Several video-oriented websites received illicit boosts in their traffic from third-party ad popups that occurred on people’s PCs. Those machines had been infected by spyware, which powered those popups.

Yahoo has added several new features to its travel Web site. The new version of Yahoo Travel focuses on personalized travel deals, travel guides and a new mapping system.

The rumors of a deal between eBay and StumbleUpon may soon become facts – the latest report indicates that the two companies are in “advanced talks.”  And this news comes straight to you from “people familiar with the matter.”

Continuing my series of interviews with Web Analysts here is an interview with Rohan Kapoor.

Rohan, originally from India, was working as an analyst for a fortune 50 company in Seattle area on his student visa (he was allowed to work for a year). Like thousands of other he applied for his work visa called H1B via his employer, unfortunately he was not selected by the newly instituted lottery system by INS.

One of the WordPress development team, Ryan Born, noted in his post WordPress 2.2 Release Candidate 1 will not include a tagging feature, the next version could include a comprehensive taxonomy framework which could open up the field for interesting plugins.

The year has been an interesting one for WordPress bloggers with the release of about 5 major and incremental upgrades since the start of the year.

Have we really reached a point where people are going to worry about how and where their progeny’s names appear in Google’s search results?

The fight that’s supposed to save boxing, Mayweather versus De La Hoya, ended up on YouTube, swiftly followed by a takedown request from HBO. It’s a missed opportunity for lots of potential boxing fans.

It’s common knowledge that quitting smoking is hard, and I’ve even known a couple people who had a tough time cutting back their caffeine intake.  But James Thomas did the unthinkable: he gave up Google.

Coremetrics is working with IBM to offer retailers Web 2.0 and multichannel analytics. IBM has introduced WebSphere Commerce 2.0 Store solution, an ecommerce platform based on Web 2.0 technology, which gives users a streamlined experience.

Many companies are not aware of the different roles that various departments in their organization will fill when they begin to work with an outside SEO firm.  What follows is a demonstration, in play form (bear with me), of which internal departments are involved in a typical SEO campaign and why. It also demonstrates some of the resistance that may be felt by those departments as well as what valuable contributions a company can make to help its SEO firm craft a successful campaign.

The Players

It’s a city . . . it’s a waboo . . . it’s CityWaboo!  No, I don’t have a clue what the name means, but a new “community resource site” has launched in beta.

LookSmart just added contextual ad serving and optimization to its AdCenter platform. With the addition publishers are given more control over the relevance and appearance of ads appearing on websites.

Valleywag today compares Facebook vs. Linked In. I’ve been thinking about the same thing lately. I have hundreds of emails waiting to be answered (I answered a bunch yesterday, but it just caused MORE email to come back in so now I’m behind again — thankfully I’ll be offline in a plane headed to a BEA event in Atlanta so I’ll have lots of time to answer emails).