by Mike Krumboltz Every year, there's one movie that just about everybody loves. In 2009, " Up in the Air " may be it. The film stars George Clooney as the ultimate modern-day road warrior. Traveling for business over 300 days a year, his character, Ryan, has logged millions of frequent-flyer miles. His personal relationships are a joke, but darn it, he doesn't care, because he has super elite prestige status on the airlines, and that's enough to keep him happy.

First there was Black Friday, then cyber Monday, and the recently added Green Tuesday . But after running into my harried ad operations manager on my way out the door for the recent Thanksgiving holiday, I'm wondering if we should add "Gamer Thursday" to the holiday retail lexicon. "Thank God it's Wednesday," remarked Jason Stott, the aforementioned manager, clenching a piece of cold pizza. "Only four more working days until Monday.

iPhones are being used as musical instruments in a new class taught at the University of Michigan. The students who design, build and play instruments on their iPhones, will perform a free public concert on December 9. The course called "Building a Mobile Phone Ensemble" is believed to be the first of its kind. The class is taught by Georg Essl , a computer scientist and musician who has been working on developing mobile phones as musical instruments.

Mercatus released the results from an interesting survey about the mobile offerings of banks. According to the firm's findings, banks that offer mobile financial services can increase their new customers acquisitions by as much as sixty percent. Mercatus also found that the current pace of mobile adoption is exceeding that of past innovations, such as ATMs, debit cards, and online banking.

More professionally-produced, full-length programming (along with a lot of clips) is coming to YouTube, thanks to a deal with a television channel called Five. Five, which operates in the UK, should bring more than 3,000 hours of content to the table. YouTube reached another agreement with a foreign entity, Channel 4, in October. The deal was similar in size and nature, involving around 3,000 hours of content and complete shows. Also, both deals are nonexclusive,

Today I'm delighted to welcome the newly appointed Director, Search Engine Watch, Jonathan Allen. He joins the New York team from Incisive Media's London office. I'm sure that many Search Engine Watch readers who have attended a Search Engine Strategies conference may have already met Jonathan. And for those who haven't met him, I'm sure you may remember him from his ultra-viral video - 50 SEOs, one question! As of today,

In case you have not noticed from your Google Analytics account yet, Google has recently added 7 new features into the already useful site traffic analysis tool. These new features are - Analytics Intelligence with Custom Alerts, Expanded Goals and New Engamenet Goals, Expanded Mobile Reporting, Unique Visitors Metric, Advanced Analysis Features, Advanced Segments and Custom Reporting Templates, and Multiple Custom Variables. So,

Today, Microsoft may have given Firefox and Chrome a better shot at grabbing market share in Europe. A report's indicated that Microsoft will appease antitrust regulators - along with its competitors - by showing Windows users a randomized ballot screen for Web browsers. In the olden days (and even now, in a lot of markets), Microsoft would of course just pair Internet Explorer with new versions of Windows.

According to the Financial Times, Google is in talks with estate agents in Britain to launch an online property portal for the UK, similar to one that already exists in Australia. Through that one, agents list properties and show pictures from Google Maps Street View. FT cites Douglas & Godon (an estate firm) commercial director Ed Mead as its source, who claims to have spoken with Google about the plans. No comment has been received from Google on the matter.

Google has announced the launch of a free global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, simply called Google Public DNS. People can opt-in to use this as an alternative to their current DNS provider. You do not need a Google account to use it, and it is an independent service, meaning it does not depend on any other products. Google says the service is part of its ongoing effort to make the web faster. This is an initiative that the company stresses time and time again.