by Mike Krumboltz Think President Obama was embarrassed when Joe Biden uttered the mother of all swearwords at the health reform signing ceremony? Think again. The Obama machine is actually selling t-shirts emblazoned with the saying, " Health Reform is a BFD ." Embrace you inner potty mouth, people.

The Yale Daily Press scored a nice piece of local news that warrants some speculation about whether Google's recent moves versus China are adversely affecting its collaboration software business. Apparently, the Ivy League school has decided to postpone its move from the Horde Webmail service to Google Apps for Education, the suite of e-mail, word processing and other apps tailored for university students and faculty.

Many blogs depend on the practice of sharing for survival, or at least profitability; they can't count on millions of people to find their own way to every article. And it turns out that, when it comes to "share" buttons, popular blogs depend more on Twitter's than any other option out there. We're going to skip the causation/correlation debate (do popular blogs turn to Twitter because it's great, or is Twitter popular because great blogs promote it?

Offering loyalty incentives, such as discounts on monthly fees, service upgrades and other benefits, provides a significant boost in customer satisfaction with fixed and mobile broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, according to a new report by J.D. Power and Associates. Around 15 percent of fixed broadband customers and 16 percent of mobile broadband customers report having received incentives from their ISP to reward their continued loyalty.

If you're a Yahoo Publisher Network member, chances are you might have received an email notification already stating that Yahoo is about to close down the service on April 30. According to the email, Yahoo is asking YPN members to remove the YPN codes from all of their sites and Yahoo will be paying outstanding YPN revenues by May 31, 2010.

Google has just launched Google Ad Innovations, sort of a Google Lab this time for its many advertising products that it is currently experimenting on.  Google Ad Innovations will showcase Google's latest idea around advertising technologies to get, well our feedback. Google Ad Innovations currently has several new advertising products that Google may or may not release in the future.

One of Android's biggest selling points (so to speak) is that it's free; Google doesn't charge anybody a dime to use the operating system it would like to see powering phones, netbooks, and all other sorts of devices. Unfortunately for Google, a major electronics manufacturer has concluded that using Android is still an expensive proposition. Look at it this way: if someone offered you an authentic racecar, it'd be a nice gesture.

by Mike Krumboltz April 1 is the only day of the year when deceit and pranks are not just tolerated, but encouraged. Interest in the "holiday" is palpable in the Yahoo! Search box. Web lookups for " best april fools day pranks ," " how to trick a friend ," and " funny april fools day tricks " are all making more noise than an overinflated whoopee cushion. But if you ask us, the most interesting prank-related query is this: April Fools' Day history .

by Vera H-C Chan All that talk about fun is over on " American Idol " and thank goodness for that. The week's theme was R&B, and singer Usher showed up to tell the Top 10 contestants how to "own their moment" on the Fox reality show. Usher, seeking a comeback himself, schooled the wannabe idols on how to claim the stageâ?"just in time. Like every season, a bunch of johnny-come-latelies tune in when the "Idol" touring group has been decided. Right on cue Tuesday night,

by Sage Lewis ConversionConference.com is a very cool new conference being put on by Tim Ash. It's May 4 & 5 2010 in San Jose. If you are looking to get the most out of your traffic you need to seriously consider this conference. Be sure and visit our small business news site.