by Claudine Zap It wasn't sea monsters , zombies , or a broken heart. The mysterious death in 1817 of the original literary singleton, Jane Austen , could have been a very unromantic case of infective tuberculosis caught from cows. The 19th-century novelist, whose body of work practically launched an entire network of PBS mini-series, dozens of movies, and yes, even the plots of " Clueless " and " Bridget Jones's Diary ," died at the way-too-young-age of 41. And ever since,

by Mike Krumboltz Gone are the days when friends and relatives received marriage announcements weeks after the big event. Thanks to iPhones, Twitter, and Facebook, the newly betrothed can spread the word instantly. That's become not norm. However, when the groom goes out of his way to digitally alert the masses that he's now a married man (while standing at the altar, mind you), folks tend to take notice.

by Mike Krumboltz Many folks who looked up at the sky last night were greeted with a very bizarre sight: a luminous ring surrounding the moon. Were aliens coming? Was the end of the world at hand? Fortunately, no. Though it looked ominous, the shiny ring around the moon last night was actually a rather common weather phenomenon. According to various weather-related blogs across the Buzz, this ring around the moon occurs when thin cirrus clouds, which contain ice crystals,

Perhaps Yahoo has started a trend. Yesterday, we learned that the company will shut down part of a business it bought two and a half years ago. Today, there's word that Microsoft's sold some things it picked up while acquiring Fast Search & Transfer in early 2008. It's important to note that this deal isn't going to cripple Bing or give birth to another Google competitor; Microsoft's not getting rid of any secret search ingredient. Instead,

So, how did Mike Bloomberg's recent NYC mayoral campaign score all those Twitter followers? Well, he may have gotten some help from Sponsored Tweets, the pay-per-tweet service from IZEA, the company that brought us PayPerPost and SocialSpark. I spoke with IZEA CEO Ted Murphy , this afternoon, and asked whether any political advertisers have used any of the company's services, including its 3-month-old Sponsored Tweets service. Well,

On Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee will discuss legislation introduced by Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) that would regulate online gambling in the United States. The hearing will begin at 10 am EST and will include testimony from leaders in the fields of online security and consumer safety. Experts will describe how current systems and technologies have been successful in blocking minors from gambling online,

We've just launched Site Performance, an experimental feature in Webmaster Tools that shows you information about the speed of your site and suggestions for making it faster. This is a small step in our larger effort to make the web faster . Studies have repeatedly shown that speeding up your site leads to increased user retention and activity , higher revenue and lower costs . Towards the goal of making every webpage load as fast as flipping the pages of a magazine,

South Korea marketing agency Cheil Worldwide has picked up a majority stake in The Barbarian Group, the acclaimed agency behind Burger King's Subservient Chicken. With the acquisition, Barbarian Group will move its headquarters from Boston to New York. Its management - including CEO Benjamin Palmer, COO Rick Webb, and Keith Butters, chief experience officer - will remain in place. The agency has created work for Kashi and Red Bull, among other clients. In a blog post today,

Digg released a new version of the Digg API today, which lets developers write and contribute data via OAuth. This API supports the digging and burying of both stories and comments. "In addition to the revamped API, we focused extensively on usability and have included an updated API documentation section on Digg with more detail on each API method including code and response examples," says Digg's Jeff Hodsdon. "Todays changes,

It is, of course, the thought that counts. A message from a friend or loved one means a lot regardless of what form it takes. Still, physical items tend to have more of an impact, and Google's made a very nice gesture by offering to send out real postcards this holiday season. A Google representative wrote in an email to WebProNews, "As a token of our appreciation to our most enthusiastic fans, we're snail mailing (!) one free holiday postcard on their behalf.