Several common website errors may give webmasters fits, not to mention site visitors when seeing them appear online.

In a move that takes considerable political clout, Presidential hopeful Chris Dodd has placing a hold on the FISA bill in the Senate that would immunize telecommunications companies against litigation for their role in handing over phone records to the US government.

Congratulations to the gang at dotMobi for their successful Moniker auction in Miami last Friday. I am extremely impressed with how much they made on these domains.

Followup to my recent article on Google AdWords’ website quality policies. Although the majority of rank and file advertisers I chatted with favor Google’s stances against, for example, "arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads," not all go along with the Google take on things.

Yahoo Search Assist expands on a person’s query to suggest additional relevant searches and concepts for the searches they perform.

Pick whichever cliché you like: what goes around comes around; you catch more flies with honey; adding insult to injury; cutting off your nose to spite your face; his butt would make Harold a Sunday face. They all could apply here – maybe not that last one; just something my grandfather used to say.

Today Google is announcing the wider availability of Google Gadgets in ad format, something that has been in testing for months. Several advertisers are cited as happy beta partners, including Intel, Six Flags, and a fizzy beverage company.

After many rumours and crossed fingers (at least on my part), the New York Times has finally bitten the bullet and removed the pay wall from its website. Columnists and other content have finally been set free to find an audience wherever they can — and that’s not all.

Just a quick rant for those who would rather debate than execute and implement.

Alright, you’ve got your bright idea and your website and you’re ready to roll. Now all you need is a first page Google ranking. Easy enough, right? Well, maybe if you’re selling fish sweaters, otherwise, there’s a lot of people with quite the head start.

The Online Publishers Association, a nonprofit trade group, has relaunched its Web site to create a better destination for research, news and commentary related to online media.

A handful of tweaks to Google’s Website Optimizer tool have arrived as the product’s first major update, based on user feedback.

Google Website Optimizer, now nearly one year old, has received its first update, according to the Official Google Analytics blog. Ooh, pretty pretty data!

The major improvements to the optimizer include:

(This is a story I wrote for the Globe that ran in the Review section of Tuesday’s newspaper. I’m posting it here for anyone who might be interested but doesn’t read the newspaper).

Necessity is the mother of invention, the old saying goes. But boredom and the desire to experiment are powerful forces too, says Canadian author Michael Winter. That’s how he came up with the idea to “serialize” his latest novel on Facebook, the hot social-networking site.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have tossed quite a bit of money at Tesla Motors, but they did so as private individuals.  Now there’s word that Google itself could get behind another automotive effort.