A white paper from Microsoft didn't provide much detail about Bing's algorithm, but was forthcoming about why and how its user interface got that way. Interesting stuff.

But what's even more important is that Bing (like Google) is presenting ever more of a web site's content before users go to a web site. If you're a site owner who tries to monetize eyeballs, you should start getting the message that you're less and less in control of the presentation of your information. That's not a good thing.

Rob interviewed me the other day about SEO, and it came out pretty well, although I was talking a little faster than he could type. Click through for the whole deal, but here are a couple of pullquotes:

Ranking in the SERP (Search Results Page) is meaningless. Anyone can get to the first page for something. What I always watch for is traffic, and changes in traffic. I care about the conversion of what happens once someone hits my page…clicking the buy button or the ad. I can rank #1 on a search of “cellphone”…but if they come to my page and don’t convert, all I’ve done is cost my company money. If I can generate meaningful traffic to my reader, to my customer…that’s the win.

SEO isn’t an event, it’s a process... Too often, employers aren’t emotionally equipped to understand what SEO really is — it’s a quality process… that involves the entire company. When Toyota decided they were going to out-quality Detroit, they didn’t hire a quality guy and stick him in a cube. They hired someone who would come in and look at the operations of the entire company and build a process that baked quality in. And the best companies that do SEO, bake SEO in.

The study found that:

• The tools seen as most effective for generating conversions were SEO (48 percent) email and e-newsletter marketing (46 percent), and pay-per-click/search marketing (32 percent).
• In the coming six months, respondents expect that ad networks will see the biggest declines in allocation of marketing spend; viral marketing and SEO will likely see the biggest increases. Behavioral Targeting is the category that is least likely to see any changes in spend.

And one more encouraging thing: the companies Forbes surveys understood that the important thing about search isn't traffic (37 percent) or SERP position (34 percent.) It's conversions: 70 percent.

Organic search = money. Remember that.

As a consumer, I like free. As a content pro, I know that "free" has cost many of my friends their jobs -- and that "free" would not have produced journalistic accounts of this meeting. I'm uncomfortable when industry groups convene in private to discuss whether and how to charge for their products. (Imagine if Exxon, Texaco, and Chevron had a meeting where pricing strategy was discussed.) That's why there were lawyers there.

But on balance, I guess I'm rooting for them. Reliable, curated information has a commercial value. I'm just not sure I trust them to set the right price on that value.

Sprint has had six-month exclusives with Palm smartphones since the first Treo, so a post-exclusive deal is surprising only if you haven't been paying attention. But usually, Palm's next move is to ship an unlocked GSM phone for the world market, with Verizon coming a few months after that. But now, AT&T has its own very nice smartphone -- the iPhone -- not to mention a bunch of Blackberries that people like. And T-Mobile is doing very well with the Android G1 and Sidekick lines, thanks very much, with more Android phones imminent. So the two U.S. GSM players don't care so much about the Palm Pre. Verizon, on the other hand, could use some sex in its handset lineup.

But what's big trouble here for Palm is that the Pre now doesn't have a GSM outlet in the U.S. There's no question that there will be a Pre for the world; GSM is far and away the most popular mobile technology globally. But don't count on a U.S. cellco distributor for it anytime soon, which means it will be wicked expensive because there won't be any subsidized sales. For the U.S. market, the Verizon deal shows Palm's weakness, not its strengths.

Polling has found Limbaugh, a self-described prescription-drug addict who sees America from a private jet, to be nearly as unpopular as Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who damned America in the way that Limbaugh has now damned the nation’s newly elected leader. But Republicans just can’t quit him. So even poor Michael Steele, the nominal head of the Republican Party who dared to criticize him, had to grovel and crawl back to the feet of Limbaugh.

Where Democrats have gotten smarter is in their ability to push the whacko fringe off-stage when they start getting too much attention. That's going to be a problem with Limbaugh, whose livelihood and lifeblood is tied into getting as big an audience is possible. Rev. Wright will be able to feed his family if he doesn't have a mass audience; not so Limbaugh. That will make Rush exceptionally difficult to shut up, even if he were willing to in the name of party unity. Which he isn't.

Which is a pity. What this country needs is principled dialog and problem-solving, not demagoguery. The more Limbaugh drives the Republican agenda and dialog, the less likely bipartisanship becomes, which weakens the nation at a time when it requires the best effort from all available smart people.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind... I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do..."

This article from Technology Review gives a neat overview of portable flat-screen technology, and why it's so hard to combine both flex and touch. First applications will be, unsurprisingly, military. God only knows how much it'll cost.

I'd imagine that a lot of similar pics could be made to illustrate robust commerce. But the telling ones for me are the cars parked around test tracks -- because that means development work has stopped, too. The sudden pileup of inventory plus extended layoffs plus no development activity equals a pretty grim picture....

The days of 1000-page tabloid-sized issues are long past; Shopper went to a slick paper and normal trim years ago. Back in The Day, I was a senior editor there, responsible for about 100 of those pages a month. That's a lot. And while Shopper may not have been the best thing I'd ever done professionally or the most fun or the most formative, it was undoubtedly in the Top 3 for all of them. It's surely where I learned the magazine business and where I started to learn how to be a manager. It's where I met my best man. It's why I moved into New York City.

And it's where I forged personal and professional relationships that have lasted decades. I'm sad to see it go. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, a friend and once one of my writers, wrote a tribute in Computerworld. Read to the bottom.

There are too many Shopper stories than can be told here; you'll have to buy me a beer or two -- and I know that my short time at Shopper is only a thin slice of a very long story.

There's an old poster that shows a genealogy of British blues bands. Every band that's worth a damn could trace its way back to the Yardbirds, for one member or another at one point or another. In the tech press, Shopper was the Yardbirds. Glad I got to play

(I'm not going to link to the RMN, because God only knows how long the links would be live.)

For many years, it was the strongest newspaper between the Mississippi River and California. It was the scrappier and more fun of the two papers in Denver, an energetic voice of the Rockies. It was 156 years old, and Scripps -- the one-time owner of UPI that did so poorly by its crown jewel -- decided it wasn't worth the financial drain. The thing is, the RMN wasn't even the weaker of the two papers.

After the jump, there'll be two pieces from RMN writers. Full text, because the links will probably expire sooner rather than later. The first is from a sportswriter. The second is an awfully good obit, explaining why newspapers are important -- and how a great paper gets that way.

And, not only is it kosher, it's either parve or dairy.

To cap it off, the first round of funding came from a second-place finish on America's Funniest Home Videos.

On the other hand, the companies that own newspapers are debt-laden swine. They took on too much debt in fat times, as national chains swept up local owners. If you can keep using cash flow to pay off debt service, you're cool. But anyone who's played Hot Potato knows what happens when the buzzer goes off.

Compare and contrast Hearst and Philadelphia Newspapers. The latter went Chapter 11 recently -- too much debt -- while saying operations are fine. But Hearst's apparently imminent closings of the San Fransisco Chronicle and the Seattle Times, shows that media companies will have a choice: kill the papers or restructure their overall operations. Since the latter runs the risk of wiping out equity, expect far-flung media companies to impose pain on their newspapers. But smaller companies, focused on their own papers, may turn out just fine.

Given that Hachette, AMI and New York all pulled out of the MPA recently, and given that tens of thousands of people got axed in the magazine business last year, this might be a bad time to be planning a big-ticket shindig. Maybe by the time the AMC season comes around this fall, all the remaining publishers can just have lunch in a phone booth somewhere in midtown...

The other day, I was flying with my family -- myself, my wife, and two 7-year-old boys -- from JFK to SFO. I was sitting with one kid, my wife a few rows back with the other. The plane was a 767, in a 2-3-2 configuration. I was on the aisle, a kid in the middle, a stranger on the other side of him.

About an hour into the flight, said stranger pulls out a laptop and fires up a movie: "Slumdog Millionaire." My immediate thoughts, in rough order:

1. That's not on DVD yet; the SOB is watching an illegal download.
2. He's watching an R-rated movie -- one that features graphic scenes of little kids getting maimed -- in full view of a 7-year-old.