The power of excellent public relations and positioning a company as an alternative t the technological norm has paid off for Powerset, the semantics oriented search technology which launched its limited public testing application in May which lends a new way to semantically navigate Wikipedia . Rumors began spinning around the blogosphere last week that Microsoft was looking to acquire Powerset , and it looks like the inevitable has happened.

It's getting even harder to make of a good short relevant domain name. Hence the web-based tools allowing you to find one are numerous. This time I will review mostly the ones that check the domain name availability dynamically and also provide you with some tips to advance your search.

Both Google and Yahoo in coordination with Adobe is finally making it easier for webmasters to make Flash contents on their site searchable by search engines' crawlers. Where as before, webmasters have to do some special arrangements with their Flash content to make it indexable by the search engines' crawlers. For Google, their search engine will index textual content of SWF files including Flash gadgets - such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites,

Expectedly, now that Google has relaunched DoubleClick's Performics ad affiliate network as the new Google Affiliate Network , there's no point in maintaining the Adsense Referrals Program anymore. So,  Google Adsense has just sent an official email to )I suppose( all Adsense members informing us that Google is retiring the Adsense Referrals Program starting the last week of August.

When Google acquired DoubleClick , the company has brought with it its affiliate ad network program called Performics. But Google never did something to push Performics as one of its advertising program, until now. Google has renamed Performics as the Google Affiliate Network , and Amazon with its popular Affiliate Marketing Network called Amazon Associates have something to worry about. The Google Affiliate Network works like your ordinary affiliate ad network,

When Google acquired DoubleClick , the company has brought with it its affiliate ad network program called Performics. But Google never did something to push Performics as one of its advertising program, until now. Google has renamed Performics as the Google Affiliate Network , and Amazon with its popular Affiliate Marketing Network called Amazon Associates have something to worry about. The Google Affiliate Network works like your ordinary affiliate ad network,

Though the iPhone may be considered the best phone for internet mobile use, Google has improved its search results for the Blackberry. As Googles goal is to help users search more efficiently, these improvements to the Blackberry will do just that. As reported in the Google Mobile Blog,

Keyword research is the first thing you do when planning a website. You do it before thinking over the site architecture and creating the content. Keyword research is the what you do to estimate your competition and create a promotion strategy. Previously, I have talked about the keyword research tools and ways to organize your keyword list . But where to start? How to find the correct core terms that you will then explore and expand?

A Microsoft Engineer leaves Microsoft to work at Google, and then decides to head back to Microsoft after spending time in the Google development system. Sergey Solyanik puts together an interesting read and comparison between the two companies, including how the perks at Google and social governance by peers lend to stronger teams and interaction but also result in questions over who is really in a management role.

SEOs keep discussing the effectiveness of old traditional techniques like reciprocal links and directory submission. Naturally, they cannot so easily be forgiven because they remain the easiest free way to gain backlinks with the keyword-targeted anchor text. I myself turned to the topic several times and got a heated discussion in response.

LinkedIn is putting together a smarter way to monetize itself with the launch of LinkedIn DirectAds )currently under limited testing(, which lets advertisers target ads by several demographic metrics such as age, gender, region, education or major, career industry and position. LinkedIn DirectAds is a grownup and more professional version of Facebook Ads, with a CPM )cost per impression( model instead of the cost per click.

Remember Adsense for Videos which debuted not so long ago? We haven't heard too much about this new form of placing Google paid ads since it was launched, until now. The NYT is reporting about the agreement between Google and Seth MacFarlane, creator of TV program "Family Guy", who is embarking on new animation series made for internet only, called "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.

Here you go, 10 search-related service for all your Twittering needs. Search for Twitter profiles, Twitter discussion, Twitter followings and what-have-yous. If you know of other Twitter search-related service/apps that we've missed, please let us know by leaving a comment. We'll gladly add them to the list.

Billionaire turned blogger Carl Icahn explains why he has not posted anything about his proxy battle against Yahoo in his newly established personal blog . At this time, due to SEC regulations, I do not intend to post your comments regarding the proxy fight. However, I am planning to give you my views about Yahoo and its management shortly. If you wish to be informed I invite you to subscribe . Stay tuned.

Any day now, we might as well expect some new changes in the iGoogle design. If you would recall, sometime in Apri, Google has already announced the new version of iGoogle. Google has also picked several user-developer to test out the new iGoogle design. If you're using iGoogle you would soon have cluster of tabso n the left hand side of the iGoogle. You can expand this tabs to reveal the list of gadgets and status information.

Whether this is true or just plain rumor, we'll let you decide. Venture Beat is reporting a scoop on a possible Microsoft acquisition deal of semantic search engine Powerset . Microsoft 's offer? - a whooping $100 million. Actually, we wouldn't be surprise if Microsoft will indeed buy Powerset since we all know that it has been struggling so hard in the web search department, always lagging behind Google and Yahoo.

If you've been hesitating to entrust your personal health records to online health providers and insurers, perhaps the newly launched C ommon Framework for Networked Personal Health Information would convince you otherwise. The Health Information standard which was negotiated by Markle Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit group that focuses on uses for information technology, gained the support of Google, Microsoft and other online health care players.

If not for Cenzic's CIA [Cenzic Intelligent Analysis] Research Lab which notified Yahoo on May 23 that Yahoo Mail is facing serious risk from online attackers due to a Cross Site Scripting )XSS( vulnerability, millions of Yahoo mail users might have been victimized already. XSS flaws are said to be the most common and risky vulnerability encountered by Web-based applications which when not fixed immediately,

Yahoo! )represented by Board Chairmen Roy Bostock and CEO Jerry Yang( has sent a letter to their Shareholders, to finally clear things on what's has been really going on with regards to the "alleged renewed talks" happening between Yahoo and Microsoft.

The results of the $10,000 Search Engine Journal Guest Blogging competition are finally in after the great SEJ Blog Off between John Carcutt and Richard Burckhardt, two excellent SEO's who have contributed incredible content to Search Engine Journal for this competition and also on various occasions. The Guest Blogging Competition The first $10,000 SEJ Guest Blogging was a huge success,