I used all three to compare SearchEngineWatch.com, SearchEngineLand.com,

This weekend, the Personal Democracy Forum hosted a Twitter-only political experiment. The participants gave it the old college try, including a Time magazine blogger and Obama and McCain representatives. At least so far, Twitter falters on the political front. My main complaint is that it's too hard to follow the topics among the participants. Also there's no simple way to browse all their tweets together, beyond the most recent 20 messages. Finally,