The election is over, which means many of us will have to go back to obsessing about other stuff ??" the economy, fantasy sports leagues, Neko Case - whatever floats your boat. Still, in reviewing the last two years of what has surely been the most exciting and fascinating election of a lifetime it's worth noting not just the impact of online platforms on the election ??" on which much has and will be written.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Microsoft Advertising: Insights, the official podcast of Microsoft Advertising. Insights will cover all things digital advertising, primarily focusing on search out of the gate. We'll discuss the state of the industry.

Today's search engine marketing news and opinion: The Organic and Paid Balancing Act; The Future of Online Ads: Location, Location, Location; SEO During E-Commerce Application Development; and more.

by Vera H-C Chan An alternate reality descends upon the Buzz Multiplex this weekend. Out of the offerings this week, two features the late Bernie Mac (one in voice only) and one showcases a cameo from the late Isaac Hayes . In another surreal twist, the most well-received movie may star a has-been '80s action star who plays ... an '80s action star. Welcome to the Twilight Zone, Buzz-style. 1. " Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa " (PG).

Over at the Official Google blog , Dan Russell of the Search Quality team, has written a lengthy post on field studying search behavior. One of the things Russell discovered is that there is often a disparity between what people say they're searching for and what they actually do search for. There's also a disparity between what they searched for and what they remember searching for later on. Another area Russell dives into is eye tracking.

News from the blogosphere for publishers The election's over, so it's time to refocus on some winning tools and services that can help you "change" your site. We also found a tomato that's far from rotten. Read on' Building a better blog Calling all bloggers"the folks at the MyBlogLog Blog recently announced that they are teaming up with Zemanta to make your blogging toolbox more powerful. Zemanta helps you find photos,

Microsoft is attempting to pull the rug out from under Google's talks with Verizon to be the default search engine on its mobile phones. And they're doing so by dishing out the dough. It's no secret that Microsoft has a bunch of cash on hand. They've been using some of it to create incentive programs like Cashback and SearchPerks to essentially pay people to search. Now,

We're happy to announce several new controls that IT administrators can now use within Message Security and Discovery. These Postini powered services provide spam filtering and email archiving to organizations that maintain their own email infrastructure. (1) Our spam protection continues to evolve, this time with NDR (non-delivery receipt) filter improvements.

Different people use the same tools for different purposes. Social bookmarking is one tool that can be used various ways. I recommend it for building traffic to your websites, but I also recommend it for link building. Be careful, though. Not all social bookmarking sites give link juice. I got the following list from Link Idol . I haven't tested all of these sites, but I knew about some of them.

Google is converting their Help Forums to a new system. The new features include: improved search results, including posts from current and new forums the ability to designate especially helpful forum members as "Top Contributors" a reputation and ranking system the ability for users,