Google Earth, Google Maps, and regular Google search results may sport some more geographically relevant photos in the future. Today, Google announced that it's linked Panoramio and Picasa in order to make it easier for people to share pictures. Panoramio is the geolocation-centric photo-sharing site that Google acquired in 2007. Picasa is the more traditional photo-sharing site Google's owned since 2004. Bringing them together makes sense,

  Hi all, I'm Doug Filak with PayPal's consumer credit marketing team and I wanted to share with you a new contest with a chance to win up to $5,000. Until Sunday, February 28th you can enter the Share the Love Photocard Contest where you can be rewarded just for customizing .

Posted by willcritchlow The good news is that tomorrow (Wednesday 24th Feb), at 8.30am PST (11.30am EST / 4.30pm GMT), I am going to be joined on the next Distilled conference call by Richard Baxter as we discuss "how to get the most from your SEO". The even better news is that it is totally free (as long as you register in time). If you would like to join us on the call,

A Report from the 3.0 Development Cycle

Menus

There’s been a flurry of blog posts about the integration of the WooThemes Custom Navigation into WordPress core, so I thought it was time we posted the official word. For 3.0, the main user-facing feature we wanted to include was a better site menu management system. Currently, dealing with menus is clunky, using Page IDs or in some cases categories, if a theme uses categories instead of pages for the menu. We wanted a menu system that had the drag and drop ease of the widget management screen, could combine Pages, Categories, and Links, was able to be re-ordered, allowed submenus, and enabled hiding specific Pages or Categories from the menu altogether. We were in the process of building this when WooThemes introduced their Custom Navigation system. Watching their introductory video, it seemed that their system did pretty much everything we wanted to do for core, so we reached out to them about contributing to core.

As you’ve probably heard, it worked out, and the first patch has been submitted. It does require some code modification, which is happening now. The decision to incorporate the Woo menus happened right before our planned feature freeze for the 3.0 development cycle, so we pushed our freeze date back by two weeks to allow the addition. We’re now targeting the 3.0 release for early May, and we think it will be worth the extra two-week wait.

I’m personally really happy that it worked out this way, because I think it will show commercial theme and plugin authors that contributing to core is a win-win proposition. More people can contribute to and improve the basic functional code now, while WooThemes can continue to innovate on top of it for their customers. They get massive bragging rights (which I have no doubt will lead to even more customers), core gets a nice menu system without having to reinvent the wheel, and WordPress users all over the world will benefit. I’m hoping other plugin and theme developers will take a cue from Woo and look at core as a place for collaboration, rather than competition.

The Merge

It was announced at WordCamp San Francisco last year that WordPress and WordPress MU would be merging codebases. This has now happened in 3.0-alpha, and we’re working on smashing bugs and tidying up a few screens. If you’re currently using a single install of WordPress, when you upgrade to 3.0 you won’t see any of the extra screens associated with running a network of sites. If you’re currently running MU, when you upgrade you’ll notice a few labels changing, but upgrading should be as painless as usual. If you’re going to set up a new WordPress installation, you’ll be asked as part of the setup if you want one site or multiple sites, so that’s pretty simple. If you want to turn your single install into one that supports multiple sites, we’ll have a tool for you to use to do that, too. So if you’ve been worried about the merge, have a cup of chamomile tea and relax; it will all be fine.

Patch Sprint!

Okay, so where are we now? The new feature freeze date is on Monday, March 1, 2010. That means that after that date, no more enhancements or features will be added, and we’ll switch gears to focus solely on crushing bugs and fixing up the features that have already made it in. That means we only have a week to try and finish up the many Trac tickets on the 3.0 milestone that either need a patch or have a patch that needs testing. You can help! From now until noon eastern time on March 1 (that’s 17:00 UTC on March 1), head on over to Trac and pitch in. If you hit a wall, hop into the core development channel at #wordpress-dev on irc.freenode.net and hopefully one of the friendly core contributors can give you a push.

Danny Sullivan will be interviewing Steve Ballmer on stage at SMX West , and has started a conversation on his blog at Search Engine Land , inviting you to suggest questions that youd like him to ask. Great questions and conversations on the threads.

For years now, online marketing professionals have stressed the importance of the human element, particularly in social media. The point was elaborated on in a keynote at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego today, where an audience of B2B and B2C marketers listened to Federated Media CEO John Battelle and special guest Anne Holland, who runs Which Test Won , discuss how to apply this concept to branding. Note: If you're not familiar with the Online Marketing Summit,

by Claudine Zap Our top picks from the day's hottest searches. Abbie Cornish (Searches increased by +16,748%). The actress ended her relationship with Ryan Phillippe reportedly over his partying and " wandering eye ." Betty White (+1,902%). The octogenarian is said to be close to hosting "Saturday Night Live," possibly alongside younger funny women . Dick Cheney (+1,115%). The former veep was hospitalized with chest pains . Stephen Colbert (+679%).

You may recall that towards the end of 2009, we began testing a new feature called AdWords Comparison Ads . This feature lets users compare multiple relevant offers with ease, and it provides advertisers with a new sophisticated and flexible cost per lead format. Speed is of the essence for many users, so we've made sure that Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second. The initial test covered mortgage-related queries in the US. Today,

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report on Chileans' use of the Web during the December 2009 presidential election. The study showed that the election services website, Servel.cl, attracted nearly 1 million unique visitors from home and work locations in December as Chileans prepared for the election.

Life would be a lot easier for marketers if there were an answer to the question, "Exactly what media mix should I use to optimise my return on investment?" While we don't have the definitive answer, a recent study we commissioned looked at how ROI is affected by varying the media mix, and therefore provides some valuable insights. Themes covered include how the media interact with each other and specifically what impact increasing online spend can have.