WebProNews

Research Scientist Heads From Yahoo To Twitter

Today, as is often the case, one tech company's loss became another's gain.  Utkarsh Srivastava has left Yahoo after spending more than three years as a senior research scientist there, and Srivastava confirmed (in well under 140 characters) that he'll land at Twitter. Srivastava's background is quite impressive.  On the educational front, he earned degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology and Stanford, and happened to receive the Stanford Graduate Fellowship, too.

Holiday Shoppers Turning To Social Media And Internet

Digital technologies continue to drive a new approach to shopping, with social media and mobile phones becoming key influencers this holiday season, according to a new survey of holiday retail spending and trends by Deloitte. Social media is gaining traction with 17 percent of consumers planning to use social media during their holiday shopping, and 60 percent plan to use it to find discounts, coupons and sales information, More than half (53%) plans to use social media to research gift ideas, while 52 percent plan to check the gift wish lists of friends and family.

Google Gives Users a Way to Lock SafeSearch

Google has launched a new way to lock SafeSearch. What this accomplishes is, users will have to enter their password to change the setting, and Google Search results will be visibly different than when SafeSearch is not locked. Google demonstrates how to to lock SafeSearch with the following short clip:

More on Google's Caffeine Update

Update: Out at PubCon in Las Vegas, Mike McDonald of WebProNews discussed the rolling out of the Caffeine update further with popular search enthusiast Barry Schwartz:

Has YouTube Found the Right Ad Solution?

YouTube has begun testing a new kind of ad format on some of its videos - skippable pre-rolls. These ads let users choose whether or not they want to watch the ad as it appears at the beginning of a video. YouTube says that when it first began testing in-stream ads a couple years ago, abandonment rates on videos were as high as 70%. They found that users were much more likely to view and engage with overlay ads.

Twitter Continues Retweet Roll-Out

Update: There is an interesting post here from Twitter CEO Evan Williams, which talks about how the retweet button works, and why Twitter is doing it the way it is.

Google Latitude Introduces Location History, Smart Alerts

A quick, but important, note: the stuff we're about to discuss is only available on an opt-in basis.  So there's no need to stop halfway through this article and drown your phone or tape it to a neighbor's car.  Now, with that out of the way, let's move on to the news that Google Latitude's gained two features called Google Location History and Google Location Alerts (which is in beta).

Google Programming Language on the "Go"

Update: Philipp Lenssen notes that someone has already developed a language called Go! (with an exclamation point). There is a book on it here. The author wants Google to change the name. This could get confusing for developers looking to use Go, although, it could also help sales of the Go! book. It wouldn't make for very happy customers, however.

Buy A Blackberry From Walmart Get A $100 Gift Card

Walmart has introduced yet another holiday promotion, this time the retailer is offering a $100 gift card with the purchase of any Blackberry device, both in stores and online.   Staring Saturday, November 14 at 8 am through November 20, shoppers will receive a $100 Walmart Gift Card with the purchase of Blackberry devices with a two-year contract.

Google Makes the Cloud Cheaper

Gmail used to offer a gigabyte of storage to new users, but now it offers at least seven gigs. Picasa comes with a gig. Sometimes that's not enough. While Google has offered the ability to pay for additional storage, the company has now reduced the prices for it.