by Mike Krumboltz Cheap Trick, the band best known for its hit song "I Want You to Want Me," has released a new album... on 8-track. The Globe and Mail reports that "The Latest" will arrive on CD, vinyl, and the clunk-tastic 8-track format. The point: to have some fun and to raise awareness of the album. Who knows, maybe it'll be a collector's item.

by Mike Krumboltz After making some disparaging remarks about Michael Jackson , a little-known congressman from New York has been thrust into the spotlight. Peter King , a rep from Long Island, made some " scathing statements " about the late King of Pop. In a video that went viral this weekend, King called Jackson a pervert, a child molester, and a pedophile - all obvious references to Jackson's legal problems in 2005, for which he was acquitted.

Gyutae Park from Winning the Web just launched a new membership site called Winners Circle . I don't normally post about stuff like this but I wanted to mention it because I think it has a lot to offer marketers of all levels. Winners Circle is unique in that it uses real case studies and specific examples to show what works and what doesn't.

by David Carberry Earlier this year we launched a new website www.localrollcall.com . Local Roll Call is an online directory for businesses to sign up and to drive an additional link back to their website. That being, said the traffic has started to increase and more and more visitors are signing up everyday. We decided we should capitalize on that traffic and start to put in place some money making affiliate programs. The first product we applied for was Google AdSense.

Dallas Mavericks owner and high-tech market pundit Mark Cuban posted an interesting piece this weekend on businesses that offer users content for free. It's a timely piece, given the furor over Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson's new book " Free: The Future of a Radical Price. " Basically, Cuban argues that those successful companies who provide free content face incredible pressure from all fronts.

The New York Times has a piece about the "new" style public relations in this day and age of blogs, Facebook and Twitter. They follow a publicist Brooke Hammerling as she develops a strategy for new startup Wordnik. An investor wants to avoid tech blogs such as TechCrunch due to his opinion that they are essentially set on auto-critic. Instead, Hammerling decides to "whisper in the ears" of Silicon Valley elite. She pitches them about the "ongoing project" of Wordnik,

by Claudine Zap Our top picks from the day's hottest searches. Michael Jackson memorial service tickets (Searches increased by 262%). A cool 1.6 million people applied online to get one of the 8,750 hot tickets . True Blood (+249%). With no new episode over the holiday weekend, fans were left thirsting for more . Lance Armstrong (+249%). The seven-time Tour de France champion was slapped with a $92 fine for not signing in for stage three of the race . Funny Or Die (+230%).

ZenithOptimedia has upgraded its forecast for global Internet ad spending in 2009 as part of a revision to its overall advertising forecast. The global media agency now believes Web ad expenditures will grow 10.1 percent this year, up slightly from the 8.6 percent growth rate it projected when it issued its last update in April. Most of that growth will come from paid search. In the U.S., spending on search media is expected to climb 20 percent in 2009,

Seems a new game is being played on the big Twitter board - bombing the hashmarks and grabbing the top of Twitter Trends. Over the weekend a crew of merry pranksters grabbed the top listing for #gorillapenis. In a power play using social media - the flooding of Twitter was a great example of why what is considered important should not just be determined by anonymous hands up.

Many online marketers love using Wordpress as their content management software to create well optimized web sites. Many of the invaluable plugins that help people achieve SEO success with Wordpress have been created by Joost de Valk aka Yoast. Now he is teaming with Webmaster Radio to have an online broadcast of tips, tricks and all things Wordpress, The show will be launched during SES San Jose so should start with a bang.