The New York Times today reported on a recent Hitwise post by Heather Hopkins highlighting that Google was now sending about three times as many of their users over to Google Maps comparing a week ending January 6th with a yea

Most of us have gotten to a place in our life or career where we need some mentoring, but don’t know where to find assistance.

For example: maybe you own a small business and you want to retire soon, and you want to prepare to sell your business, but don’t know how to begin.

You might imagine that more than a couple of companies have tossed the title of Chief Digital Officer at some random young guy.  Gannett Co. seems to have thought things through, however, and it’s given the position to Chris Saridakis, the CEO of PointRoll.

The Semmys has just been officially announced, and is a new award site for the best Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing posts of the year, and is the brainchild of Matt at Small Business SEM.

A disturbing report via National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell says Big Brother (that’s the US government and its NSA if you haven’t been keeping up) wants access to any email, file transfer and Web search. Their main ally so far in the security game: AT&T.

I didn’t watch Mark Zuckerberg’s 60 Minutes interview.

Fifty-seven percent of online users navigate their favorite sites from the home page, top sites report two-thirds of the traffic they receive arrives deep within the site from search engines according to a new report from JupiterResearch, "Site and Network Navigation: Trends Force New Paradigm."

Ruth Kedar of KedarDesigns.com designed the Google logo in the version that became famous around the world (the original tries at designing the logo were by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, reportedly, using the Gimp software). I asked Ruth how the Google logo design came about originally, and here’s her reply.

One of the things we do as a social media agency is analyze what other people do and comment on it.

Matt McGee recently reached out to a number of industry bloggers to be involved with a blog content award he’s calling “The SEMMYs“.

Out of the range of Google-related rumors – new data centers, an operating system, world domination – one that hasn’t been mentioned in a while is the Google PC.  That hardly matters, though, because Everex has stepped in with another stand-in: the $399 Cloudbook.

The classic web analytics funnel analysis is simple indeed.

The key metric is the percentage of times the process is abandoned on each step. The implicit assumption is that steps with the highest abandonment rates are the biggest problem.

At every conference or tradeshow, you get a badge.  I have a box full of them on my desk, an increasing number of them with the title of "Speaker" affixed beneath my name. 

A new survey by Brodeur and MarketWire, shows that 75% of journalists use blogs to get ideas for stories.

Journalists may not comment but they are reading…in fact, four in five say they read read blogs at least two to three times a week. Almost 30% of journalists in the survey say they have their own blog.

Journalists consult blogs for story ideas, angles and insights:

Damn, ever since Facebook blocked my account for a little less than a day people have been calling me with some real sob stories about how their accounts got turned off by Facebook and that they have no recourse.

I seriously don’t know what to do either, but I’m going to collect them all and then write a post. Maybe a little “A list blog attention” will get some accounts relooked at.

Toasters and Companion Logos are in as the video entertainment site Dailymotion tries to match delivering the marketing message with people’s rejection of intrusive ad formats.

Microsoft has partnered with MediaCart Holdings on a grocery cart screen that will feature video ads and help shoppers find items in the store.

Something like 20 minutes out of every television hour seems to be dedicated to commercials; advertising is pretty firmly entrenched in our lives.  Spending on it is likely to go down, however, with the exception applying to online ads.

If you were too busy celebrating the Giants win on Sunday to be bothered with watching 60 Minutes and its interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Resource Shelf has a transcript of the chat.