If you commute along a heavily-trafficked highway, you've probably often thought - and tried - alternate ways home. This is a trial-and-error method that can be quite frustrating. Many times, such as rainy days, when traffic is bad in one place - it feels bad everywhere. But Google Maps is hoping to alleviate some of that frustration by adding arterial roads to its traffic layer . If you don't typically use the word "arterial" when considering your commute,

The Google Maps team has been on quite the tear this summer, enriching its platform and beefing up location-based services, such as Google Latitude. In just the past two months, the search and Web services giant has offered multiple searches for one search destination session , shown users how to get Google Maps on Web sites, and offered a Street View tutorial. The innovation machine hasn't stopped cranking. Today,

by Claudine Zap Here's a concept: A TV show about youngish professionals in the suburbs whining about how hard it is to juggle love, life, career, and kids. Heard that before, right? Well, now you have, but back in 1987, the concept was groundbreaking  thanks to " thirtysomething ," the show about the everyday challenges of living.  The first season is finally out on DVD. Word of the release had fans flocking to the Web to look up "thirtysomething," " thirtysomething on dvd ,

Earlier this month comScore released its Q2 retail e-commerce sales estimates, which indicated that US online retail spending dropped from the same period from last year. This is only the second time that has happened. Sure, you have to take the economy into consideration, but there are other factors that can keep people from making purchases online. A new poll from Harris Interactive found that a lack of human assistance is one of those factors, and a big one at that.

Yahoo search may soon be just an extension of Bing - this is not a given as of yet, but something that is looking very likely. All that said Yahoo is also not giving up. Yahoo has recently launched a new look. While not active on the home page just yet the look is available for a sneak preview at m.www.yahoo.com , and at a first glance, it does look a bit cleaner and slightly less cluttered.

One of the questions asked during the JK Wedding Dance phenomenon was why the owners of the video did not get paid. After all, YouTube, Sony and Chris Brown (artist behind the song) benefited monetarily in a way that they would not have had the video not been made. Now, YouTube is answering that question. Future JK's can get paid. Maybe. It's all part of an expansion of YouTube's Partner Program. In a post on the YouTube biz blog announcing the expansion , Shenaz Zack,

As you start to execute the link building part of your search engine optimization strategy, I would recommend to make sure you always try to keep it natural. Doug Caverly at smallbusinessnewz reports on Phil Orford, the CEO of the Forum of Private Business, taking a casual 84 mile walk over the four days for a children's charity. It's no mean feat and will be reported in dozens of places around the web and the reports will no doubt include links back to his site.

YouTube's Partner Program has, as a general rule, allowed in only content creators who produce original and heavily viewed clips on a consistent basis. This was a smart and safe approach. But it's an approach that also excluded a lot of very popular one-off videos, and YouTube's now seeking to correct the problem. A post on the YouTube Biz Blog announced this afternoon, "[W]e're extending the YouTube Partnership Program to include individual popular videos on our site. Now,

Spammers are taking particular advantage of the heightened interest in health-related issues like swine flu and healthcare reform to distribute large shortened-URL spam runs using the Donbot botnet, according to Symantec's MessageLabs . "In August, the ongoing abuse of shortened-URLs as a delivery mechanism resulted in a number of legitimate URL-shortening services being forced to close their businesses due to their inability to handle the malicious use of their tools,

Online video advertising platform Mixpo is sharing some stats regarding the growth of local video and interactive display ads. "Year-over-year, Mixpo has seen, primarily, local TV advertisers, extend their broadcast strategy and campaigns to the Web by more than 300 percent," a Mixpo spokesperson tells WebProNews. During that time, according to Mixpo, over 1.2 million minutes of video display advertising have been watched.