Today Apple launched Ping. You can get the full story on ClickZ who covered the announcement. Were you expecting apple to launch a music social network today? Click to read the rest of this post.

At some point during the crush of Connected Marketing Week , Experian Hitwise announced the launch of two new premium Search Intelligence products that can improve your search marketing performance. I just found the press release in my email, so I hope you don't mind if I finally get around to reporting the "news." Click to read the rest of this post.

Following their new computer to phone calling service Google have launched a new beta feature for Gmail users, called priority inbox. It ranks your email according to what you read. Click to read the rest of this post.

Hot on the heels of the organic results integration in the US, Yahoo & Bing both announced today that now is the time to begin preparing your paid search accounts for the final integration, in which Microsoft Adcenter will power all paid search ads on Yahoo! Search in the U.S. & Canada. Click to read the rest of this post.

One of the events that was part of Connected Marketing Week was a one-day forum on the "Future of Display: Ad Networks and Exchanges," which was co-programmed by the IAB Networks and Exchanges committee. Click to read the rest of this post.

Last friday Google launched the Googlebeat channel on Youtube, which aims to bring the value of services like Google Trends & Hot Trends , Google Insights for Search and Year-end Zeitgeist to a wider audience. This strategy is of passing interest as it seems that Google is squarely positioning itself as generating the equivalent value as trending topics in Twitter. Something which the latter has had great success with in garnering media attention. For example, FastCompany,

Today, Bing announced the Bing for Mobile Android App. Significantly, Bing also announced that Verizon will launch new Android devices pre-loaded with the Bing for Mobile app over the coming months. Click to read the rest of this post.

Last week at SES San Francisco, Brent Payne, the SEO Director of the Tribune, shared some of his social media link building tips during the News Search Optimization session. Click to read the rest of this post.

Google Voice launched a 'call phones' feature this month that works within your Gmail account. Not much to say about it, except that it could make Google Apps for Business an even more attractive proposition, as they are offering international call rates )computer to phone( starting at 2 cents a minute to Japan, Britain, Germany and France. Arguably everything required to launch a business from your computer now sits in the cloud of Google Apps.

Now, I've known for months that SES Chicago 2010 was being moved from it's traditional slot in December to October this year, but I was surprised at SES San Francisco last week to hear an industry veteran blurt out, "SES Chicago is being held in October!?!" Click to read the rest of this post.

Shashi Seth, Senior Vice President of Yahoo! Search Products announced today that Bing now officially powers Yahoo's organic search results in USA and Canada, saying "Yahoo! Web, Image, and Video search experiences on both desktop and mobile devices are now powered by the Microsoft platform in the US and Canada )English(, with more markets to come." Click to read the rest of this post.

Yahoo announced today on the Y! Mobile Blog that they have partnered with TIM Brasil , and displaced Google, to provide the search facility to one of the largest mobile carriers in Brazil . Yahoo will power the search facility on the TIM mobile portal, which has more than 41 million mobile subscribers in Brazil. Such a strategy follows in the footsteps of a Yahoo/ Nokia partnership to improve mapping, mail and chat services and also the purchase of Koprol,

Wow, SES San Francisco was awesome wasn't it? Over 6,000 registered to hear about the latest skills and insights into search marketing. Click to read the rest of this post.

SES San Francisco attracted 6,000 attendees last week - and now the leading search and social marketing event heads to Hong Kong. SES Hong Kong , which will be held September 13-14, will feature Avinash Kaushik, author, blogger, and analytics evangelist at Google. Click to read the rest of this post.

As expected, marketers' eternal riddle on SEO vs PPC did not fail to generate interest at SES San Francisco last week, as Imelda Khoo reported. Earlier this year, Kevin Gibbons had already shared with us his in-depth analysis of the SEO or PPC option . This is why, this time, we decided to meet with SpyFu 's CEO, Mike Roberts, as the search analytics company has created RECON, a tool that gives marketers a better understanding of SEO. How?

I'm afraid this will be my last blog entry at SES San Francisco, but it's been a blast. I don't know how you're feeling right now, but I'm knackered. Luckily we can end on a high with a fix of Augmented Reality. Gene Becker )Lightning Laboratories( is moderating this session, with speakers: Howard Ogden )Augment Reality(, Lisa Murphy )metaio(, Michael Liebhold )Institute for the Future(, Mathijs Gajentaan )Winvolve(, and Jay Wright )Qualcomm(.

We are almost at the finish line, but there are still a few more sessions to go so hang in there with me. Next up we have Trackur's Andy Beal )Trackur( going solo. I follow Andy on Twitter. Andy is the Indiana Jones of reputation management. He also has great teeth and quite possibly, the best accent ever )he's originally from England, and now lives in North Carolina(.

Everyone needs a good tool. So are you ready to hear about the latest and greatest? Me too. I actually changed sessions to be here today after Alex sold me on his toolbox at Schmoozefest yesterday. Anyway, we have Simon Heseltine )AOL Inc.( moderating an All-Star line up: Dave Snyder )Blueglass(, David Szetela )Clix Marketing(, Mark Jackson )VIZION Interactive(, Alex Cohen )ClickEquations(, and Ariel Bardin )Google(.

Good morning peeps. Can you believe we've reached the final day of SES? That's nuts! But here we are on Day 3. It's my last day guest blogging for Search Engine Watch and I would kill for a good hand masseuse right about now. So, PPC or SEO? This has to be a loaded question, right? Still, everyone likes a good fight. Mark Jackson )VISION Interactive( is the moderator come referee, with fighters Rand Fishkin )SEOmoz(, Melanie Mitchell )Digitas(,

After months of speculations, Facebook has finally unveiled its geotagging feature. Facebook Places goes live today in the U.S., in partnership with several location-based services. You heard it, it does sound a lot like Twitter's earlier-launched Twitter Places : the name, the partners )at least for Foursquare, Gowalla and Localeze( and the same principle of layering and meshing data from those partners. So what's the difference? Where's the edge?