Microsoft Corp. has announced the recipients of approximately $1 million in academic research funding.

The dominance of the iTunes Music Store could see a challenge from Seattle, if reports of the pending debut of an Amazon digital music presence come true.

Valleywag is running “Valleywag Hotties“, a competition asking who the hottest man in geekdom is.

The most credible source of information about a company is now “a person like me,” which has risen dramatically to surpass doctors and academic experts for the first time, according to the seventh annual Edelman Trust Barometer.

Today’s communication technologies – including cell phones, e-mail, and blogs – can drive users to a heavy sense of guilt.

The summary – a young lawyer applies for a position with a firm, which extends an offer, then cuts the offered salary; the young lawyer fires off an email declining the position, after which the fun really began.

The social search engine, Prefound announced today that it will begin sharing revenue with topic experts to provide the most relevant and up-to-date information on specific topics of interest to the PreFound.com community.

This is hilarious stuff. Google’s Matt Cutts decides to sneak around Ask Jeeves’ offices after hours.

An annual survey conducted by IT Analytics firm Outsell Inc. concludes that just over 80% of advertisers are using some form of Internet Marketing with a definite emphasis on search marketing.

This social networking mashup enables Skype users to search and locate other skype users so they can then exchange information or chat.

Ingy dt Net, creator of Kwiki and Socialtext dude, has created Jemplate — the first template toolkit for Ajax.

There seems to be a C++ schism going right now as the Ecma consortium works out standards for the widespread programming language. The specification will bind C++ to the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). This presents a problem for some because it ties the language a little too closely to .NET.

The AP is reporting that Bill and Melinda Gates went with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to a San Diego high school to talk about the Gates’ Foundation’s $11 million school reform project in the area.

The beta version of Office Live provides its small business testers with a free top-level domain name, website design tools, site hosting, and email with its Basics configuration.

From softpedia, news of recent updates for Google Local (UK)… Google launched two new services for England’s version.

Would you buy a computer encased in a Scotch bottle? Of course you would. [Hic] I would, too. How about a mouse that’s also a phone? How about a CPU that looks like an anime girl? [Hic] That’s sick man, some things should just be left alone.

The recent Grand Theft Auto scandal surrounding the secret and sexually explicit Hot Coffee modification has done more than cause uproar in Congress. Game developers are taking a more hands-on approach by launching the first ever Sex in Video Games Conference this summer to build support for a new special interest group.

Canuckflack sent me this uber-news:

MSN Search has gotten a facelift, junking most of the blue for lots of white space, a look very consistent with Windows Live offerings.

With a 6.17 percent rate, AOL Search fared best among search engines when it came to converting visitors into customers in January.

A bundle with the Tegic T9 predictive text software and the IBM WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment will debut as T9 Run later in 2006.

Excellent post at WMW by user sugarrae on the what is old and what is new about link building. It’s all about marketing, not just getting links. Via TW

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard from Lycos. Long lost amidst the choppy seas of corporate change, Lycos was once one of the ruling elite.

Microsoft, Yahoo, and Time Warner were the top three companies receiving website visitors in January 2006, as each handled more than 100 million unique visitors for the month.