by Josh Bernoff Seth Godin's Linchpin is a remarkable book. You should buy a copy . (It's available on January 26.) Unless, of course, you're enjoying that rut you're in. First of all, let's acknowledge that Seth is a polarizing figure. He is the god of small business, and his books like Permission Marketing have transformed the way people think about marketing. But his books are written to persuade and inspire,

Snow, sunshine, a good film or two and good companydoes that sound like a good time to you? Well it did to us, so we packed our bags (okStefan and a few others packed their bags) and headed down to Park City, Utah to attend the Sundance Film festival . The Bing team will be down there showing the attendees how they can use Bing to navigate through Park City using Bing Maps , learn about the hottest films, and plan their festival activities.

U.S. retail operating systems boxed software revenue increased 35 percent in 2009, but it was not enough to lift non-games software into positive territory, according to new research from The NPD Group. Total retail non-games software revenue fell 7 percent in 2009 to $2.4 billion. That is an improvement over the 10 percent decrease in 2008. Unit volume for 2009 dropped 6 percent and average selling price dipped 2 percent.

This week's Twitter column comes a day late. I think it doesn't matter when I post my weekly Twitter post. The important fact is that I do at all and the the quality of the post makes it worth reading. So from now on I won't be that exact anymore. The weekly Twitter column will stay though. It might appear earlier or later in the week, depending on breaking events for instance. This week I want to speak about Twitter arrests .

by Josh Bernoff I pay my bills electronically. When possible, I get the bills sent to me electronically. Companies like Citibank (my credit card company), Bank of America (my bank), and Comcast (my cable company) like it that way. Less paper for them. Comcast calls it an "ecobill" to try to make me feel good about saving paper. This is supposed to be the new way we all live, in the Internet cloud. Paper is so 20th Century. But if you do your personal business in the cloud,

Myxer, which is behind an eponymous mobile entertainment destination, issued the first of what's supposed to become a monthly report this week, and its stats favor Android. Indeed, the Android operating system apparently showed up the iPhone in several respects. According to the report (which is called BoomBox), Android pulled far ahead of the iPhone in terms of traffic this year.

by Jeff Howard Google's keyword research tool is an excellent resource for generating keyword ideas and also trending which keywords deliver a higher volume of searches. But, note the use of trending in the last sentence. The tool can't tell you how many website visitors you'll receive from a #1 ranking. Experience has shown on average it is 10% - 25% of the monthly estimate. Meaning if you go after a keyword with an estimated traffic volume of 4,000 searches per month,

Microsoft, touting some functionality related to Exchange Server 2010 and the like, notes that "an employee in Nigeria will instantly know if a co-worker in Siberia is available." Raise your hand if you have employees in your company working in Nigeria, trying to ping the Siberia office. Is this a common scenario in corporate IT?

Judy Chang As we continue to focus our attention on the people of Haiti during this disaster, we at PayPal wanted to say THANK YOU to all of our customers for their generous donations toward the Haiti relief effort thus far. As of January 20, charities using PayPal .

by Claudine Zap Animals catch the Web's attention this week. An unlikely Internet star is born when Lily the bear gives birth on camera. And the Web goes crazy over another purported spotting of the mythical beast the chupacabra. Those stories and more in your Buzz Week in Review. Lily the bear gives birth The Minnesota black bear is the subject of a research study â?" and fascination on the Web. Lily may live in a cave,