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David Utter over at WebProNews has written an insightful piece on the possibility Microsoft wants Yahoo mainly for the old Overture patents it holds, in particular patent 361.

Between his article which clarifies much of Usman Latif’s posts on the topic as well as Latif’s own detailed post from 2005 when Google fired the employee for blogging - shows a very good conspiracy and Machivellian business theory.

Is ‘patent 361′ the Holy Grail of our industry? Does it hold the power of the search engine industry? Could we see a long-haired Tom Hanks snooping around San Jose this year looking for clues?

When you see the government investigating the Yahoo/Google deal, and the cries about the possible Microsoft buying of Yahoo, this makes for even more high drama.

Is Jerry Yang refusing Microsoft advances because he knows the secrets. Is patent 361 the National Treasure like source of all riches in paid search?

This definitely gives a different perspective to the entire situation. I am waiting for David Brown to write the novel.

Once the most popular reasons for reinstalling your operating system is that it is often the easiest way to deal with a preponderance of viruses, spyware and other collected nasties that find their way onto your computer. So when reinstalling, it make sense to secure your like-new PC as best as possible. Here are five programs that make that possible.

AntiVirus – AVG Free
The most important security measure you can take on a new computer is protecting against viruses and Trojans. That’s where anti-virus software comes in. AV software, usually, runs in the background of your computer, analyzes new files received via email, downloaded or elsewhere to make sure they are safe. You can also schedule it to check your computer for viruses it may have missed, or manually check whenever you want.
For AV software to be good, it needs to stay up-to-date. For it to be tolerable to the user, it needs to run lightly in the background, and it needs to easily offer the user options to override it when it’s too aggressive, as nearly all anti-virus programs have been reporting too many false positives lately. AVG’s Free version accomplishes all that—and does it for free. Runner ups include NOD32, Kaspersky and BitDefender.

Anti-Spam – SpamBayes
Viruses may be the most dangerous problem possible affecting your computer, but Spam is probably the annoying. According to Akismet, nearly 90% of all email received is Spam. That comes out to 1,000 spam messages per day for an average user. While most of that Spam is trapped on your mail server, more than enough makes it through to your email reader, clogging up your folders, slowing down your email downloads and generally making finding real emails that much more annoying and tedious.

That are plenty of solutions for combating Spam, including the filters built into Microsoft Outlook, but I’m a big fan of SpamBayes. I’ve been using the open-source SpamBayes filter for more than five years now, ignoring newer and flashier filters. Why? Well, for one, it just works. It catches nearly all my Spam, and I get very few false positives. The way it works is also significant; like the name suggests, SpamBayes draws its power by using Bayesian algorithms to determine what is spam and what is ham. Simply stated: SpamBayes learns from you. Every time you tag a message as spam or ham, SpamBayes analyzes the email for clues as to what makes spam and what comprises ham. The more emails you tag, the smarter it gets.
SpamBayes is easily added on to Outlook, other desktop mail applications, webmail or even to your mail server. Set up is a breeze (just tag a few emails and go) and the program is light and fast.

Anti-Spyware – Ad-Aware and SpyBot
If viruses are dangerous and spam is annoying, spyware is the unholy marriage of the two; it slows down your computer, hijacks your home page and—as its name suggests—spies on you. It certainly annoys you, and can be very dangerous, either leaving your PC susceptible to viruses or stealing private data from you. Above all, it is intrusive. And it comes from some unlikely sources: companies you know, love and trust.
But you don’t have to succumb to it. Anti-virus programs like AVG will prevent most spyware programs from lodging on your computer, but there is more you can do. Firstly, read the End User License Agreement (EULA) on every new software program you install. Don’t just blindly click ‘Next’ when installing new programs. Secondly, download the above two programs: Ad-Aware and SpyBot. Both will scan your computer for spyware, adware and malware programs, and offer you the option of removing the programs they find. The free version of Ad-Aware won’t protect your PC in real-time, but you can upgrade to get that feature. SpyBot, which is freeware, includes TeaTime, which provides free real-time protection, including registry monitoring. SpyBot can even replace spyware programs with “dummy programs” so you can still run spyware-dependant programs. Between the two, you can remain completely spyware-free.

Extra Protection – Sandboxie
Even after all that protection, sometimes you need a little bit more. That’s where Sandboxie comes in. Sandboxie is a remarkable (and free) program that protects your PC from everything and anything run on it—by providing a virtual “sandbox” for that program to run it. Within the sandbox, no registry changes can be made and nothing can be installed to your actual PC; nothing bad can happen.

Someone sent you a program they swear is virus-free—and AVG also thinks it’s clean—but you’re still unsure about? Run it in the sandbox. You teenage niece is using your computer and you don’t want her messing anything up? She can browse the internet and work in Sandboxie. Son uses P2P software? No problem when it runs in Sandboxie. Don’t trust Internet Explorer? Set it to always run sandboxed. All downloads need to be approved by you before they can run. Executables run without affecting anything else.
And Sandboxie manages to give you all this protection without slowing down your PC. It runs quietly and unobtrusively in the background, and gives you that extra measure of protection you need.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• “Googlewash” Is Googlewashed by Online Reputation Defenders
  Googlewashing now appears to be the domain of online reputation management companies.
• Google News UK Sorting News Without Bias?
  Can the flap of a butterfly’s wings in the Googleplex set off a tornado in the top UK news and media sites?
• SEW Experts: The TV Writers — And the Buzz — Are Back
  The end of the TV writers’ strike holds some meaningful lessons for search marketers.
• Spamalot? Yahoo! Buzz Is Not Your Holy Grail
  Yahoo! Buzz promises to squash spammers with a team of spam cops: the Yahoo! Buzz Editors.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Yahoo! Buzz promises to squash spammers with a team of spam cops: the Yahoo! Buzz Editors.

Yahoo! has a team of editors who program links on Yahoo.com. These same editors will now be reviewing all top-ranked stories on Yahoo! Buzz for possible feature placement on Yahoo.com homepage.

How many? Your guess is as good as mine. Yahoo doesn’t share specific numbers on the size of their teams. Or their secret identities.

During the initial beta Yahoo! tested with a limited group of publishers that represented a broad range of content types, large and small. How you can get in the game:

Yahoo will open up to more publishers over the course of the beta. Interested publishers can join the mailing list via this link for updates.

Here’s how Yahoo plans to keep spammers out and their buzzworthy results from being manipulated:

Users will need to login to Yahoo to vote which should help keep spammers out. Yahoo! Buzz plans to insure the integrity of the votes by combining user voting on-and-off network with a proprietary search ranking algorithm.

From initial Buzz results, very little censorship and keyword cleansing.

PopSugar and GiggleSugar join the entertainment category eaderboard dominated by Yahoo O&O properties. Voting? Fast and furious.

So what do Yahoo! Buzzters yodel?

Warning: Adult Content including the V-C words after the jump …

Click to read the rest of this post…

In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the Black Knight always gets a laugh by claiming that the loss of both his arms is “just a flesh wound.”  Now Powerset’s COO has left the company, its CEO is changing roles, and it, too, claims to be okay.

Raise an eyebrow, snicker, or do whatever else you [...]

The largest Web email services including Yahoo, Microsoft and Time Warner’s AOL are adding features that enable users to perform social functions such as tracking friends and creating personal-profile pages for others to see.

 There were 542 million email users in August 2007, compared to 483 million social networking users globally, according to comScore.
Including non-web based [...]

There are variations on the phrase I don’t give a [flying] crap. But apparently that’s not always true. At Facebook, at least, they’ll give one, or throw one, so long as its imaginary and only costs them some personal information. Go ahead, get it out of your system. It is, quite possibly, another steamy rotten [...]

In an article for the Financial Times, Maija Palmer said it all, writing, “Google is planning to expand its staff by a third, with most of the new hirings in Europe . . .”  But to add my editorial voice to the mix: holy crap.

Europe Braces For Google Buildup

Perhaps I’ve been thinking too much [...]

Who needs a birth certificate when you’ve got Twitter, Flickr, and Ustream to document the blessed event? Who’s ready for Birthing 2.0? Before we continue, I’m really, really sorry.
Remember those old Disney cartoons? The ones where fathers-to-be paced outside the delivery room with a handful of cigars? Yeah, well, those days are not just [...]

Article marketing is powerful. It works and this article invites readers to find out for themselves the power of this form of free traffic generation.
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