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

Sorry folks, no more link yahtzee since someone at WikiAnswers was smart enough to change the answer to the question I linked to in my zero star section. Hooray for progress!

One star link:

• Apparently Microsoft may build a "copyright cop" into every Zune. See, Zune, this is why nobody wants to buy you.

Two star links:

• Shoemoney says that SEO has no future, which is a bit of a hater thing to say, but his exact words are "...in my opinion there just is no future in current SEO for Google..." I could agree with that claim (emphasis on current SEO) since SEO is constantly evolving, so SEO practices that work today may not be effective five years from now.
• Prepare to be horrified: manbabies.com. WTF, WTF, W.T.F.

Three star links:

• According to a blog post, "Google may be adding geographic information about brick and mortar stores and service companies to the algorithm along with reverse IP lookup to help boost site rank for regular results."
• Need a gift for your son or daughter? How about road kill toys? They're adorably squishy!
• Apparently Thursday at noon is the best time to post blog entries. Maybe I should have delayed publishing this by 3 minutes...damnit.
• Search Engine Land reports Microsoft Live Search's new design going live. Ooh, how very minimalistic!
• Joe Morin's new company, Storybids, now has a website that's live. According to the site, "Storybids is a simple yet extremely powerful website tool for media sellers and content buyers. We connect those with creative ideas for product placement with advertisers who want to place their products in user generated videos, mini-dramas and webisodes, music videos and online commercials."
• Lee Odden shares 5 new Twitter tools with us. Rand gives Summize.com his bearded seal of approval.
• My favorite SEO slash hardcore U2 fan, Matt McGee, is jobless. He provides some great tips on how to improve your SEO experience and knowledge and hopefully nail that SEO interview. Meanwhile, I'm starting a site called feedmcgee.com that will take donations (U2 schwag is acceptable) to ensure that our little small business SEM doesn't go hungry.
• Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the yottabyte, which is 1,024 zettabytes, which is roughly a crapload of exabytes, a buttload of petabytes, an assload of terabytes, and a shitload of gigabytes...scientifically speaking, of course.
• Although MySpace received 74% of U.S. social networking visits in April 2008, it's a -5% change compared to the same time last year. Facebook, meanwhile. experienced a 32% increase in market share from last year and had 14.8% of visits, and some site called myYearbook had a 475% year over year change from 2007, enjoying 1.33% of visits this year.
• Brian Cuban (Mark Cuban's brother who I pretend I know well because we're friends on Digg) wrote a post asking whether a competitor is devaluing your keywords. He opines that keyword suits like the Orion Bankcorp v. Orion Residential Financial case in Florida will become much more common over the next decade. For more information about the court case, check out Sarah's great post about how the court order on negative keywords won't break the Internet.
• Hey, check it out, the Google Analytics Blog defines search engine optimization. The eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Blog weighs in on their definition.
• Galen Ward provides an interesting argument as to why you shouldn't link to your trusted partners. We generally advise against linking to your competitors or to those within your niche using the same anchor text/keywords you yourself are trying to rank well for.
• I'm betting that most SEOs will love this t-shirt; Rand has probably ordered at least 50.
• Stephen Colbert has been awarded the Webby Person of the Year. Mission accomplished, Google bombers!
• This comic accurately portrays the evolution of virtually every college student's life ambition. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to resume fervently watching the clock until it's beer thirty pm.

Four star links:

• Last week's In the Trenches post at Search Engine Land highlights the benefits of a Google Campaign Report, recommends Nielson's Blog Pulse Trend Search as a great free tool, and drills through the main engines' paid search news.
• It's an oldie but a goodie: 12 Examples of Viral Content, and What We Can Learn From Them provides, well, 12 examples of viral content and highlights some takeaways and lessons learned.
• Speaking of viral content, this post shares 6 strategies for building viral content. They're some pretty sound tips. I recommend studying both the examples and the strategies before you venture off to create viral content of your own.
• Malcolm Gladwell (Mr. Tipping Point) writes an article for the New Yorker about the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery. Rand proclaims that the article is "so awesome, I think I just got pregnant." If you too would like to become pregnant, read the article so that you may also conceive a Gladwell baby.
• Barry Schwartz believes in the Google -60 penalty, and he provides examples to support his claim.
• Adam Audette has a great SEO guide to information architecture, and he also provides some nice advice on nofollow sculpting.
• Slightly Shady SEO tells us why whitehats need to know blackhat SEO, and he provides some really solid, sound reasons as to why we shouldn't be turning our nose to blackhat SEO practices, but rather can actually learn from them.
• The redesigned NES. Hell. Yes.

Five star links:

• Aaron Wall discusses in great detail what a #1 Google ranking is worth. It is an extremely thorough article and is well worth reading.

YOUmoz entries:

• Something Weird is Happening at Google. xxclixx noticed some strange display URLs in Google's search results.
• Trip-Wire Marketing: Stealth and Position Create Explosive Results. Webwordslinger.com talks about "trip-wire" links and how they provide crawling spiders "more avenues to explore, keeping them on-site longer, leading to more complete and indexing faster."
• Your Chance to Win a FREE Conference Pass to Pay Per Click Summit. Kelly Larsen offers SEOmoz members the opportunity to win a free pass to the next PPC Summit and also provides a 10% discount code.
• Telegraph is Breaking News Before It's Happened. London Phil noticed that the Telegraph broke election news before every other news outlet, yet the link from Google's SERPs pointed at a 404. He wonders if the Telegraph got their headline into Google before everyone else by putting it up before it actually happened.
• Marketing Channels: Integration = Local Synergies. Webwordslinger.com discusses leveraging various marketing channels and integrating them into your marketing campaign, especially if you're a local business.
• Managing Customer Care: Keeping a Client vs. Finding a New One. Geez, webwordslinger.com has been busy with the blogging lately. This post talks about various ways to provide a positive customer experience and keep your consumer satisfied.
• YOUmoz Newb Pwns SEO Expert Quiz! Darren Slatten tears our SEO Quiz a new one by going through its flaws and by challenging some of the questions and responses.

Best of YOUmoz:

• Brent D. Payne gets all sappy and talks about his Five Favorite Things About Twitter. And, naturally, all of you Twits just ate it up. ;)
• You Got Us Traffic, But Where Are the Sales? from Sakis highlights how it's easy to forget that a lot of conversions actually happen offline, though your website still probably drove a lot of those sales. Lots of people come to your site and then make their purchase decision later.

New events added to the Events Calendar:

• Search Engine Marketing Roundtable in Singapore on May 13, 2008 at the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Center in Suntec City, Singapore
• Jane and Robot Meetup on May 13 at the Solo Bar in Queen Anne in Seattle, WA. Jane and Robot is a site created by Vanessa Fox and Nathan Buggia that focuses on search-friendly design for web developers.

Upcoming events:

• Search Engine Marketing Roundtable in Singapore on May 13, 2008 in Suntec City, Singapore
• Jane and Robot Meetup on May 13 in Seattle, WA
• Infopresse Day on SEM/SEO May 13 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• Page Zero Marketing Seminar May 15 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• PPC Summit May 19-20 in San Francisco, CA
• International Search Summit May 22 in London, UK
• SEO Training Class May 23 online at highrankings.com/seo-classes

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

• SEO specialist in what appears to be Seattle, Texas, though I'm pretty sure that one or the other is incorrect (unless there actually is a Seattle, TX, in which case my bad)
• Director of eCommerce for a venture-backed startup in Cambridge, MA
• SEM strategist in Needham, MA
• VP of acquisition and retention for a telecommunications solutions company in Needham, MA
• Partner/affiliate marketing manager in Needham, MA
• Lead web developer/architect in Needham, MA
• Lead web developer/architect in Austin, TX
• Contracted Wikipedia link builder for LocalSEOGuide
• Senior web designer in Needham, MA
• Senior UI designer in Needham, MA
• Front-end developer in Needham, MA
• C# / ASP.net web applications developer in Needham, MA
• Full-time SEO/SEM and social media expert for a national alternative newspaper chain. We have worked with this company and highly recommend them--a great group of people work there and it is a fun work environment.

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

• Bluebonic SEO in Washington, DC
• SEO Services Group in Chicago, IL, and India
• Realicity Real Estate Marketing in Eden Prairie, MN
• Shimon Sandler, Inc. in New York, NY
• Clickexplosions.com in Largo, FL
• 3plains in Minneapolis, MN
• SEMLeader in the US, UK, Poland, and Vietnam
• Vortex Solution in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Asia:

• Predicate Logic Web Design in Dubai, India,  United Arab Emirates, and Australia
• Valuebound in Bangalore, India

Featured resumes:

Happily employed:

• Zafar Ahmed is an SEO evangelist who specializes in Internet marketing strategy reports.

Looking for employment:

• Mike Young is an international link building and SEO specialist with proven leadership and interpersonal skills.