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Okay, I understand that we’re all trying to “give a jolt” to the economy. But I was still surprised today when Lycos provided a list of Christmas gift ideas two days before Thanksgiving Day. Aren’t we all supposed to wait until Black Friday?

Nevertheless, for shoppers who like planning ahead — or for online retailers and etailers looking for what will be hot this holiday season — Lycos just announced its ninth annual list of the most popular toys and video games, based on web search activity.

(For a complete list and commentary of the Lycos Top Toys and Video Games of 2008, go to the Lycos 50. You can also voice your opinion on this year’s list, and weigh in on weekly Internet trends and pop culture on the Lycos 50 Blog or follow the Lycos 50 on Twitter.)

It shouldn’t come as a shock that Apple’s iPod holds the top spot as the #1 most-searched for toy this holiday season. But this year, the Apple frenzy includes hot-searched items like the iTouch and iPod Nano.

Harry Potter, at #11, makes a fifth consecutive appearance in 2008, with Harry Potter games, books and DVDs dominating Harry Potter-themed searches.

New in 2008 is KOTA, the Triceratops Dinosaur (#15), generating more search interest than Fisher Price’s New Elmo Live (#19). Meanwhile, not so hot in 2008 are Hannah Montana-related toy items, which made a big splash in 2007, but fail to make this year’s list.

Spongebob Squarepants (#14) takes over as the top licensed character-themed toy of 2008. Spongebob was last seen on the Lycos Top Toy list in 2005. And when it comes to dolls, Barbie (#6) continues to reign, extending her run on the annual Lycos list of Top Toys and Video Games to nine consecutive years of appearing in the Top 10. But there’s not enough data on Caribou Barbie to see if that will be a big hit this year — let alone in 2012.

Gaming consoles see a big resurgence in search popularity in 2008, with the Nintendo Wii (#10) capturing the most search interest, generating 25% more search activity than the Xbox 360 (#12) and Playstation 3 (#13). Also seeing a resurgence in 2008 are old school classics like Monopoly (#17), despite the current housing market.

Five of the top 25 toys in 2008 originate from the popular world of anime including Naruto (#3), Pokemon (#4), Dragonball (#5), Inuyasha (#7) and Gundam (#16). Meanwhile, one new toy making the 2008 list may be unfamiliar to most adults, but if search activity is any indication, expect the Bakugan Battle Brawlers (#24) to be flying off the shelves this holiday season.

On the video game front, the massive multi-player game RuneScape (#1) scores big with web users for the fourth consecutive year as the most-searched video game of 2008, while Final Fantasy makes its first appearance on the list since 2005, with Final Fantasy XIII (#3). Also racking up points online, making first-ever appearances on the top video games list, are war-themed games including Call of Duty: World at War (#9) and Gears of War 2 (#14), while Guitar Hero World Tour (#8) and Wii Fit (#15) are the most popular Wii-themed games based on web searches in 2008.

Also new in 2008 are Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games Fable 2 (#17), Fallout 3 (#18), Street Fighter IV (#10), Dead Space (#19), Far Cry 2 (#22) and BioShock (#25). This also marks the fourth consecutive year the Madden football-themed games fail to make Lycos’s Top Toys and Video Games list.

As for me, I don’t do any Christmas shopping until the very last minute. That way, I don’t have to figure where to hide presents where my three kids (or wife) can find them before December 24th. Yep, when I say “last minute Christmas shopping” I mean last minute shopping. You’d be surprised how simple decisions are on Christmas eve.

A month ago, LinkedIn unveiled its new search platform. Now they’re rolling it out to their 31 million users.

Here’s what you can look forward to in the new search platform:

Suggestive Search - When you type into the search box, a list of suggested names from your contacts pops up. You can select one of the names without having to type in the whole thing. I think this might come in handy when you’re having a hard time remembering a name. Maybe you remember the first letter or the first name, but the rest of it just isn’t coming to you - this can help.

Streamlined Search Results - LinkedIn changed the design to make it easier to scan the results. They also added photos. Results can be sorted by relevance, which includes the social graph, or by relationship, relationship + recommendations, and keyword.

Customizable Views Users can determine what info they want returned in their search results. Just click the “Views” drop down menu (next to the “Sort” drop down menu at the top of the results). You can decide whether you want to view headlines, photos, locations and more of the people returned in a search.

Take Action Straight from the Search Results When you mouse over a result, you’ll notice links that let you take action. You can send InMail, get introduced (through a common contact), or add that person to your network.

Modify Your Search On the right hand side of the results, you’ll notice a form where you can type in additional information to narrow your search down and pinpoint it to more exact specifications. You can search by name, job title, company location, and school.

Save Your Search If you want to return to the results, you can save your search. This is a good idea if you’ve modified your search or customized your view.

Check out this video to get a good visual for all of the above:

Of course, you’ll need to be signed in to LinkedIn to take advantage of all the features in the new platform. Not LinkedIn yet? Our own Carrie Hill explained why you need to be in her article, Small Business Owners Need Twitter and LinkedIn.

Head over to LinkedIn and give the new search a test drive. Then come back and let us know what you think in the comments.

During Search Engine Strategies San Jose back in August, I did a video interview with Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team. It will be uploaded to the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on YouTube tomorrow.

Why the wait?

As Maury Sline explained to The Blues Brothers, “A gig like that, you gotta prepare the proper exploitation.”

So, here’s a taste of what you can look forward to seeing and hearing in tomorrow’s video interview: Matt talks about his job interview at Google before he joined the company as a software engineer in January 2000. He takes a look at trends in the industry, including mobile search. He praises an iPhone App developed by Barry Schwartz, President of RustyBrick. And he discusses the Cuttlets, the people who crowd around him at every search conference.

And what can you do today to ensure that you don’t miss the Matt Cutts video interview tomorrow? I’m glad you asked.

First, go to the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel and take a quick look around. You’ll find there are now 184 videos from SES London, SES New York, SES Toronto, and SES San Jose 2008.

According to YouTube Insight, these 184 videos currently have more than 45,000 combined views. That’s about three times more views than the number of people who attended these four conferences and expos this year.

And there will be more video interviews added during and after Search Engine Strategies Chicago, which will be held Dec. 8-12, 2008. That’s a lot of content — and a lot of insights from top search experts and the search engines themselves.

Now, some of these video interviews are uploaded to YouTube during each SES conference. But others are uploaded in the weeks and months following a show.

So, if you want to be alerted when the Matt Cutts video interview has been posted, all you need to do is hit the orange “Subscribe” button in the upper left hand corner of the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel, which already has 142 subscribers.

To embed one of these video interviews, just copy the code from the “Embed” box — which you can find in the “About This Video” box when you’re watching the video. Once you’ve copied the code, just paste it into your website or blog to embed it.

And if you want to embed several of these video interviews, use the Search Engine Strategies video widget. It will let you customize a SES Video Player Widget for the audience on your website or blog.

For example, in the header options, I selected the standard link and said I’m blogging at SES Chicago. For my playlist content, I selected videos of everyone, picked two thumbnails with a maximum of 25 results. And for my format option, I selected a vertical orientation. And the SES Video Player Widget generated the code for me to past into this blog post.

Now, I could have selected a customized header. And after going through an authentication process, I could have customized my playlist — and display only videos of my company. Or I could display videos of everyone, but with videos of my company first. You can see an example of this on the SEO-PR website.

Or, you can see an example of a more bi-partisan approach on the Search Engine Strategies Chicago home page — just below the fold. (By the way, if you register by Friday, Nov. 21, you can save up to $200 with the Early Bird rate.)

Now, I don’t need to explain the benefits of adding video to your blog. Search engine marketers and popular bloggers understand that already. But consider the benefits of adding relevant content from the latest SES conference and expo — quality content that can be customized for your audience. And, don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself. It is useful content that your website’s visitors will find beneficial or your blog readers will find valuable.

What’s the catch?

Well, if you select videos of everyone, then you might end up with a Matt Cutts video interview on your website or blog. And if anyone watches it, that would give the SESConferenceExpo’s Channel on YouTube more views.

Or, as Elwood told Maury Sline, “I know all about that stuff. I have been exploited all my life.”

My email box has been filling up with notices about the annual start of National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org). However, in general, I write nonfiction. If you, like me, consider yourself a…
More: continued here
take the challenge write nonfiction in november

iPhone users, get happy. Google has updated the search results for your device. It’s a cosmetic change that displays the results in a more user-friendly way.

However, I was only able to get the updated results by going directly to Google.com in Safari on my iPhone. I was not able to get the results via the Google app or the default Google search box in the drop down top bar in Safari.

Here’s a video from the Google Mobile team to show you all about the update:

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The new Yahoo! front page went into testing a couple months ago. The redesign effort also coincides with the new user interface, YUI 3.

Here’s a peek:

Nicholas Zakas of the Yahoo! User Interface team expanded on the UI efforts by explaining the goals for the framework of YUI 3:

1. Eliminate global dependencies. We wanted each part of the page to operate separately from all of the others. Each part should have no knowledge of what else is on the page and therefore can’t depend on objects to be globally available. The 2.x library is based on the global YAHOO object, which we would have had to abstract away; the 3.x concept of YUI instances that could be individually manipulated worked perfectly to achieve this goal.
2. Make it small, make it fast. The Front Page can’t afford to be slow, so we needed to have as little code as possible to get everything up and running. YUI 3 impressed us with its organization into small, atomic units that allowed us to specifically include parts of the library that we wanted while eliminating parts that were unnecessary. Further, one of the goals of YUI 3 was to optimize for runtime execution and make it faster than the 2.x version. Once again, YUI 3’s approach was directly in line with the Front Page’s goals.
3. Create version independence. From the start, we didn’t want to have dependencies on specific versions of YUI components as this can lead to maintenance issues. What we really wanted was for each part of the page to be able to use whatever version of the components that they wanted. The sandboxing feature of YUI 3 opened up the possibility of having two (or more) YUI instances each loading different versions of various components while not interfering with each other.
4. Allow code portability. Having worked at Yahoo! for a combined five years, Steve and I knew that anything we put on a Yahoo! property could be a candidate for porting to someplace else. We knew that this possibility meant the code had to stand on its own and not make assumptions about the environment in which it was placed. We thought about the most difficult environment possible: a locked-down browser environment where the JavaScript code has no direct access to the DOM. Since YUI 3 can abstract away the DOM through its Node interface, we had the entrypoint necessary to make this requirement a reality.
5. Be forward compatible. The project to create a new Front Page is an incredibly long one and we wanted to be as forward-looking as possible. We knew that if we created the framework on YUI 2.x that we’d be hard pressed to get time to upgrade later on. By building on YUI 3 from the start, we eliminated the need for developing an upgrade path later on.

Google Toolbar 5 for IE was recently released, and it includes an update to its News feature. Now, a drop down box includes tabs for 5 news niches: Top Stories, U.S., World, Entertainment, and Science/Technology.

You can check the headlines without leaving the page you’re currently browsing or click a link to read more about a news item you’re interested in.

Here’s a screenshot:

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Blogger has released a cool new feature that lets readers offer quick responses. It’s called Reactions, and it allows bloggers to create a variety of responses for their readers to choose. One possible implementation of the feature looks like this:

You’re not limited to “LOL” or “Fail.” You can set your own annotations:

To use the feature, go to Layout > Page Elements. Click the “Edit” link under the Blog Posts element. Check the Reactions box and enter words, separated by a comma. Hit Save and you’re ready to go.

Related Reading:
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adtech New York starts Monday with the exhibit hall opening and then Tuesday the keynote sessions begin and regualr conference sessions start Wednesday with many notable search industry speakers in attendance. If you are in the area it may well be worth catching this event as it covers all aspects of the advertising industry and can be a great way to start the out of box thinking by combining some other advertising thinking into the search mix.

Mike Grehan, Dana Todd, Kevin Ryan, Danny Sullivan, Kendall Allen, Motoko Hunt, Adam Lavelle are just a few of the featured speakers.

And don’t forget the parties - the best place to network in a relaxed social setting.

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that election day is next Tuesday. Whether you’re observing or you’re breaking out the campaign gear for some hardcore get out the vote effors this weekend, here are some tools to help you keep up with the news and your efforts:

Google Earth

You can download a KML file that lets you search results from past elections, since 1980. The data is broken down and can show you how different regions of the country voted - even by county. I used to work as a political consultant, and let me tell you - this kind of data is heavily relied on. It’s a bit of a late release for campaigns, who already have this data. But it’s great for political junkies.

Google News

Trying to remember what a candidate said on an issue? Just type their name into Google News. If Google has indexed a quote by that person, it will appear on top of the search results in the one box.

Google Mobile

Want to know your precinct location? The Google Mobile team has created a special tool just for that purpose. Go to m.google.com/elections on your mobile phone, type in your address and you’ll be directed to your precinct.

The tool did not point me to early voting locations, which in my state are not the same as Election Day precinct locations.

As cool as that is, always verify with your local elections office. Google even helps you do that. They have a box where you enter your state’s abbreviation, and it will pull up relevant links to voting information.

Yahoo Elections Hub and Political Dashboard

Yahoo makes the most of its successful portal platforms with its Elections Hub and Political Dashboard. The dashboard is a super slick map showing the latest poll results. Hopefully they update it with real time results on election night. I can totally see myself keeping the dashboard open while watching results come in on the tv.

Microsoft Live Search xRank

xRank, Live Search’s buzz tool, has a politician section. It’s no surprise that the Rep and Dem presidential and vice presidential candidates take the top 4 spots today. The rest of the top 20 is filled with senate and gubernatorial races, with Hillary Clinton and George Bush thrown in for good measure.

MSN Election Live Q&A

Q&A is Live Search’s answer product, and over at the MSN Election Guide, you can find the Election Live Q&A. It’s pretty straightforward. You can ask and answer questions about the election in real time.

AOL Elections Toolbar

AOL has a toolbar for IE and Firefox that can keep you up to date with election news. If you like to surf the net while watching TV - this could be an ideal toolbar for you come Tuesday night.

Well, hopefully that’s enough to keep you busy and up to date.

Got any tools to share? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

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