Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Three star links:

• The Cut and Paste Personality from the Wall Street Journal details how people are "borrowing" other folks' witty web profiles. Seriously now, how boring and lazy do you have to be to the point where you can't even think of anything remotely interesting about yourself to put on your profile, so you just steal someone else's?
  
• eVisibility created an amusing comic depicting Yahoo!'s refusal to accept the Microsoft deal. Pretty clever, guys. :)
• The NY Times posits whether Americans are hostile to knowledge. Whether it's our educational system, naivety, or B.S. like "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?", something's not adding up for us yokel Americans. Be sure to check out the article's comments, which are more interesting than the article itself.
• Apparently most programmers who code in PHP don't believe in God. I like the one respondent who believes in "New Agey Stuff." How very spiritual.
• Penelope Trunk shares some valuable (albeit aggressive) responses to the cringe-worthy interview question of "What are your salary expectations for this position?" I guess "one meelion dollars" doesn't really work much nowadays.
• Found via ResourceShelf comes 10 emerging technologies of 2008. What, no sharks with laser beams on their heads? Lame.

Four star links:

• Photodropper brings us a Wordpress plugin that allows you to search through Flickr photos and add them to your blog posts without leaving your dashboard. What a nice little time saver!
• The Shrinking Advantage of Brands details how Google is the most powerful brand in the world today, and they've achieved that status with far less advertising than mega-brands like Coca Cola, IBM, McDonald's, and other top companies. The article states that the nature of advantage is shifting, and that cheap interaction means better connectivity, meaning better awareness of companies like Google who barely have to advertise to get your attention.
  
• Speaking of Google, apparently they're showing bias towards .org TLDs. Now you know why we're not SEOmoz.com. ;)
• Copyblogger provides a comprehensive keyword research guide for bloggers that's definitely worth checking out. It's more concise than our keyword research guide (which I have to update soon--sorry for the delay on that), leading me to wonder if we need to trim some fat off our own guides.
• Rhea Drysdale guest posts on Sugarrae and quizzes her husband on SEO 101. His responses are very amusing. I should make my boyfriend do this, though I suspect halfway through he'll say "This is boring. Let's play Rock Band."

Five star links:

• This list of 17 mistakes startups make was, according to Rand, hijacked by another site, but he's found the original source. The tips are extremely valuable for any blossoming startup--every founder should study these as a precursor to diving into the deep end.
• Howard Owens comes up with 10 things journalists do to reinvent journalism. His tips are extraordinary and I hope journos take note, especially in light of the recent dominance of news and information by bloggers.

YOUmoz entries:

• Google Experiencing Growing Pains? Octane analyzes Google from a social media, search information, search technology innovation, and universal search perspective.
• Love Comes from Unexpected Places, and So Do Contacts. Click Magnet discusses how a "History of X" post or article makes for good, compelling content, and he cites an example of his article detailing the history of Valentine's Day being featured on CNN.
• SEO Principles to Launch By. Calamier shares some great SEO do's and don'ts that are important to keep in mind when performing search engine optimization for either yourself or for a client.
• Keeping Track Of What You Read. Ann Smarty shows off her smarty pants by sharing with us her method of keeping track of the valuable information she comes across in the various blogs she reads.
  
• SEO Comic: Ranked Hard. Shell debuts his Ranked Hard comics and asks our community for some feedback.
• Bad SEO Advice? JonnyRash shares some of the poor advice provided to him in an online SEO course he's taking. If an instructor favorably mentions Lycos and Altavista all the time, you may want to check and see if he's stashed a time machine somewhere; if not, maybe it's time for a refund.
• SES London Day 1, Part 1; Day 1, Part 2; Day 2, Part 1; and Day 2, Part 2. Ciarán brings us extensive SES London coverage. He has written a post about Day 3, which I'll publish later today.
• There's No Substitute for Knowing a Client. Judd Exley talks about the importance of knowing your client's niche, business model, clientele, and user base above all else.
• Viral Marketing at the Grass Roots Level. Brenda2179 discusses the purpose of social media marketing and how you don't necessarily have to spread content virally via social media sites.
  
• Social Media and SEO. Speaking of social media, Mani Karthik talks about the benefits of social media and how to use it to your advantage.

Best of YOUmoz:

• Eric Enge's I Don't Buy Links is a marvelously written entry about the negatives associated with purchasing links, Google's policies on link buying, their discovery method, and much more. Matt Cutts himself even noted in the comments that this post sums up Google's stance on links and that he'll refer folks to it for future reference. Way to go, Eric!

New events added to the Events Calendar:

Mel and I are in the process of de-bugging the Events Calendar. I'll start regularly adding industry-wide events in order to spread awareness about upcoming conferences and meetups. Hopefully that'll encourage more participation from you folks. :)

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

• Reseller for Easy Store Hosting services in Bangalore, Karna, India
• Business development consultant for a telecommunications website in Fort Meyers, FL
• Ad operations analyst , front end web developer, and back end web developer for InvestorGuide.com in Fairfax, VA
• Community manager for Harvard Business Digital in Boston, MA
• SEO specialist with link building expertise for Geary Interactive in San Diego/San Francisco, CA
• SEO executive for DSGI Business in Bury, Lancs, UK

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

• Global Icon in Philadelphia, PA
• Dito in Virginia
• Geary Interactive in San Diego, CA
• Ressac Media in Montreal, QC, Canada
• Reliable SEO in Ontario, Canada

UK/Europe:

• PoLR in Glasgow, UK
• Internet Advantage in Salamanca, Spain (Spain, eh? Any chance I can score an all-expenses paid internship? Just wondering...)
• Belprog in Minsk, Belarus
• PHP-MySQL-Team in Kiev, Ukraine
  
• Neenco in Kiev, Ukraine
• SEO 4 Experts in Kiev, Ukraine

Asia:

• Search24online in Bankura, WB, India
• SEO Freelancer in Bangalore, Karna, India
• GPS Infoway in Madurai, TN, India

Featured resumes:

• Mary Jo Caruso has been doing SEM since 1997, and she's currently looking for employment. She's available for both long and short-term SEO and SEM projects.
• Tony Adam is a happily employed SEO who works for PayPal. He's also a friend of SEOmoz. :)
• Lily Grozeva is a graduated Digital Control Systems engineer who has been involved in SEO and Internet marketing for 3 years. She's currently looking for employment.
• Uh, "The Man" is happily employed but would like to exchange tips with other SEOs. He's also looking for freelance jobs. Insert "working for The Man"/"The Man is always gettin' me down" jokes here.