by Vera H-C Chan Holidays both holy (Ramadan and Yom Kippur) and secular (Labor Day) dominated September, but the autumnal change of pace didn't always mean peace. Interruptions and protests testified to high anxieties. Those were dwarfed by an unrelenting series of natural disasters . Below, the events that bestirred the Buzz. The disaster roll Some took mere seconds, others lasted for days, but all left a wracked landscape. In the state of Georgia,

Way back in January I released a simple application called  TweetNews , which essentially ranks the latest Yahoo! News articles by their number of related Twitter messages to determine relevance for really fresh content. Remarkably, the community responded to it â?" taking out the server quota in a matter of minutes and resulting in a  Wired  article saying TweetNews "might well be the best mashup we've ever seen." So,

Another school year is just around the corner, and Google Checkout is here to help you save time and money on all of your back-to-school shopping. Over 400 Checkout stores are now offering exclusive discounts of $5, $10, or $20 on purchases made through September 1st. You can get a head start on your shopping by checking out our product gadget that features school gear from participating stores. After you've stocked up on your back-to-school essentials,

How long would it take to translate all the world's web content into 50 languages? Even if all of the translators in the world worked around the clock, with the current growth rate of content being created online and the sheer amount of data on the web, it would take hundreds of years to make even a small dent. Today, we're happy to announce a new website translator gadget powered by Google Translate that enables you to make your site's content available in 51 languages. Now,

UC Santa Cruz has received a major grant to help digitize the Grateful Dead Archive at the university library. The university was awarded a National Leadership Grant of $615,175 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The grant will allow the UCSC Library to digitize materials from its Grateful Dead Archive spanning from 1965 to 1995. The project will include a new website titled, " The Virtual Terrapin Station .

Often, the source of a statement means everything. It might, for example, be more newsworthy if Gordon Brown labeled Americans "silly" than if (or when) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called us all evil pigs. And Matt Cutts would just like everyone to know that one source of a study on advertising isn't exactly Google's best friend. This morning, a lot of headlines declared that at least two-thirds of Americans don't want to be tracked by advertisers online,

Betsy mugs with ijustine (Justine Ezarik) first day of the 140 twitter conference. Perez Hilton, eat your heart out. The Twitterati Glitterati are out and in force (and they should never really have let me in)! My first big conference after Techcrunch50 was 140 Twitter Conference. Because it was in Los Angeles, it had a totally different flavor that perhaps only Stefan has experienced previously, during the Bing-a-thon.

Nielsen has shared some findings from research involving how American consumers intend to spend their money during the upcoming holiday season. About 42% expect to spend less. Online retailers may not feel the hit as much as some brick and mortars, however. According to Nielsen , online retailers, as well as value retailers like dollar stores, discounters, and club stores will attract "the lion's share" of holiday spending.

Recently, a couple blog posts have focused on the "deadly sins" of SEO copywriting and content marketing.  Michelle Bowles from TopRank Marketing showcases five tips for avoiding deadly SEO copywriting sins . GrokDotCom reminds us that "Nobody wants to read your sh**! These articles are funny, informative and (for some) may hit very close to home. Yet, I was surprised that no-one pointed out the #1 SEO copywriting sin. And that's creating keyphrase-stuffed copy.

eBay and GM have finished trying to sell new cars together, at least for the time being. The California-only "Click and Buy" experiment that benefited from one extension has now wrapped up according to the revised schedule. Unfortunately, no one's connected any sales figures to the program just yet; things have been difficult to tabulate because many people may have concluded their purchases in dealerships after starting the process online.