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Yahoo disclosed in a SEC filing Friday that they spent $79 million to stop the Microsoft take over, which I am sure will annoy some stockholders who now have stock priced around $13 when the Microsoft bid went as high as $33.

Interestingly Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer still is interested in the acquisition, though you would need a dance card to keep track of who is for or against the merger/buyout.

Yahoo confirmed Friday that the changes noted by others had been in the works for a few days and would continue for a few more.

"We've rolled out some changes to our index with fresh web data and updates to our crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We have had two updates since last November: one in December, 2008, and another in late January this year. We expect the update will be completed very soon. Throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages in the index," Yahoo blogger Sharad Verma announced.

TripAdvisor has launched a search engine where people can compare fares from various airlines and booking agencies. The site which is known for its reviews of travel destinations will also include a feature others have yet to add - the inclusion of bag fees, food and other items such as headphones.

"Nobody else has been able to give consumers clarity about what's the true cost of travel," Bryan Saltzburg, general manager of new initiatives for TripAdvisor told the Boston Globe.

If you love to travel but the economy or your own budget have you staying home, traveling virtually can be a fun way to still see the sights. Street View on Google Maps tempts our wanderlust, and now they've enhanced that temptation by adding Panoramio picture browsing.

Panoramio, which was acquired by Google in 2007, is a photo-sharing site that focuses on photographs of locations and points of interest around the world.

To see the photos, when you're in Street View on Google Maps, click on the box in the top right corner labeled "User Photos." That will launch a visual menu of photos that streams across the top.

Before he retired, my father was a banker for more than ten years. But he devoted a lot of his spare time writing for a national broadsheet and a few magazines. When he finally joined Facebook two weeks ago, it became easier to explain my work in this “new media” industry.

I guess I’m lucky. I don’t find the need to submit cringing stories to My Parents Joined Facebook — not that I have anything to hide from my dad, but I’m glad that he gets it, as a former journalist who found the need to catch up with the times. There aren’t too many people in their 60’s who bend over that way. For him, converting his column to an online medium allowed him the luxury of not having to go through an editor — he found the idea of not having a deadline attractive, and being able to get instant feedback almost immediately more enthralling. To him, it isn’t about “print being dead” — it’s about forcing the traditional industry to learn new tricks. You can only be senile up to some point.

How did you explain blogs, YouTube, Twitter and all that to your folks? More importantly, have they taken the plunge as well? Believe it or not, the main reason why my father joined Facebook was PEER PRESSURE from his old friends from high school and college who are now happily retired in their 60’s, and perhaps have nothing better to do than play Pet Society.

Shopping :

The British government’s plan to appoint a director of digital engagement, with responsibility for overseeing a move to engage more with citizens through social media and other digital technology, has been ridiculed by the main opposition party.

The central government job has been created “in recognition of the huge increase in the use of the internet, digital communities and social media” and “will work across Government departments to encourage, support and challenge them in moving from communicating to citizens on the web to conversing and collaborating with them through digital technology.”

The circa £120,000 ($174,000) per year salary for this three-year contract is probably the most questionable aspect of the role, and warrants some accusation by the Tories of it being a “grotesque amount of public money”. However, to brand it a “pointless job” and to devalue it by suggesting it’s simply about “ministers… faffing around on Facebook and Twitter” misses the point.

Twitter has leapt in popularity among “the masses” since high profile celebrities started publicising it, and a number of Members of Parliament already have accounts.

Similarly, a number of ministers maintain blogs. David Cameron (leader of the Conservative party) has even been known to make (much parodied) video diaries. Presumably, he’s just “faffing around” with a video camera when he should be concentrating on finishing the washing-up and getting out into his constituency?

The fact is, there are many government departments that act like dinosaurs. A central advocate that encourages staff at all levels to consider relevant ways of communicating and engaging with those that will be voting for (or against) them can’t be a bad move in itself.

“This role is not for everyone - success will be achieved by influence and encouragement, not by issuing instructions from the centre,” suggests the vacancy description.

I certainly don’t expect ministers to be wasting time throwing sheep at each other in Facebook when they should be working, but that’s not what this job is advocating. It wouldn’t hurt to cut some of the bureaucracy and outdated methods of communication in favour of more honest, transparent and modern ones.

The Internet added 24 million new domain names in 2008, according to the last quarter Domain Name Industry Brief published by VeriSign.

The year ended with a total of 177 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domains (TLDs), representing 16 percent growth against 2007. In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, more than 10.1 million new domain names were registered across all TLDs. The five largest TLDs in terms of base size were .com, .cn (China), .de (Germany), .net, and .org.

The overall base of .com and .net domain names grew to 90.4 million at the end of 2008. This represents a 12 percent increase over the previous year and a pathetic one percent increase over the third quarter of 2008.

In the past, “word of mouth” meant literally that. Now friends telling friends is as likely, or perhaps a little more likely, to involve the tap of keys and click of mouse. Because of this word spreads faster and wider than ever before, and this means you need to be more aware than ever before of the phenomenon and how it affects you.

When something spreads effectively through word of mouth it is considered to have gone “viral”. There are many factors that influence a message to go viral but for the main ones are:

• Surprising/Unique/Newsworthy/Remarkable
• Easy to understand
• Easy to spread
• Easy to remember
• Emotionally charged
• Loaded with benefits

Each case will not necessarily have all of these but the more attributes that match, the more likely it will go viral. In order to make your own messages spread you need to craft it in such a way that you hit most of these points.

Consider the last viral you were sent, perhaps an email joke, a text message that had gone around all your friends, or a YouTube video. If you think about it there will likely be most of these factors, with the benefit being usually fun and laughter.

Of course it is not just good stuff that spreads via word of mouth.We all know bad news travels at light speed.

If you want to attempt to stop bad news spreading then you need to nip it early and effectively. Remove the emotion and benefit from spreading the message by calmly resolving the issue or by going above and beyond in your customer service so if the message is spread it is noteworthy because of positive reasons and not negative. If that fails then you need to make your side of the story clear and memorable. The more complicated a message is, the fewer people it will impact.

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