In a statement, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said, “After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”

The extension of the deal wasn’t a given by any means; the $1 billion investment Google made in AOL back in 2005 proved to be disastrous financially. Further, Microsoft has been aggressively making deals to grow marketshare for Bing, most notably with Yahoo, which now sees Bing powering Yahoo search and its related advertising.

With the renewed AOL deal, Google locks up about 2.3% of the search market according to the most recent numbers from comScore. Google currently has 65.8% of the market, while Microsoft has 27.1% between Bing and Yahoo.

Beyond web search, today’s deal also broadens Google’s reach on mobile and gets additional premium content onto YouTube –- both of which are currently high priorities for the company, as CEO Eric Schmidt noted in his statement on the deal. “It’s particularly exciting to see our relationship expand into video and mobile. These areas are now at the heart of users’ online experiences and at the core of both of our businesses,” he said.

More About: aol, Google, Search

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Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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More About: afghanistan, bp, current events, gay rights, graphics, healthcare reform, infographics, iraq, News, oil-spill, stimulus, visualizations, wikileaks

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With another long hot American summer coming to a close, many students are scrambling to get back into “learning mode” before school starts. One of the simplest ways to ease that transition is with podcasts. Whether your passion is American History or Algebra, there’s probably an educational podcast out there for you.

While these programs probably won’t mirror your lesson plan, they will explore topics covered in class. Below is a sampling of some of the exceptional podcasts that both teach and entertain. Best of all – they’re free. Read on for your “2010 Downloading Curriculum.”

Radiolab investigates some of world’s most intriguing scientific questions in a unique conversational format. Recent episodes have examined the importance of words in human development and time. First time listeners will probably notice that the show also just sounds different.

Before becoming a radio producer, Jab Abumrad, one of Radiolab’s creators, was as an experimental musician. Abumrad’s passion for ProTools is apparent in the show’s textured soundscape, which is layered with a variety of sound effects and quick edits. Perhaps the show’s only downside is its frequency. There are only a handful of episodes every season because one Radiolab episode requires months to produce.

Outlet: WNYC, New York City’s Public Radio Station
Time: An Hour
Frequency: 5-6 every season

Additional Listening: The Naked Scientists Podcast

In Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Carlin, a veteran journalist turned podcaster, dissects the textbook version of events. In shows that often run over an hour, the host passionately retells some of history’s best stories.

Hardcore History has become one of the most downloaded podcasts on iTunes, and Carlin’s widespread appeal can also be attributed to his insight. One podcast asked, “Could widespread child abuse in earlier eras explain some of history’s brutality?” Another show was based off the question, “Does the toughness of peoples play any role in history?” Don’t let the name fool you; all material is appropriate for younger listeners.

Outlet: Dan Carlin
Time: 1 – 1 1/2 hours
Frequency: 5-6 every year

Additional Listening: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Planet Money is NPR’s podcast on global economics and business. Initially created by veteran public radio reporters Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson to explain the recent financial crisis, the show quickly became one of the most popular and praised podcasts available.

Planet Money’s success lies in how it tackles complex subjects with great storytelling. A financial instrument like a Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) may sound impossibly boring, but Planet Money routinely makes these types of things the heart of a thrilling narrative. The team continues to explore the financial collapse, but they’ve expanded their scope to include all aspects of the global economy.

Outlet: NPR
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Twice a week

Additional Listening: Freakanomics Radio

Disclosure: The author interned at NPR.

For those of us who couldn’t make it through Wuthering Heights, Cliff Notes Cramcast would have been a lifesaver. This free podcast reviews some of the stuff you need to know for the big test and does it in three to four minutes. Of course, these podcasts can’t cover every detail. To do that, you would — you know — need to read the book.

Outlet: Cliff Notes
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Twice a week

Additional Listening: Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips

The Internet is full of podcasts that cater to students learning foreign languages. For those interested in the major European languages, Radio Lingua is a good bet. Another reliable hub is Open University, which in addition to the European languages also has a set of Mandarin podcasts. These outlets are mainly for beginners or students who need a quick review. Both are rated highly on iTunes by users.

Outlets: Radio Lingua and Open University
Time: 15-30 minutes
Frequency: Lesson plan

Additional Listening: Other reliable podcasts include Discover Spanish and Learn French.

For those of us who struggle to calculate a 15% tip, The Math Dude’s podcast is a must-listen. Every week, affable nerd Jason Marshall explains basic concepts like how to calculate the area of an object or how to add faster. When Marshall isn’t podcasting, he researches “infrared light emitted by starburst galaxies and quasars” at Caltech, which just means his left-brain knows what’s up.

Outlet: Quick and Dirty Tips
Time: About 7 minutes
Frequency: Weekly

Additional Listening: Mathgrad.

Every Sunday, comedians Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver recap the week’s events in The Bugle, a satirical podcast that is easily one of the funniest listens on the Internet. Think an audio version of The Daily Show, where Oliver is also a regular. The Bugle’s focus tends to be on the biggest international news, but the duo’s separate locations – Zaltzman in London and Oliver in New York City – ensure a focus on the English-speaking world’s antics. Although the pair has a leftward slant, there are no sacred cows. The Bugle even takes aim at itself in its tagline: “An audio newspaper for a visual world.”

Outlet: The Times (UK)
Time: 30 minutes
Frequency: Weekly

Additional Listening: NPR News, BBC World Service

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock

More About: back to school, cliff notes cramcast, current events, dan carlin, economics, education, english, foreign language, history, itunes, math, planet money, podcast, podcasts, radio lingua, radiolab, Science, the bugle, the math dude

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With the new app, Android users can speak a simple “check in to [insert place name]” command after tapping the home screen button. The command will prompt Vlingo to automatically pull up the location in question, and other nearby venues, on Foursquare, providing users with a fast alternative to touch-based Foursquare checkins.

Vlingo’s voice-activated Foursquare integration not only includes support for checkins, but also lets users post voice shouts and ask Vlingo, “Where are my friends?,” or “Who’s nearby?” to pull up a list of Foursquare friends who have checked in recently.

Vlingo for Android also supports voice-activated, speech-to-text status updates for Facebook and Twitter.

Unfortunately for those of us with iPhone and BlackBerry devices, our Android-toting friends have the advantage here, but hopefully not for long. Vlingo promises voice checkins for these devices in future releases.

More About: andriod, checkins, foursquare, vlingo

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For some in Silicon Valley, Asia remains an alluring black box. A promising world with pockets of hyper growth, obscured by a tangled web of unfamiliar languages, customs, regulations and native ecosystems. Although the walls are coming down fast, the road to Asia’s markets remains an intimidating one for many.

Enter Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups (a recently launched $30M super angel fund) and Geeks On A Plane, a program that takes tech entrepreneurs and investors to emerging markets. In its own small way, Geeks On A Plane is attempting to bridge that gap between the Valley and the rest of the world. Earlier this year, roughly 55 “Geeks” traveled to several key hot spots in Asia, including Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul and Beijing, to connect with the region’s top entrepreneurs, to mingle with Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and to sample local tech conferences like Shanghai World Expo and CHINICT.

“Asia is easily a third, possibly close to half of the world’s population, I think there’s a lot of innovation and a lot of growth that is happening in China, India, and Southeast Asia,” McClure says. “Some of the internet models that we’ve seen are starting to be transferred over there, and actually a lot of the internet business models are being copied over here…There’s actually an explosion of social networks happening in all those countries.”

Although McClure doesn’t consider himself an expert in doing business in Asia, through his trips and his new relationships, he says he now has a better understanding of the internal dynamics of Asia’s disparate markets and is acutely aware of common Western misconceptions. In particular, he says it was very eye opening to learn how advanced China actually is and how many have underestimated the region’s technological and economic progress.

“Well I think people tend to look at China as being a pretty big opportunity but they also tend to think about China as being a little bit behind and I think that’s just really the wrong impression. China has actually got more internet users than the US, they certainly have more mobile devices than the US…You know the top 10% of the Chinese population probably has more average spending power than the average US citizen…and they’re buying a lot of cars, they’re buying a lot of houses, they’re buying a lot of consumer products online.”

While not everyone can join a Geeks On A Plane Tour, Dave McClure is sharing a collection of mini-documentaries from his latest trip with TechCrunch TV. The videos were shot and produced by Ben Henretig, founder of Micro-Documentaries, a new startup that creates highly polished, short (hence micro) videos for clients. The first of four episodes is on their trip to Shanghai (second video from the top). You can also watch McClure’s interview with TechCrunch TV, where he discusses his new fund and expounds on his trip to Asia (first video).

By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

The mood on Twitter matches the weather today: Stormy.

A quick search for some keywords we're not allowed to print here (read: "Hurricane Earl" and any curse word you can think of) returns a plethora of tweets as the Category 4 storm heads toward the Eastern Seaboard. Earl's ruining weddings. Earl's ruining birthdays. Earl's even ruining one woman's news-reading experience: "Got to love all those hurricane verbs the MSM [mainstream media] throws out: 'churning' 'barreling' 'bearing down' 'roars' 'swirling' 'rolls'," tweets @Laracchapman.

But as Earl roared – er, made its way – toward North Carolina's Outer Banks, twitterers also expressed concern for loved ones in the area, urging them to follow evacuation orders. As for the people who have to evacuate themselves: Well, let's just say many of them fall under the curse-laden tweets category.

Then there are the TV jokes. With all the twitterers who have decided to refer to the storm as "Hurricane My Name Is Earl," TBS must be appreciative for the publicity bump for the show's reruns: "If I was still in N.C. I'd be the idiot on the beaches of the Outer Banks with the boom box blaring the theme to 'My Name Is Earl,'" tweets @redneck_trash. And @unclekilroy makes this point, playing off the Southern, less-than-favorable attributes of the TV show's title character: "'My name is Earl. And I'm fixin to put a hurt on you!' Figures the hurricane striking the south has a redneck-esque name!"

"The Earl Cometh," tweets @whatman75 in this Twitpic.

Still others have fears unrelated to the hurricane: "OhMyGosh! I was watching 'My Name Is Earl' and a fly hit my eyebrow and I started freaking out," tweeted @HellosPerson last night. No follow-ups on the fly-eyebrow situation were tweeted, so we're still waiting with bated breath for an update.

As for news-you-can-use tweets, federal emergency administrator @CraigatFEMA is tweeting all things hurricane preparedness, from how to protect your boat to how to communicate vital information with friends and family ahead of the storm. Food safety specialist @benjaminchapman is sharing how to keep your kitchen stocked in the event of a power outage, and @RedCross is encouraging evacuees to register on their "safe and well website" and tweeting information about shelters, traffic information and feeding trucks.

Keep checking msnbc.com and our hurricane tracker for the latest on Hurricane Earl as it churns, barrels, bears down, rolls and swirls through the Atlantic.

Whew. Thanks for letting us get all of those hurricane verbs out of our mainstream-media system, @Laracchapman.

One of the challenges of running a social commerce site these days is that there is just too much demand, from both local merchants wanting to give out deals and consumers who want to try them. There are only 365 days in a year, and the daily deal format limits each city to 365 deals a year.

Sites like GroupOn and LivingSocial are hitting those limits. GroupOn is expanding its inventory by “personalizing” deals, essentially showing different deals to different people. LivingSocial is handling the issue by going hyperlocal. It will now start offering deals by neighborhood and city districts.

LivingSocial will start bringing daily deals to the hood out in Washington, D.C. and New York City. In Washington, D.C., there will be deals for The District, Montgomery County and Northern Virginia (not exactly neighborhoods, but why get bogged down in details). In New York City, you can sign up for deals Uptown (soul food), Midtown (cupcakes), Downtown (facials) and in Brooklyn (dance lessons). Again, these aren’t really neighborhoods—Brooklyn on its own is bigger than most cities in America—but they do break up the city into more manageable zones and open up the site to more deals.

This is something, in fact, that Groupon does as well in a couple cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. In fact, it breaks down Washington, D.C. the exact same way: the District, Montgomery County and Northern Virginia.

Twitter has just launched its first official iPad application and the reviews so far have been glowing. The new app offers a few notable features: panes for interacting with content within a stream, media which displays inline without slowing you down and gesture support for common Twitter actions, among other things.

What stands out the most about this new application is not a summary of its features, however. It's how the app fits into this growing trend that positions the iPad as the go-to device for consuming streams. With its touchscreen interface, the Apple tablet is ideal for both viewing and interacting with flows of information - not just tweets, but also Facebook status updates, news, RSS feeds, photos and more.

Sponsor

With the official Twitter for iPad application, the process for interacting with Twitter's fast-updating stream of content has been addressed through the use of panes. You tap on tweets to open a pane on the right where you can see the posted video or photo, or, as is often the case on Twitter, the Web page being linked to via someone's status update. There, within this new pane, the content loads.

But the pane can also be pushed off slightly to the side with a swiping motion so that you can continue to browse through the stream of tweets on the left. By the time the content loads on the right (Twitter's blog post puts it well: "let's be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load"), you're ready to skim the news, watch the video, etc. and then you can move on to the tweet you've already queued up to take its place.

Initially, you'll have to figure out how this particular interaction works, but after a minute or two, it will be swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe and you'll quickly become addicted to the flow.

The other interactions, unfortunately - like the pinch to view author details or using two fingers to pull down on a tweet and see the entire conversation thread - are slightly less intuitive. Maybe more than slightly, to be honest. There's a learning curve.

For example, you first have to learn how to "properly" tap a tweet. Tap on the tweet itself and you see the right-side pane and its associated content (like the photo, video, news item or even a stream of the hashtag mentioned). Tap accidentally on an @mention within the tweet, however, and you'll end up seeing that person's profile information instead, displayed below the tweet in the right-side pane, and not the associated content. This can get a bit confusing for the new user - and it can easily slow you down, too, because you have to focus on where to tap. And that's just one example.

The two-finger pull-down has to be done slowly or it flips up like a window shade whose cord you just yanked and let go. The pinch a tweet - well, let's be honest here - someone is going to have to release a YouTube instruction video for that gesture. (Oh, thank you.)

In other words, Twitter for iPad is not perfect. (And no, it didn't just "kill" all the other Twitter applications, the Twitter website, or anything else). It's a good enough app, but it may not be for you.

But these days, there are plenty of other applications to choose from. We've previously been fans of Twitterific for iPad, but it wasn't exactly ground-breaking in its design. However, other startups, including Pulse, Flipboard, Entertainment Weekly's Must List, ABC News, Reeder and even some interactive iPad magazines like Wired, certainly are. Wired and EW's Must List each present new visions for magazine content on the iPad, both in long form and short, Pulse and Reeder are gorgeous, interactive news readers and, while ABC News may be a bit hokey for you with its Google Earth-esque spinning globe interface, it's definitely doing something different. Whether its interface ends up winning or losing in the long run is almost besides the point - the point is that new interfaces are possible now, thanks to the iPad.

At the top of the heap today, though, is Flipboard, a social news reading application we recently called "one of the best iPad apps available." In reality, that's selling it a bit short. It's one of the best apps available, period, iPad or not. In comparison with Twitter for iPad, the app clearly excels. There's no learning curve - the entire process is 100% intuitive. And any app that isn't needs to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate whether its special "tweaks" really work.

Twitter for iPad, despite its many innovations, involves several minutes of practice to get it right. You couldn't hand it over to grandma without a how-to class either. And that's not grandma's fault - she readily mastered using iPad's built-in photo gallery application despite never owning or using a computer. We would argue that good design makes new interactions simple and intuitive - you don't think, don't don't have to practice and you certainly don't have to watch a video to figure out how you "pinch a tweet." You just swipe, tap, pinch, swipe, and all somewhat mindlessly. Twitter for iPad is a good start, sure to be a hit among early adopters, and there's no arguing it showcases some innovative ideas, but it's not a home run just yet.

Social news and bookmark site Reddit has been working lately to battle against its stereotyping as the less-significant, red-headed stepchild to Digg.

After Digg-founder Kevin Rose revealed Digg's July traffic numbers on his blog, Reddit administrator and programmer KeyserSosa publicly requested that the "entire mainstream media" quit with the diminutive adjectives already, as Reddit looks to have more traffic, not less, than Digg.

Sponsor

In July, Reddit claimed that experts were "misunderestimating" its traffic and it didn't know why. According to Reddit programmer Mike Shiraldi, a number of third-party Web traffic measurement services were grossly underestimating its traffic. According to its own numbers from Google Analytics, Reddit saw "more than 8,000,000 unique visitors in the last 30 days and 400,000,000 pageviews" when we wrote about their traffic measurement issues in July.

In his blog post, Kevin Rose revealed that Digg had "200+ Million page views in July" - a number that seems to contradict what Reddit sees as persistent attempts by the mainstream media to minimize its impact and relevance in comparison to other social bookmarking sites like Digg. As one user notes in the comments, Reddit has only 1/20th of the staff, but the numbers seem to show that it has at least 40% more traffic.

See a full-size version of the image here.

Recent updates to the Google search engine now allow brands to dominate the search results pages (SERPs) with a single website.

Brands like Apple, Sony, Dell, and HP can now control the majority of the front page, allowing for an SEO based Internet marketing monopoly.

What was initially thought a bug, Google has confirmed the algorithm update:

“We periodically reassess our ranking and UI choices, and today we made a change to allow a larger number of pages from the same site to appear for a given query. This happens for searches that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain.

“We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.”

However just a few weeks ago Google’s Peter Norvig spoke about providing diversity in the SERPs: “We haven’t figured out any way to get around majority rules, so we want to show the most popular result first, but then after that, for the second one, you don’t want something that’s almost the same as the first. You prefer some diversity, so there’s where minority views start coming in.”

So where will this new update leave the small time Internet marketer?

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Washington D.C.-based startup EverFi has just raised $11 million in Series A funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from TomorrowVentures and independent investors including Michael Chasen, the CEO of Blackboard.

EverFi has created a SaaS application for schools to help educate young adults on financial literacy, student loan default prevention, filing taxes, credit card debt and more. The application’s curriculum incorporates virtual worlds, gaming, social media and videos to help teach children these life skills.

For example, the company’s Buttonwood platform, aims to prevent teenagers from student loan defaults. The application includes a Second Life-like virtual world where users can learn and implement key financial literacy concepts, such as credit worthiness, the loan application process, interest rates and more.

Currently over 2,000 public schools in 47 states will be using EverFi, with the company’s reach expected to more than double in 2011. While EverFi’s technology is not free to use, the platform’s use in public schools is completely funded by outside corporations and foundations that license its programs. Partners include United Negro College Fund, Capital One, Genworth Corporation, U.S. Bank, PayPal, BB&T Corporation, and others.

The company plans to use the funding for new product development and additional hires.

Since Yammer launched as the “Twitter for businesses” at TechCrunch 50 in 2008, the startup has continued to improve on its already solid product, releasing mobile apps and new desktop clients, adding threaded conversations, hosted versions and more. The fact is that in just under two years, Yammer, which we use at TechCrunch for internal communications, is being used by more than one million users and 80,000 companies worldwide (which includes 80% of the Fortune 500). That’s impressive growth for the startup, which has raised $15 million in funding and is doubling revenue every quarter. But the social enterprise arena is competitive with Salesforce Chatter, Jive, Socialcast and many others vying for a piece of the pie. However, Yammer is going to be releasing a new version of its application at TechCrunch Disrupt this fall which could be a game-changer.

The new Yammer will essentially turn the microblogging application into a full fledged social network. Yammer plans to add a number of applications to its platform that will increase its functionality beyond just a communications platform. An events application will allow you to invite co-workers to company or group events and track responses. Attendees can also download the event into their calendar.

An ideas application will help employees and administrators create, find and categorize the best ideas within a company. Employees can rank ideas through voting, and ideas can be created separately or can be promoted from existing conversations on Yammer.

Yammer is also going to be upgrading content sharing by allowing users to preview information in shared links. The startup has also added a Q&A app that encourages workers to ask questions and find answers from a database, and includes a polling application. Additionally, the new version of Yammer will allow users to assign a task resulting from conversations and track its completion, and will include the ability to tag content with topics, making it easier to find conversations by subject.

Another integral part of Yammer’s transformation into an open social platform is the ability to install third-party applications. Yammer will soon give third-party developers the ability to sell and create applications like those that Yammer will now offer. It’s similar in theory to the Google Apps marketplace.

In terms of communications functionality, Yammer is adding the ability to send Direct Messages to multiple parties, and a chat feature, which will allow users to create chat rooms that can be archived or searchable. Missed chats will automatically become direct messages.

A new Activity Feed will aggregate stories about co-worker actions within all of their enterprise apps (both on and off Yammer) and will allow users to follow content. And a new notification feed will alert users in real time about co-worker actions that affect them.

Yammer CEO and founder David Sacks tells me the feed is one of the key components of social networking and existing enterprise platforms have been built before the concept of a realtime feed. Yammer’s next-generation application, he says, will help enterprises create a social communications platform around data and communications.

In terms of the big picture view of the social enterprise, Sacks believes that the ability to create a go-to corporate social network is a Facebook sized opportunity. Half of the social web entails sites like Facebook and Twitter, explains Sacks, and the other half will be around enterprise social networking. And he makes it very clear that Yammer hopes to be the de-facto application for companies, both big and small, to use for their social networking efforts.

Of course, it’s safe to assume that either an existing social enterprise player, such as Salesforce, or even Google may want to purchase Yammer to boost their own offerings. Sacks says he’s received considerable interest in his company, but for now he wants to focus in creating the best product in the space. That, he says, is going to be the new version of Yammer.

Two years ago, Google launched Google Chrome – a browser based around the open-source program Chromium. Today, the latest version of the browser was released making it the sixth version to date. Google reports that today Chrome is now three times faster than when it was released in 2008 when it comes to JavaScript performance.

Among the new features introduced in version 6 are: auto-fill and auto-fill synchronization and more than 6,000 extensions; all of this change is meant to enhance the way users browse and make for a more lightweight feel. The new color scheme is meant to be easier on the eyes and the merging of the two menus into one makes the browser’s appearance more streamlined.

Over the next few months, Google reports, there will be even more advancements made to Chrome – including the launch of the Chrome Web Store, which will make finding web applications much easier.

The new stable version is available for download now and Google has stated that versions 7 and 8 will be out this year; they have decided to release a new version every 6 weeks. Chrome OS is also due out by the years’ end.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Google Chrome!

It’s free and comes with a slew of touch interface bells and whistles built right in. The app is intended to allow for seamless navigation between tweets, photos, web pages, videos and other media and updates. It’s also usable even for those who don’t have Twitter accounts.

Twitter for iPad [iTunes link] has a few new UI touches that you haven’t seen elsewhere. These features are custom-designed for the larger screen and touch capabilities of the iPad. It also caters to what the iPad was made for: media consumption rather than creation. Twitter’s Leland Rechis, a mobile UX designer, writes on the Twitter blog that the iPad is “a device that really lets content shine.”

The main interface is a series of panes that can expand and retract based on the kind of content the user wants to access. “Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like,” wites Rechis.

Media viewing is optimized for the iPad, as well. Videos play in-line with other content and can be loaded while you’re browsing through your timeline. You can pinch a video to view it fullscreen, too.

Finally, Twitter has really done some interesting things with touchscreen capabilities in this app. When you pinch a tweet, you’ll see details about the author and have a list of actions you can take, including reply and retweet. A two-finger pull-down gesture will show the entire conversation around a tweet.

It’s a creative way to approach multitouch app building, and we look forward to playing with it ourselves. We’re also really looking forward to what apps may come to other tablets in the future.

The iTunes release is rolling out right now; if you can’t get the latest version of the app right now, wait a bit and try again. And of course, let us know what you think of Twitter for iPad in the comments.

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