Today I became aware of a very unfortunate branding issue with a new social media platform called Posterous (pronounced Post-Er-Us). First of all, you should know that Posterous is a killer application that I have little doubt will soon be a leading social media property; I will have a follow-up post outlining the reasons. Now onto a sad yet humorous (IMO) lesson in branding; Posterous appears to be commonly misspelled (and even mispronounced ) as Posterious (Post-Ear-E-Us).

by Sage Lewis Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has some pretty extreme views for the business world. I think he might be looking in the mirror too closely when he talks about the business world as a whole. Check out our small business news site.

by Vera H-C Chan Ready to celebrate the Fourth, old-school style? First, declare war on Britain (ok, you can Tweet it if you prefer). Get some people to sign on, set a bonfire on the lawn, burn some King George III effigies, and stock up on rum, applejack, and salted meat. If it's a bit too late to get the applejack on short notice, a fireworks compromise will do. The recession has forced cities and sponsors to cut back on the pyrotechnics this year,

It's been a week since we announced that a new version of channels is coming, and we wanted to give you an update on our progress. Well over a million of you have now opted in to the beta, and many of your channels are looking really good - we were just admiring shotscience 's and muzik4machines 's designs. Your feedback over the past two months has shaped - and will continue to shape - the evolution of this whole site and particularly your channels.

Honestly I didn't notice the difference until I read from Mashable that Google have changed the way it displays search results. As usual, I couldn't find any announcement about it at the Official Google Blog. So, I take it to mean that Google may still be ironing out some kinks related to this "enhancement." So, what are the changes? There are three "unnoticeable" things actually. First,

So while U.S. Anti-Trust Regulators are planning to investigate Google's deal with book publishers to settle copyright issues amounting to $125m, Google continues to make Book Search a better and worthwhile service for their users. If you've been following this issue which has been dragging on since perhaps the day Google Book Search's inception, you'd remember that Google has received so many criticisms because of this project.

In January, four trade groups announced that they would be developing behavioral advertising standards . The groups are The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), The Association of National Advertisers (ANA), The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), and The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

At SES San Jose 2009, I've been asked to make a solo presentation to kick of the Search and Community Track. The title of the session is " How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community ." I've been working on my presentation, but it lacked a compelling case study that illustrated how a community organization had used search engine optimization and YouTube video to generate measurable results.

July 4 is Independence Day here in the States, which, for most of us, entails the risk of losing: your fingers to cheap fireworks; your waistline to hot dogs; your liver. All of which, as a red-blooded American, I support wholeheartedly. But if you're spending today celebrating the country's independence, how about putting some attention on your own personal independence? It might be independence from a day job, or financial stress,

Update July, 3rd 2009: Added 12 local SEO & search resources suggested by readers in the comment section and on Sphinn + some newly researched links. The most obvious trend when it comes to SEO is "going local". Ever since Google introduced Google Maps and Local Business Center and later added local search results to Universal Search displaying them on top of everything else businesses everywhere strive to be there.