It’s perhaps not too much of a stretch to describe either Best Buy or Walmart as omnipresent, and together, the two retail chains are definitely hard to avoid.  So it looks like Facebook’s virtual currency will soon receive a huge push, as Walmart and Best Buy are supposed to start selling Facebook Credits gift cards.

Susan Wojcicki is an important figure in Google’s history for all sorts of reasons, which we’ll run through in a moment.  But it looks like she’ll play an important role in its future, too, as word has come that Wojcicki was named a senior vice president yesterday.

A little background info: Wojcicki is the person who rented her garage to Larry and Sergey when they were in the process of founding Google.  She later became Google employee number 18, and managed to create everything from Google Doodles to AdSense over the years.

Amazon.com has introduced a free app for iPad called Amazon Windowshop, which the company describes as a complete “rewrite” of its website for iPad.

Amazon says Windowshop takes advantage of the iPad’s responsive, multi-touch user interface and offers a fluid user interaction.

“Amazon Windowshop is a top-to-bottom rewrite of Amazon.com – designed and built without compromise just for iPad," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com.

Sony shares took an upswing as rumors began to swirl that Apple was vying to acquire the company. Reuters reported, from a Barron’s report, that Apple was interested in Adobe, Disney or Sony as their potential targets.

Would acquiring Sony be a good move for Apple? Your thoughts.

Google’s $700 million acquisition of ITA Software has just hit another obstacle.  Several high-profile travel companies have banded together to form "the FairSearch.org coalition" and ask the U.S. Department of Justice to challenge the deal.

The service that provides eBay with a good chunk of its revenue now has a new chief financial officer.  eBay announced today that Patrick Dupuis, formerly of contact center outsourcing specialist Sitel, is taking the CFO position at PayPal.

If that seems like an odd career path, the fact that BJC Healthcare, a nonprofit healthcare organization, employed Dupuis prior to Sitel may send your eyebrows even higher.  Dupuis did serve as CFO at both those outfits, however.

It appears as though a beta version of Google Instant has been spotted in the wild, according to Droid Life. If you have an Incredible, Droid, or Droid X chances are you now have the ability to use Google Instant.

Do you like Google Instant? Tell us your thoughts.

Time Warner Cable customers who have ESPN and have Internet service with the cable company will now be able to watch ESPN and ESPN3.com online starting tonight with “Monday Night Football.”

To view the content, Time Warner Cable customers can pre-register by visiting the company’s “My Services” section and verify they have a subscription. Customers can also go to ESPNnetworks.com or ESPN3.com to register or sign in to view content.

Six weeks after becoming Digg’s CEO, Matt Williams has made a tough call.  Williams announced today that he intends to lay off 37 percent of the organization’s employees in an effort to keep Digg out of the red.

Earlier this year, Arbor Networks took a moment to consider the idea of Google as an ISP, and determined that the search giant would actually be the third-largest carrier in the world.  Now Arbor Networks has revisited the concept, and it believes Google’s moved up a step in the rankings.

Amazon.com today said its latest Kindle eReader is the bestselling product on its U.S. and U.K. Websites.

Without giving specific numbers, Amazon said sales of its new Kindle have already surpassed total devices sales from October through December 2009.

So far, Google hasn’t celebrated with any public parties or press conferences.  Not even with a short press release or tiny blog post.  This morning, Google just used a Twitter account to announce the fact that the Android Market’s now populated by 100,000 apps.

You can see the seven-word tweet for yourself below.  It was sent from a somewhat out-of-the-way account the Android team uses to communicate with developers.

Half of Americans who use social networking sites have seen people share to much personal information, yet more than a quarter (28%) rarely think about what could happened if they share too much personal information online, according a new survey from Lawyers.com.

Google may soon make British history, but not in way that will make anyone proud.  Due to the company’s admission that its Street View cars sometimes collected entire emails and passwords while taking pictures, Google could become the first organization to be fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

eBay has partnered with social shopping website Groupon, to offer daily deals from Groupon throughout its site.

Members of the eBay Bucks Rewards Program who purchase Groupon deals from the eBay site earn 5% of the purchase price back in eBay Bucks.  Groupon is available in more than 100 North American markets and offers nearly 200 deals per day; eBay will use geolocation to find the closest deal for each user.

PBS has introduced a beta version of a new PBS.org with a focus on local content from member stations, full TV episodes and auto-localization features.

The new PBS.org features member station and partner content along with national productions as part of the home page, topic pages, special features and series sites.

PBS.org is automatically localized so visitors can view video, TV schedule information and content that is specific to their community.

The version of Android that’ll follow the version codenamed "Froyo" should be released any time now.  To celebrate its arrival, Google has already taken the step of installing a large statue of a gingerbread man on the company’s campus in Mountain View.

It seems that Space is no longer the final frontier when talking about Foursquare check-ins. Douglas Wheelock, a NASA astronaut, has checked into the International Space Station using the location-based app. For this simple feat, Wheelock was "awarded" the very first NASA Explorer Badge. Bow before it Foursquare geeks.

The bickering between Apple and Google continues. It’s gotten to the point where at just about every event where one of these companies has an announcement (at least within the mobile space), they take not so subtle jabs at one another. 

Which mobile operating system will win out in the end? Apple’s iOs? Google’s Android? Share your thoughts here. 

Flock, creator of the social web browser, sent WebProNews some interesting findings about the social media habits of consumers. One finding we found particularly interesting was that based on responses to a survey from the company, 74% say they feel pressure to respond to emails within a day, while only 52% feel the same about Facebook postings.

Some people have complained that it’s hard to get much information out of someone in 140 characters.  It may also be more difficult to obtain the truth.  A study has found (or confirmed, if you like) that individuals are more honest when dealing with each other face-to-face than when using Twitter.

Few people are more highly regarded in the blogging-for-business world than Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net. He has essentially set the blueprint for how to turn a blog into a business, and is one of the go-to sources for tips on how to do as much. He had a chat with WebProNews at BlogWorld last week, after speaking in one of the more popular keynotes at the event.

Again and again, Google’s apologized for collecting sensitive WiFi data while taking pictures for its Street View program.  Now the search giant’s issued another apology, and also announced several concrete steps it’s taking to ensure nothing similar happens in the future.

Google introduced a new feature to its AdWords Search Funnels today: the Top Paths (Query Paths) report. Search Funnels are a set of reports that describe ad click and impression behavior on Google.com that leads up do a conversion.