Nielsen Online has released their search rankings for November 2009 . Things remain awesome for Google and Ask.com saw a hop. But Bing gained the most, increasing by an entire percentage point from October. Meanwhile, Yahoo! was down 0.1% and AOL was down 0.2% month-over-month.

YouTube just released their Year End Top Video Report for 2009 and not surprisingly Susan Boyle's audition video in Britain's Got Talent show emerged as the most watched video on YouTube globally and Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me" tops the the music video category.  But aside from these two, YouTube also published their 2009's fastest rising search on a monthly basis. Some of the fastest rising search terms are correlated with the most watched videos list.

Facebook has launched an award system for translators, where those who translate for the social network can get special icons as they accomplish specific milestones. Awards are grouped into into the categories of voting participation, words published, and translations published. "Since launching our Translations application two years ago, more than 300,000 people have answered the call to contribute translations and make Facebook available in more than 70 different languages,

If you've been to brick and mortar stores lately, you may have noticed something we haven't seen in awhile - empty shelves. Because of the economy, stores stocked up on lower inventories, anticipating the worst. As a result, completing your Christmas shopping might be a bit difficult this year. The closer it gets to the big day, the easier it is to just buy gift cards and call it a day. If that's you, you're not alone.

The two tools are Keyword Niche Finder and Keyword Grouper. The concept behind both tools is grouping keywords together for easier search ad management. The Keyword Niche Finder returns groups of keywords instead of just a long list of keywords related to the term. This is a good place to start if you haven't already done keyword research for the campaign you're working on. For example, let's enter "Christmas shirt" into the tool.

Video game console and game sales are through the roof again this year When it comes to holiday gifts, video games have been at the top of many people's wish lists since Pac-Man first started gobbling power pellets in the early 1980s. As gaming technology has grown, so has the demand for the systems, games and add-ons that it takes to keep gamers happily mashing buttons (until the batteries run out). According to the Entertainment Software Association, video game hardware,

While many people already lie on their Facebook profile despite the pleas by Privacy Czar Mark Zuckerberg to keep the Facebook database clean for YOUR benefit, it is now an informally recommended practice by some at Facebook. Before we move forward, lets put this on the table first. Facebooks move toward less privacy for its users may have profoundly changed the service once the full scope of what they are looking to do hits the masses.

Before we get into the meat of the article I have a challenge for you. Say Top Twitter Trends 3 times fast. Frustrating isnt it. Every time I try it I end up saying Top Twitter Twends thus giving the Baba WaWa (Barbara Walters for you young kids) sound to it. As you have likely guessed I think I may have too much time on my hands so lets get back to the real deal. Twitter is one of the Top stories of 2009 because of its tremendous growth,

We’re at that exciting point in WordPress development where the dev team feels like version 2.9 is complete and ready for the world.

If you’ve been waiting for your moment to pitch in, it’s now. First we need tech savvy testers to upgrade their blogs and kick the tires, make sure everything is rolling like you expect it to. Here’s a list of all the fun and geeky new stuff in 2.9 to try out. Second, and more importantly, we need everyone to test out their plugin compatibility.

If you’re a user of plugins, there’s a groovy new compatibility feature on the plugin directory where you can vote on whether a plugin is compatible with a version or not and it’ll get registered in the new plugin compatibility checker. This is as a replacement to the old wiki-based lists we’d do before. To see it in action check out this Akismet plugin page, as you can see 14 people have already registered that it’s compatible with 2.9.

If you’re a plugin author, of course you should update your “Tested up to:” in the readme.txt for your plugin.

If all goes according to plan, WordPress 2.9 will be out before the end of the week. You can download the release candidate here.

For more details on the changes since Beta please review the revision log on Trac, and happy testing!

Microsoft has launched a Bing app for the iPhone. It's now available for download in the Apple App store. Of course the iPhone app is not the first mobile experience Bing has offered. There is already Bing for Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Sidekick and select BREW-based devices on Verizon. Key features of the iPhone app include: - Daily image from Bing.