The good news: Google has finally launched an Australia-specific version of Google Maps. The bad news: the service gives terrible directions. Also, Google kind of forgot to mention the release to Australia.

Vodafone and MySpace announced a deal today to provide social networking services to European customers for the first time. This move is representative of a continued push into the mobile marketplace by social networking services, along with their advertising partners.

Watching video online continues to be a popular form of entertainment. A new survey from Advertising.com found that nearly 66 percent of respondents view streaming video content at least once a week. Forty-four percent of video viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34, while 56 percent are age 35 and older.

In the latest of its efforts in social branding, Yahoo has announced a partnership agreement with Pontiac to develop an online hub geared specifically to the community of enthusiasts supporting the automobile manufacturer

If you are building a Yahoo Search for your blog, and found their Search Builder created ones that were just a little too wide for your liking at 300 pixels, you’ll like their latest update.

A super narrow format for search boxes created with Yahoo Search Builder became available today. At 192 pixels in width, it should be narrow enough to satisfy most blog templates and designs in existence.

The way people behave when looking for information doesn’t differ much from the time when going out for dinner meant toting a big club and hoping you could get the drop on something with sharp teeth.

That forager comparison comes from someone who knows search pretty well. Mike Moran co-authored the book Search Engine Marketing, Inc. with Bill Hunt, and has considerable knowledge of the topic of search.

Listrak, an email-marketing firm has added a feature that enables users to insert RSS feeds containing links to social bookmarking sites to their email marketing campaigns. The feature combines RSS and social bookmarking with email marketing software.

“Social bookmarking is quickly becoming a viable alternative to standard search engines,” says Ross Kramer, CEO of Listrak. “People are sharing information like never before, and the new social bookmarking feature allows our clients to seamlessly integrate this new technology.”

I’m a huge fan of the Opie & Anthony radio program on XM Satellite Radio, have been for years, and over the last week, I’ve heard show host Anthony talking about his experiences with Windows Vista.

Anthony’s had a lot of trouble, running into unsigned drivers, video card drivers that have worse performance in Vista than in XP, and a constant Blue Screen of Death before every install.

Over the last week, Viacom, reportedly after negotiations went nowhere, demanded YouTube remove 100,000 videos.

Now, people are complaining that legitimate videos got swept up in the Great Purge, including this guy who had a video of him and some buddies discussing RSS and OPML, deleted because it occured in a restaurant that shares a name with a CBS personality.

Last month, Todd And published the Power 150, a listing of the top 150 marketing blogs in the US.

While some have criticized the list because of its US centricity – I can think of a good half dozen marketing blogs in Europe and Asia that ought to be in such a list – the Power 150 is a useful resource.

Microsoft has announced plans to share a percentage of in-game advertising revenue from MSN Games with its casual game developers. Developers of web-based titles found on MSN Games will be eligible to take advantage of the new Ad-Share Program.

Funds will accrue monthly for those participating in the Ad-Share program, with developers receiving a percentage of the gross revenue achieved from the advertisements shown during online gameplay for their title(s), including ads served during the loading screens at the start of a game or in between levels.

Ever since Google stopped showing accurate backlink (aka incoming link) counts to websites webmasters and SEOs have been forced to turn to other, more accurate tools like Yahoo.

This hasn’t really been all that bad in my opinion but it is refreshing to hear that Google has finally launched a new backlinks analysis tool within Google Webmaster Central.

In case you haven’t noticed, social media optimization (SMO) is the new big search marketing term. I think you’ll be hearing a lot about it this year and thought I’d give you an easy tip to get started.

First think you need to know is what social media optimization is. Basically, it’s just getting exposure and traffic from social media sites like Digg, del.icio.us, MySpace and many others. For a more in depth explanation, check out the new rules for social media optimization.

If search engines are the next great marketing machines, then links are the fuel that drives the mechanism of search engine optimization and rankings. Obtaining quality inbound links might seem like a daunting task, but in actuality there is an effectively simple element to linkbaiting that is often taken for granted.

After Shuman Ghosemajumder posted a pair of blog entries attacking the click fraud assessments and methodologies of companies like Click Forensics, that company’s CEO Tom Cuthbert and a couple of other executives took to the blogosphere to respond.

Believe it or not (and you might not believe it), Cuthbert and Ghosemajumder are not strangers peeking over the tops of opposing trenches, tossing mustard gas and grenades at each other in a virtual sense.

Over the years, I’ve used a lot of third-party components and self built control libraries. It an easy way to add functionality to your code projects – just reference the dll file and that’s it. This encapsulated functionality comes in most cases at a high cost. Imaging that you have an assembly of your homemade ASP.NET controls that you wish to use in your new website. In there you have a custom version of the GridView control that does something smart. On your new website this is exactly what you need, but you need it to behave a little different in a certain situation.

Why is it so hard to make a decision in business? Business requires that people make decisions, and every decision is a risk in some form or another, yet as we deal with business risk management, it seems that management has become more paralyzed by managing risk to such a point that decisions often go unmade.

Project managers dealing with this kind of problem often have to go to great lengths and burn work cycles just to get someone to commit either for or against a project or work.