Google Hummingbird update

Check out this article on Google's update called Hummingbird. This algorithm change, which was officially announced on September 26th, addresses conversational queries largely driven by mobile devices using voice search. Read the full article here:   
http://www.link-assistant.com/news/google-hummingbird-update.html

YouTube - How to Create Custom Thumbnails + more

This video covers 4 New YouTube updates:
JamesWedmore.com

1. How to Create Custom Thumbnails
2. InVideo programming
3. Interactive Polls & Questions
4. New Analytics Feature: Estimated Minutes Watched

Google Places becomes Google+ for Local Search

These Google algorithm changes really shake up the Local Search playing field:

Google Places Is Over, Company Makes Google+ The Center Of Gravity For Local Search

Using Google+ Pages for Business Marketing

Top Google Result Gets 36.4% of Clicks [Study]

Adobe Lightroom 4

Adobe Lightroom 4 now in stores!
Lightroom is a complete photo management and editing suite, and powerful organizational tool for your photographs. Check out the new features.

Adobe Creative Cloud & Luminosity video

This is a mixed post of two tweets:

Adobe Creative Cloud Offers Applications, Services, Community - read more.

Working With Luminosity Masks in Photoshop - check out tutorial video.

Google Boost > AdWords Express

When a Google rep contacted me back in November 2010 to introduce Boost, the product seemed positioned as AdWords for Google Places, or paid Places. Now they're re-positioning it as AdWords Express to simplify the AdWords process for small business owners. Read more...

ICANN going beyond existing 22 TLDs

LA Times article about ICANN going beyond existing 22 Top Level Domains (TLDs)
At $185,000, it’s pricey, but then all sorts of domains become possible.

Partition Tool

Back in the day, you may have used Partition Magic... or more recently, you may have bought Acronis Disk Director or... you can download Partition Tool for FREE!

Amazon S3 for hosting static websites

I hadn't considered Amazon for website hosting until a colleague mentioned they have redundant servers on both coasts and offer dedicated IPs. For more info, check out Press Release: Amazon S3 adds new features for hosting static websites.

Amazon Cloud Drive & Cloud Player

News Release
Amazon announced the launch of Amazon Cloud Drive, Amazon Cloud Player for Web and Amazon Cloud Player for Android. Together, these services enable customers to securely store music in the cloud and play it on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac or PC, wherever they are. Customers can upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their Amazon Cloud Drive for free.

Google changes Local Search Algorithm

Google changes its Local Search algorithm to favor Places, i.e. business listings.

This is a big shift, especially for local businesses looking to rank well in geo-targeted search results.

Full article at searchengineland.com. The adventure continues...

Tablet Wars

Tech round-up of some tablet contenders. The Blackberry Playbook's screen is smaller than I'd like, but the camera, RAM, and Flash support make it real nice!
Full article at Engadget.

Google URL Shortener

1. Using Google's browser, Chrome, go to goo.gl URL Shortener

2. Install extension, which will new icon to Chrome for 1-click url shortening.

3. Go to any website w/ long url. Click on icon and Presto!
http://brendanbowie.blogspot.com/ becomes
http://goo.gl/X9N0

BONUS: To generate QR Code for camera phones, just add .qr
http://goo.gl/X9N0.qr

More on QR Codes

Google Cloud Print

Google Cloud Print - an interesting & ambitious goal "to build a printing experience that enables any app (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer anywhere in the world.