WebProNews

Google Launches Friend Connect After Months of Waiting

It has been quite the day for connecting. Not only did Facebook unleash Facebook Connect on the world, but Google has also now made Google Friend Connect available (in beta) as well. Friend Connect is basically a way to make your own site more social via a service from Google. By using the service, you are allowing people to socialize within your site using accounts they have already established from other parties (including Google itself).

WSJ Editor Doesn't Get Internet Advertising

Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson spoke about a print advertising resurgence in a speech at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. He thinks advertisers are moving back to print because of his belief that print has a more attentive readership than Internet news readers. From Reuters ...

Police Take Unsolved Murders To Internet

The Internet is certainly maligned enough as a place of general depravity and poor etiquette, but all shadows have a lighter side. The Toronto Police, for example, have launched a website where visitors can check out cold homicide cases and provide new clues.

eBay Attracts More Complaints

eBay is certainly no stranger to controversy. They even catch hell when they're giving away items (well technically, they're charging a buck....for things like sports cars, jet skis, etc.). The auction site is hosting a contest called "Holiday Doorbusters," which is basically summed up here:

Yahoo Tries To Reroute Navigational Queries

Ask made a rather embarrassing admission earlier this week: its third most popular search term for 2008 was [Google].  Now, although we can't say if a similar exit pattern exists, Yahoo has taken an interesting step towards heading off its own Google-bound visitors.

Here's How Facebook Connect Works

Facebook has just announced the general availability of Facebook Connect, its new service that allows users to login to other sites using their Facebook IDs and share there activities from these third-party sites with their Facebook friends. The service, "makes it easier for Facebook's 130 million users to tap into the social graph by extending their Facebook experience to any participating Website, desktop application or mobile device," a Facebook representative tells WebProNews.

Wikipedia Gets Big Grant To Simplify Contribution Process

Back in March, the official article count for all versions of Wikipedia combined hit 10 million.  It was an impressive moment, but one that might have come much sooner if not for some overly complicated procedures.  So Wikipedia has been given a large grant to make contributing to the volunteer-written encyclopedia easier.

Spitzer Hired To Write Financial Column For Slate

Former controversial New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign amid a call girl scandal, will now have a new job writing a column for Slate.com about finances and the economy.The column is called "The Best Policy," and will run every other week. In his debut column for Slate titled "Too Big Not To Fail" Spitzer takes the U.S. government to task for trying to bailout financial institutions.

Google Buys PaperOfRecord Newspaper Archive

On March 23, 1752, the Halifax Gazette told the story of a tragic romance. The author of the short narrative named neither subject, referring only to them as the Officer and the Lady. A short time after they married, the Officer scolded the Lady for being late for dinner, whereupon she downed a bottle of liquid opium and declared, “Duty and obedience!