In an effort to help out Yahoo with its revenue problems, Yahoo has hired Joanne Bradford, a former Microsoft Corp. Executive.

Yahoo announced the recent hire in a press release Tuesday. Bradford was Microsoft’s head of their Media Network and resigned back in March after a 7 year stint with the software giant. She then joined Spot Runner Inc as their Executive Vice President of National Advertising Services before being swept up by Yahoo. Read more…

According to Reuters, MySpace saw more advertiser ad views in June than Yahoo! Yahoo may be the second biggest search engine on the planet, but when it comes to advertising it saw 34.7 billion ad views compared to MySpace which saw 51 billion views. (figures are from a press release issued by ComScore last week).

Yahoo does have the power to draw more revenue out of their ads and still leads MySpace in terms of revenue. Typically in the realm of social media, ad impressions do not necessarily equal dollars.

“Social media gets all these ad impressions but not necessarily get the dollars,” said Colin Gillis, analyst at Canaccord Adams. “MySpace’s cost per thousand (CPM) page views are significantly lower than that of Yahoo”.

Back in June MySpace unveiled a redesign of their home page which has opened to doors to larger sponsors such as Wendy’s and Sprint. While it is too soon to say that MySpace has overtaken Yahoo in the ad wars, this definitely shows that at this rate, they aren’t far from it. Look out Yahoo!

The Ciao shopping and price comparison sites, operating in seven European countries and languages, will now be the property of Microsoft. This follows the deal reached between the software giant and Greenfield Online, operator of Ciao, for $486 Million.

Ciao allows users to create lists of their favorite items, rate products, and provide feedback. Microsoft plans to incorporate Ciao into its Live Search portal in Europe. Read more…

Apple has seen great success with its popular “Hi I’m a Mac” ad campaign, and now Microsoft has enlisted the help of Jerry Seinfeld for a series of TV ads.Seinfeld will earn a reported $10 million as part of the $300 million advertising campaign being launched by Microsoft.

The ads debuted on Sept 4 – I just by fluke happened to see the first ad when watching Kitchen Nightmares last night. I found the first ad to be funny, but personally think Microsoft has a little ways to go to catch up the Mac ads which in many cases are down right hilarious. You be the judge – take a look at the embedded video below and leave a comment with your opinion! Read more…

Including features that are commonly found on other networks like Facebook and MySpace, Yahoo Mash was Yahoo’s beta attempt at the Social Networking scene.

I have to ask the question “where have I been?” It was not long ago that I reported on the demise of Windows Live Expo, a classified ad platform that I had never heard of until its doors were closed. Now, I hear of the loss of Yahoo Mash, another entity that, well, I didn’t know existed until I read a twitter post from Lee Odden noting that its shutting down. Read more…

The Los Angeles Times reports German researchers, through the help of Google Earth, have discovered that 2 out of 3 cows point North.

Using Google Earth, the researchers studied more than 300 herds of cattle from around the world. Of the 8510 cows they observed, two thirds of them had aligned themselves to face magnetic north while grazing or resting.

This is the first discovery of large land mammals to have this built-in compass. Other animals such as birds and most bees have a similar trait to aid with migration.

So, if you ever find your self lost out at the farm, take a look at the near by cows to help guide you safely home.

Is there no end to lawsuits against Google? On Tuesday Judah Klausner, an inventor from San Francisco, filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, Verizon, LG, Citrix Systems, Comverse Technology, and Embarq.

Klausner’s company, Klausner Technologies, filed a patent back in 1992 for “visual voicemail”, a way to apply a graphical means of interacting with voicemail messages, similar to the use of e-mail.

Back in June, Klausner had a similar lawsuit settled against Apple, AT&T, and eBay (Skype) over its “visual voicemail” features on iPhone devices.

Verizon apparently had anticipated the lawsuit from Klausner and two weeks ago filed their own lawsuit in US District Court, to have the inventor’s patent declared invalid.

In an article published on Reuters Tuesday Jim Smith, a Verizon spokesman stated: “We anticipated Klausner’s action. We are seeking a declaration that Klausner’s visual voicemail patent is invalid and that Verizon’s system does not infringe the patent in any event.”

The latest lawsuit is just a series of suits filed by Klausner dating back to the first in 2005 against AOL.

According to ABC 9 Eyewitness News, Yahoo has applied for a huge state tax break to help them setup shop in La Vista NE.

In order to qualify for the tax breaks Yahoo would have to create at least 50 jobs with an average salary of at least $68,700, and invest $100 million over a four year period.

The Application for these tax breaks is no guarantee of Yahoo’s plans to build in Nebraska. Its interesting that with all the financial trouble Yahoo seems to be having, that they may be willing to move forward with such a huge development.

A few months ago I wrote an article about 13 ways a webmaster can go about building links to their site. One of these ways was through the use of directory submissions.

There are many reasons why you may consider a directory submission. You could be trying to build your brand, focused on links for organic rankings, or simply want to drive traffic to your site. Below we will focus on the link building and organic ranking aspect of directory submissions.

There are countless directories out there these days, some are free, some are paid, and many are garbage. If you decide to build links to your site using online directories, there are some things you will want to consider before spending your hard earned money. Read more…

Possibly the most exciting post for me was from Oliver Marks at ZDNet . Here is a company that is thinking outside the box and developing an alternate interface for search on the internet; it involves returning results based on aggregate sets of information. Freebase Parallax is a fascinating peak into the future and it utilizes the strongest attributes to browse and explore data, a sort of marriage between Google and Wikipedia. This article has been placed under the Google section because I predict they will quickly snatch up this company and its revolutionary approach.

“Still technically in alpha, Freebase will be the underpinnings of many future companies – some would say this approach is the future of the entire Internet. Read more…