The folks over at Knuttz.net have cracked the code on Digg. So listen up, I’m here to explain to you exactly how they do it (well, with one critical missing detail!)

If visitors to your website choose to add your feed to their web-based reader of choice, they probably have that feed added to Ask.com’s Bloglines service.

Matt Mullenweg (the guy who started Automattic, which produces Wordpress, which runs this blog and many others) tells Jonathan Schwartz that Sun Microsystems isn’t there for startups.

The U.S. Senate has shot down a proposal that would have required some political bloggers to register as lobbyists or face prison time for up to 10 years. The Senate approved an amendment that removed the section that would have required some bloggers to be regulated.

Traditional approaches to system development include design of both the application and platform strategies.

When Kellogg pulled a Pontiac and told TV viewers to search for its Special K brand cereal on Yahoo!, Hitwise wondered if people really were the sheep Kellogg hoped they’d be. A line graph later, sure enough, people generally do what they’re told, as long as it’s on TV.

Hitwise is reporting that Google Reader is still lagging pretty far behind both Bloglines and Rojo in terms of market share, despite much love from tech writers throughout the blogosphere.

In addition to some new search/keyword technologies, Microsoft also took the lid off of some interesting new online video ad technology developed by adCenter Labs. These developments could easily expand advertising options beyond pre-roll and post-roll spots.

Cameron Olthius recently posted about the rise of “made for digg” sites, a phrase coined by Ethan Kaplan, who points out Knuttz as an example.

I don’t know who’s smarter, Nick Wilson for writing this excellent post on linkbaiting tactics for 2007, or Danny Sullivan for persuading him to publish this post (which is blatant linkbait itself) on Search Engine Land. Regardless, it’s a great read.

The former name of the US Government’s information portal has been mercifully replaced with the domain name USA.gov and a Spanish-language counterpart, GobiernoUSA.gov.

JP Morgan has published a report on how Google Checkout did in 2006, and their findings show that Checkout reached 6% of the 1,100 consumers they surveyed, compared to 42% for PayPal, what I call a good, but not massive, start.

The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus ruled yesterday that advertisers posting their ads to YouTube, and other online video sites, must follow the same guidelines used in TV ads.

One of the things that has been interesting to see over the course of the past year is how Google has been quietly dominating the RSS market. While this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given Google’s market clout today it’s been interesting to watch it happening.

Facebook is a great service – my 17-year-old daughter and all her friends use it (I have an account too), and so does my cousin who is at McGill University in Montreal, where she engages in the typical sort of debauchery expected of second-year college students, and then posts pictures of said debauchery on her site for all her friends to see.

I met a lovely reader today, who responded to seeing my blog post yesterday on accessbility. I wrote about the topic not as expert, but as a student.

Online browsing and research will increase offline retail sales by 12 percent over the next five years according to JupiterResearch. In their new report, “U.S. Online Retail Forecast, 2006-2011″ growth of offline sales will reach 40 percent of total U.S. retail sales.

‘Shorting’ or short selling refers to the selling of a contract, a bond or stock or a commodity that is not directly owned by the seller. When practicing short selling, a seller is committed to purchase the stock or commodity previously sold.

This is probably a non-starter, but it’s fun to think about. It’s well known among the most ardent click fraud combatants that there are armies of low-paid workers in the world that are paid to do nothing but click on ads all day – in India, Vietnam, Thailand, and others. But what if the pay-per-digg model was expanded by some crafty, unethical, profiteer through outsourcing?

Q&A With Gabe Rivera, Creator Of Techmeme Techmeme may be the singlemost significant news site I’ve found in the last five years. There is no single source on the internet that does a faster more relevant snapshot view of what is happening in the world of tech than Techmeme.

JD Lasica had a post removed from YouTube the other day.

In the face of recurrent search losses, this week Microsoft showed off what its much-touted adCenter Labs has been working on. At Demo Fest in Redmond, Mr. Softie showcased what the company called “breakthrough digital tools” focused on improving keyword and content technologies, ad selection and relevance, audience intelligence, social networking, video, platforms, and devices.

Today, I ran into an issue regarding the way numbers are parsed in different cultures, which resulted in very wrong numbers.

In 3 weeks (from this Sunday), America’s biggest sporting event kicks off. As you can tell by little metaphor there, the game I’m talking about the NFL Super Bowl. Not only is Super Bowl known for being one of the …