The Google Gmail team is at it again, but this time fun is trumping hardcore functionality. Basking in the warm reception of its new Gmail voice and video chat utility , Google has added more than 30 themes users can choose from to further customize their inbox. The move recalls Google's April introduction of iGoogle artist themes , launched with flair by Google search guru Marissa Mayer in Manhattan this past summer.

by Mike Krumboltz The buzz surrounding " Twilight " can not be overstated. Searches on the?vampire flick are through the roof. Meanwhile, related lookups for the film's stars continue to soar, and queries for the movie's hunky main?character are flexing their blood-stained muscles. Here's a roundup of the biggest Twilight searches from the week. Try to contain your screeching. Twilight Reviews The hotly anticipated film won't hit theaters until Friday,

TopRank Online Marketing and the Direct Marketing Association have just announced a partnership to develop and deliver a series of educational workshops on social media marketing entitled, " Social Media Smarts: Introduction to the Social Web, Tools and Tactics ." With marketers facing tighter budgets in the coming months, social media marketing offers new opportunities for companies to engage customers,

I spoke at PubCon last week - about How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns To Grow Traffic and Alternative Discovery and SEO - Feeds, PDFs, and Blog SEO. But, enough about me. Let's talk about the top trends spotted at last week's search engine and Internet marketing conference and expo in Vegas, baby! For the record, I not only spoke at PubCon, I also looked at the 88 articles about it in Google News, the 77 articles in Yahoo! News,

TopRank Online Marketing is pleased to announce a parternship with The Direct Marketing Association to develop and present a series of 2 day workshops on social media marketing for direct marketers.? On December 4th in New York the new course entitled: "Social Media Smarts:?An Introduction to the Social Web,

by Vera H-C Chan Add another gloomy outlook to America's short-term future: The online appetite for poking fun at president-elect Barack Obama has?fallen more than 61% in the past week. The precipitous drop follows an all-time Search high for " obama jokes " in the days immediately after the election. Given that America has seen enough negative numbers these days, do these figures portend a moody humor forecast? Entertainment Weekly wistfully asked last week,

You puzzle lovers out there may remember that we launched a crossword puzzle game that combined the Search Assist feature to provide helpful hints from Yahoo! Search last Fall. After all, many of us aren't born with the natural "crossword gene" (myself included) and having a helping hand to unscramble the word simply doubles the fun. Many users told us that they really enjoyed the game and were sad when it was removed after a brief period of time.

If you are looking for a good tall class of link juice then I'd suggest opening up social networking profiles at as many social networks as you can. Why? Just about every one of them use do-follow links in profiles even if they don't in other places. Twitter is one social service that uses no-follow links everywhere except the profile (and you're allowed only one link in that - but it's a valuable link).

Citysearch appears to be going for the jugular with its newly rebuilt site. While many sites add a little social here and a little mobile there, Citysearch is going for the three hottest trends all at once: Social, Local, Mobile. "We rebuilt the Citysearch platform to give our users what they asked for - a new site that drills down to the hyper-local level with content for specific neighborhoods," said Jay Herratti, CEO of Citysearch.

Real estate search site Trulia has partnered with Placecast for audience targeting and dynamic messaging. The goal is to improve the relevancy of the ads appearing on their site. Placecast will use its proprietary targeting algorithms to generate ads based on the real estate locations in which a user expresses interest. The ads will also take into account demographic and psychographic data points.