by Vera H-C Chan Santa and his elves aren't the only ones working through Christmas Eve. Senators are due to line up to vote aye or nay on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act , otherwise known as its vision of how to reform health care in America. The House wrangled its bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act , on November 7. And yes, there are differences, some minute and some vast,

To wrap up my blog for this year, I thought I'd look at how Australian Internet users divide their time online. This is a pertinent question as marketers battle it out for the precious attention span of consumers on what is now considered a mainstream channel. The below table compares the average session time for each Experian Hitwise parent industry during November 2009 and November 2008. Overall Australian are spending a longer amount of time online during each session,

Google has issued a statement regarding the company's pending acquisition of AdMob . Google's intent to acquire the company was announced back in early November. The deal was for $750 million in stock. Since then, the Federal Trade Commission has vowed to closely scrutinize the deal. Google had this to say today: As we said when we announced the deal, we don't see any regulatory issues with this deal,

Compete puts together a monthly ranking of the top 250 Web sites in the US, based on unique visitors, and breaks up the data by relevant categories and behavioral segments. The firm is sharing the top 50. "Despite continued concerns surrounding the economic recovery, holiday shoppers flocked to the Web in November," says Compete. "Of the 20 fastest growing Web categories last month, 13 were shopping related.

Unfortunately, the recent 2.9 release triggered a bug in certain versions of PHP’s curl extension.  With these versions of curl, scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly.  To fix this problem as well as a handful of other, lesser issues, we are quickly releasing 2.9.1, the first maintenance release of the 2.9 line.  Help us get 2.9.1 ready to go by testing 2.9.1 Beta 1.  The easiest way to test Beta 1 is to install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, elect to get on the point release development track, and then perform an automatic upgrade via the Tools->Upgrade menu.  You can also download the Beta 1 package and install manually.  Fourteen tickets have been fixed in 2.9.1 Beta 1.  Since the curl problem and a couple of other problems are dependent on specific hosting configurations, any and all testing help is greatly appreciated.

Pepsi will reportedly be skipping its annual Super Bowl commercials, and will instead invest the money it would generally spend on those, in social media marketing. This would make the first time in 23 years that Pepsi will not have Super Bowl ads. Larry D. Woodard, President and CEO of Manhattan ad agency Vigilante writes in an ABC News piece: Pepsi represents one of the stalwarts, not just of the Super Bowl advertiser lineup, but of broadcast TV in general. In 2006,

Although we're sure most of you are busying yourself with last minute shopping, baking and present wrapping, we wanted to take a minute to wish you all the happiest of holidays and a fantastic new year! We're signing off for the weekend, but before we go,

by Claudine Zap Our top picks from the day's hottest searches. Yule Log (Searches increased by 904%). Warm yourself to the cozy local TV version . Easy appetizer recipes (+802%). Hosting a holiday party? No sweat . Serena Williams (+635%). The tennis phenom was named female athlete of the year . Tavern on the Green (+315%). The fabled restaurant in Manhattan's Central Park will close . Space Jams (+295%).

According to Opera, Facebook is the most popular site on the mobile web in Africa. In addition, a report from the company shows a 5% jump in global mobile Internet users. Opera Mini has garnered more than 41.7 million users worldwide showing a 5.3 percent jump compared to the previous month, according to the report. The number of page views in November went up 9.5% and data consumption increased 8.3% compared to October. In Africa,

by Vera H-C Chan No holiday comes with a soundtrack as extensive as Christmas'. While carols date back to medieval times, the tradition of Christmas carols is relatively new. As Time magazine points out , trilling door to door didn't have anything to do with the Yuletide when the custom first started. In fact, according to the BBC, the Church of England wasn't big on this pagan caroling, so irked tenors, altos,