by Claudine Zap Forget Barack Obama's grand speech in Egypt. The real person who's making friends in the Middle East: None other than Paris Hilton . The hotel-chain heiress is bringing her reality show " Paris Hilton's My New BFF " to Dubai. The producers say they want the show to become a global franchise , with citizens of the world competing to be Paris Hilton's newest "Best Friend Forever." Already, contestants in the U.K. and U.S.

Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps . But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps. As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging,

by Mike Krumboltz Few people elicit such a "love him or hate him" response quite like Michael Moore . The rotund rabble-rouser is known for his provocative pictures on everything from health care to terrorism. Moore's last film, " Slackers Uprising ," didn't cause much of an uproar. However, his new flick is poised to put the left-leaning provocateur back in the Buzz. From what we can tell, the film is still untitled. Most searchers are calling it " Save our CEOs .

by Claudine Zap What you thought was a nice place to see kangaroos and the Outback is actually the site of the coming alien invasion. Well, maybe. The blog I09 recounts a spate of reports that Australians in Sydney have been abducted, taken to a medical facility in the Blue Mountains, and, um, medically examined. The victims claim to be sort of asleep, conveniently next to an open window,

Lately, the team has been pushing out features and fixes as they're ready in "mini-pushes" rather than waiting for the big, numbered releases that occur once a month. Here's what's gone out in the last few weeks: * The Wonder of "Wonder Wheel": Next time you search for a video on YouTube you may notice a link on the right-hand side of the page labeled "Wonder Wheel." This is a new beta search option from Google.com,

Privacy concerns are ever-present, but the past week has generated significant buzz on the matter. First up, Google has been asked by a the European Article 29 Working Party to keep "unblurred" photos for Street View for as little time as possible . The conundrum is this. Google sends its cars out to photograph countries. They use technology to blur things like license plates. However, sometimes the tech goes awry and blurs things that don't need blurring.

Not sure about you, but I'm trying to stave off the agita I'm getting around the latest Google-Twitter-Facebook clash for real-time search . Google Operating System's Alex Chitu through a wrench in the machine when he found Google's code reference to a microblogging service. Chitu wrote : Much like Google Blog Search,

Google has always been interested in bounce rates, primarily to let webmasters know how readers are responding to the content on their pages. But what Google Analytics reports as your bounce rate is not entirely accurate. Every page on your website is optimized for a number of keywords, not just one. Some of those are intentional and some are not. Just in the last 6 months or so Google has been tinkering with the way that it displays SERP snippets.

If you're tired of going back and forth between AdWords and Analytics to track conversions and goals (or tired of setting up a separate tracking code to integrate), then you're in luck. Now, you can import your Google Analytics Goals into your AdWords account. As a result, you can also integrate your Analytics Goals with Conversion Optimizer . If you're not aware, Conversion Optimizer is a conversion tracking tool.

by Vera H-C Chan Come Monday, the Gosselins of " Jon & Kate Plus 8 " will make a " life-changing " announcement, conveniently timed for its one-hour TLC time slot. The promised change is supposed to broker a "peace." Considering the couple spent their 10th anniversary on June 12 " 150 miles apart ," it sounds like time to cut bait. The Gosselin disintegration may have them among the top 25 searched people on Yahoo! in May,