by Claudine Zap If you love " Star Trek " but wouldn't be caught dead in costume (yes, Comic-Con counts) or have long outgrown your action figure collections, consider this: You can simply smell like a character from "Star Trek." According to Gizmodo , the scent that only a Trekkie could love is called " Red Shirt ." The male cologne is a sly reference to the expendable characters on the TV show that faced certain death. Get it? Relax, unless Danger is your middle name,

Editor's note: Last Friday marked the third anniversary of the release of Virtual Alabama, an innovative information-sharing program in the state of Alabama. Built upon Google Earth Enterprise, Virtual Alabama has become a true leader in promoting collaboration among the different agencies that fulfill government's many roles â?" from disaster preparedness and response to the environment, from education to economic development, and much more. We invited Chris Johnson,

The Federal Trade Commission has recently taken an interest in regulation of blogs when it comes to bloggers receiving products and writing about them. A lot of discussion has taken place about what it means to blog responsibly. The Responsibility Project from Liberty Mutual partipated in the recent BlogHer conference, and has put together a nice little gallery of videos in which bloggers talk about the subject.

CBSSports.com said today it has created a network of 32 reporters to cover every NFL team and provide brief updates on its homepage. The new initiative called RapidReports will have a reporter dedicated to every team to provide a stream of short, original news updates. CBS says it is the only media outlet to offer this type of coverage of the NFL. Jason Kint "With RapidReports, CBSSports.

On July 29, GREE (gree.jp), one of the biggest SNS sites in Japan, announced its financial report from June. The report shows that they had 374% increase in sales and 696% increase in profit compare to June of last year. Since last year, GREE has been promoting the services through TV commercials and partnerships with other media and sites to increase the membership. As a result, their membership has reached 12.6million by the end of June.

According to a statement Carol Bartz issued this morning, the new Yahoo-Microsoft deal "comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo, our users, and the industry." But a significant number of Yahoo's (former) investors apparently didn't believe that line, and have sent the company's stock into something of a tailspin. People who bleed purple can try to put the matter into perspective; the whole stock market is having an iffy day, after all, with the Dow and Nasdaq down 0.

Headlines can be powerful.  I think most marketers would agree that a strong headline can be both intriguing and enticing, and can help drive a surge in short term traffic.  However, I'm also sure that most SEO's would question the long term impact of using creative headlines on their search engine rankings.  There are times I work with a client's editorial staff to explain and clarify aspects of SEO, including the importance of keyword research, content optimization,

IAC released quarterly earnings today and the news is a little dim. The media and advertising division, which includes Ask.com and CItysearch saw Q2 2009 revenues of $168.6 million, down from $186.3 million in Q2 2008, a 9.5% decline. Revenue per query declined on Ask.com, which IAC is attributing to an improved search experience. They say users are finding what they're looking for with fewer clicks. As a result of all of this, cost per click has declined. Additionally, Ask.

A group of Democratic senators are co-sponsoring legislation that would ban texting while driving nationwide. The four senators co-sponsoring the legislation - Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.). The legislation would force states to ban texting while driving or risk losing all federal highway funds. The legislation is set to be announced at a press conference today.

So by now, you've probably heard about the Microsoft - Yahoo search deal . You may even have read my take that this will be good for advertisers . If not, go back and start there, so we're all caught up. I got responses from several other search marketers saying the deal looked good from their side too. We'll be putting up a collection of industry responses later today. In the meantime, I wanted to look at the deal from a searcher perspective. Is it good for them too?