WSJ looks at the growing trend of small businesses who are bypassing costly software in favor of free, online alternatives that make money by showing ads. They point to the fact that consumers have been using such services for years (free email, MapQuest, etc).

Following the recent news that Google would allow other contextual ad platforms to be used on the same website as their AdSense service, Amazon has just announced a contextual platform of their own for selling books.

The Onion added video news, which is fun, but most of this interactive stuff is garbage. MarketWatch added a stock predictor which allows you to vote if a stock will go up or down that day - wow.

Seth Godin has been barraged with email spam asking to exchange links:

Over the last few weeks, I've received several emails, all the same, all from real people at Reed. They baldly (and boldly) ask me to swap links with them as part of a scheme to move up the Google rankings.

Good travel related and click funnel research, including information about how shallow Travelocity's funnel is:

WebProNews reported earlier today that Google is again looking at the Boston/Cambridge area as a potential opportunity for expansion, including an active search for real estate space in the area. In addition, Search Engine Watch references a Boston Herald article further supporting this information, although the Herald cautions that Google also looked into the area a year ago without any action.

In a market where people will do anything for 15 seconds of fame some people take it a bit too far.

Reports are slowly coming out of the Peoples Republic of Threadwatch that late last week there was an attempted coup by several junior editorial officers. Hard facts are difficult to come by since the country's communication network has been repeatedly attacked the last few months with WMDs that people on the street refer to as "getting on digg".

Here are two related, but separate stories that someone needs to merge (hence why I am putting them both on threadwatch). In short, Print Media is having a very, very bad day.

Let me first say my opinion is to agree with Rae that this system provides absolutely zero (even negative) value to users.

However my inner hustler respects the creativity that Merchant Circle had in coming up with their business model, which combines "mafia" tactics, local search, and reputation management.

In an effort to establish a beachhead against the advance of YouTube, NBC Universal and News Corp announced their partnership to create a competitive video distribution product.

I wasn't going to post this, but Matt went and deleted my comment on his post so now I feel I have to. Nothing I commented was untrue or mean, seems he just didn't want people to remember that he's one of the biggest fish to ever get caught selling links.

I was doing a "define" search on Google an noticed a new addition called related phrases appearing

Google is using Sneakernet to get 120 terabytes from A to B

Hat tip to Matt
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/quick-legal-update
He left comments off on his site, so comment away here.

The suit was dismissed without leave to ammend, I think that means they have no case, and also got themselves sanctioned by the judge, whatever that means.

MSFT releases/updates Search Ranger proxy, sort of similar to Achilles, which lets advertisers determine the IP addresses of their content publisher clicks.

Via SEL, Google beta launched a distributed pay per action ad network, and are accepting publisher sign ups here.

Kevin Federline aka Mr Ex-Brittney Spears has launched his own branded search engine Search with Kevin, by searching you are entered in a contest and the "winner" gets a chance to party K-Fed at his birthday bash.

It's a report in the New York Times about a research report out of MSN, on systematic publishing of junk pages designed to only show ads, by a few organized efforts suported by Google (blogspot and adsense) and more. The article goes 5 paragraphs in without mentioning SEO, describing the perpetrators as "rogue actors", "shadowy operators", and "rogue actors". The article properly reports on the identification of two ISPs/hosts seemingly involved, and repeatedly highlights how it is a defined activity of a small group with purposeful intent. When SEO is mentioned (paragraph 6), it is mentioned respectfully, properly, and positively:

While I 've tried to dabble in the domain marketplace, the most I've ever been able to would pretty much barely cover dinner for 4 at a family restaurant. Aviva has pretty nice rundown of some tips on how to make money from domains.