Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Zero star link:

• Fox News says that the Internet is making us dumber. Um, I'd argue that Fox News is making us dumber. Them telling us that another medium is making us dumber is like Paris Hilton calling Tila Tequila a slut.

One star link:

• Apparently John McCain wants users to spam various websites. Hey Google, are you paying attention? Holy geez, it would be so awesome if McCain's website were hit with a penalty.

Two star links:

• I've actually seen this store at the Detroit Metro airport many times (including earlier this week), and it always makes me shake my head and go "Really, Detroit? Really?" Apparently someone else thinks the same--www.news.detroit = not a valid URL.
• Paul Graham thinks that the city you live in says a lot about how ambitious you are. I'm not a huge fan of the post because it pretty much kisses Cambridge's ass while poo-pooing every other city, but hey, whatever floats your boat, I suppose.

Three star links:

• Our friends at Acquisio recently launched a new multi-engine PPC bulk editor, so if you manage a lot of campaigns across various search engines, you might want to check out what they have to offer.
• Speaking of friends, Gab Goldenberg (aka Bookworm SEO) was interviewed over at Winning the Web. I'm very impressed with how quickly he's risen in the SEO ranks. He's done a great job of getting himself known in the SEO industry by providing great content, knowledge, and expertise, and by being unafraid to ask for help and look for mentors who can help further enrich his skillset. We're proud of you, Gab!
• Still another friend of the moz, Tom Schmitz from Portent Interactive, authors a handy post detailing how to identify your online competitors. It's straightforward and even incorporates rubber chickens into its examples (and who doesn't like rubber chickens?).
• It's finally happened: monkeys can control robots with their minds. I for one welcome our new monkey overlords.
• Pinging on my "well, duh" radar is this article talking about why people are more likely to be assholes online than in person. Ahh, the power of anonymity...
• In light of Rand's recent post about building web access to one's service (he used Papa John's online ordering system), this post from March talks about what Papa John's does right (displaying their URL on freakin' everything during Superbowl ads, implementing an "order now" call to action) and what Pizza Hut does horribly, horribly wrong (apparently you have to auto-opt in to receiving their advertisements if you want to order online).
• Hmm, apparently blogging is good for your health. I don't know if teenagers' Live Journal ramblings are good for anyone else's, though.
• ReadWriteWeb uses a Digg example to highlight the folly of groupthink. I agree that, in any situation, the "wisdom of the crowd" mentality is something of which you should be a bit critical.
• This seems like a bit of a no-brainer, but here's a chart, anyway: it shows that the success of your startup depends on the sector/industry.
• Google Webmaster Central announced that they're attempting to "make more housecalls"--if you're organizing an event and would like a WMC associate to speak about Webmaster Central, you can fill out a request form and they might come to a city near you.

Four star links:

• Danny Sullivan does a great job of highlighting Search 4.0 and emphasizing the need to put humans back into search. It's a pretty thorough post that touches base on historical trends, the current landscape, and future insights.
• Here's an interesting post that pings 23 professional web designers on when they think the design process is finished. The variety of responses is really enlightening, and it's something you should consider when you're working with a designer in pursuit of that "perfect" site overhaul.

Five star links:

• Mel found this site last week, and it is awesome. It dissects logos using a bit of math, and it is really very neat (for example, get from the Volvo logo to the Quicktime logo in three simple steps!).

YOUmoz entries:

• Google Now Pulling Primary Link Text from Meta Descriptions. Adam Dorfman posits that Google uses content from the meta description to populate the primary link for certain search queries, though someone in the comment speculated that it could be from the DMOZ description. Weigh in with your thoughts!
• Can You Plagiarize Yourself? Webwordslinger wonders if you run the risk of self-plagiarism if you blog about the same topics for various companies/sites.
• It's Not All Google: International Search Summit, London. Unofficial SEOmoz employee and conference coverage expert Ciarán provides us with a play-by-play of last week's International Search Summit.
• ATTN: Hidden Column Saves You Money! (if you make it happy) JustFred unearths a hidden column in Google Adwords (coincidentally, the working title of the latest Indiana Jones installment was "Indiana Jones and the Hidden Google Adwords Column," but they wanted a title even longer than that).

Best of YOUmoz:

• Google Image Traffic and Flickr by EverywhereTrip talks about the benefits of hosting your own images vs. having them on Flickr, and he also shares some interesting insights on how Google Image works.
• Protect Your Site and Your Users Against Cross-Site Scripting from Stephen T not only provides a handy Dr. Evil/Sean Maguire flowchart (aren't they one and the same?), it also gives a great rundown of how to protect your site against XSS attacks.

New (and upcoming) events added to the Events Calendar:

• Webanalytics Congress May 29 (hey, that's today!) in the Netherlands
• SMX Advanced June 3-4 in Seattle, WA

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

• SEO/SEM specialist in Boca Raton, FL
• Contracted online marketing partner for Optimising Ltd in the UK. Can work remotely.

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

• SEMWorldWide in San Diego, CA
• LeadRival in Benbrook, TX
• SuiteCommerce in Miami, FL
• Superlative Internet in Seattle, WA
• Bweeb Inc. in the US and in the UK
• Arrowhead Marketing in Guadalajara, Jal, Mexico

UK/Europe:

• Dreyer Media in Hamar, Norway

Asia:

• Designworkz in Singapore

Featured resumes:

No new resumes this week.