by Vera H-C Chan Heads up: Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 27, which means you have less than two weeks to prepare. If you accept the premise that the occasion is a time for celebrating family and not dysfunction, then you might be disheartened to know that cumulative searches for the occasion??"from turkeys to Thanksgiving prayers??"are 44% lower than at this time last year. Considering how fired-up citizens have been about the election year,

I think I have mentioned Google's incredible 'um'testiness before. They love to try out new ideas before sending them into perpetual beta (hello Gmail) or actually launching them as real offerings. ?This has been less evident over at Google-owned YouTube " though with all of the fretting over making their investment back it's only a matter of time before they begin to randomly beam "Chocolate Rain" into people's cerebellums. Just to test the technology out.

As founder of ClickZ back in 1997, Andy Bourland was an inspiration to many working during online marketing's early days. We were reminded of all his good work and deeds when Andy disclosed this week that he suffers from a serious medical condition that leaves him with very little strength, and which he says in all likelihood will take his life in the coming years. Andy, on his blog, reports that he's prepared for the worst, but hoping for the best.

Walmart has sent a DMCA notice to TechCrunch and SearchAllDeals.com , a shopping search engine and deals aggregator. (Think of it as the Techmeme for deals on the web, with a Google custom search engine to boot.) Both sites posted some information about "Black Friday" sales for discount giant Wal-mart. But Wal-mart is claiming copyright infringement. It's also saying the info wasn't supposed to be out before November 24th. The problem is SearchAllDeals doesn't host content.

It's official. Classifieds firm Oodle let go 10 staffers 2 weeks ago. CEO Craig Donato called it a "prudent decision." In an e-mail to ClickZ News, Donato noted the layoff was part of an overall re-org. "We re-aligned our organization. We made cuts in marketing and consolidated positions in account management, but we're still aggressively hiring in engineering and other key roles.

by Claudine Zap In the fine, upstanding tradition of 007, the 22nd Bond film opening today has a title that makes absolutely no sense. It's called " Quantum of Solace ." Quantum of whuh? For who? James Bond fans went to their favorite gadget, the computer, for help, sending lookups on " definition of quantum of solace " up 500%. But we're sorry to tell you,

Many of you in the U.S. have noticed some big changes in Live Search Video this week. Now you have lots of tools for browsing to find your favorite TV shows, music videos, and all of the most-watched content on the Web, just by clicking. Based on what we're hearing, it's a primetime hit! And of course, it still includes the best and only "smart-motion preview" technology that plays a preview right on the page to spare you those frustrating misclicks.

Posted by Sarah Bird, Esquire May It Please the Mozzers, The Washington State Attorney General announced in a press release yesterday that it was suing a Redmond-based SEO company, Visible.net. According to the Complaint, Visible also does business under the name WebMarketingSource.com, Caputures.com, and Captures.com (that's not a typo). The AG also names the owner of the companies, Gilbert Walker, as a defendant in the case. The defendants sell website design, SEO,

Posted by Andrew Olsen and Lily Xia, Google Engineering Organizations using Google Apps can take advantage of our APIs to make Google Apps fit their unique businesses processes and technology environments. Customers have pulled off some useful customizations, like synchronizing Google Calendar with Microsoft Exchange and updating email preferences for all of their users. Today we're making our Google Apps APIs even more powerful. First, we're improving the API for Google Docs,

New market research has found that blog readers are strongly influenced by blog content when it comes to purchase decisions across a number of categories, and that blogs play a key role in ushering readers to the point of an actual purchase. BuzzLogic , a social media analysis company and ad network, sponsored the market research and JupiterResearch , a Forrester research company, conducted the survey of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US.