Twitter and UK newspaper websites – Robin Goad,  Hitwise UK.

Last week (w/e 14/03/09) Twitter.com was the 54th most visited website in the UK, up from 66th the week before. One consequence of Twitter rapid rise up the rankings is that the micro-blogging service has now overtaken most of the UK newspapers online. As the chart below illustrates, last week Twitter received more UK Internet visits than the homepages of the Guardian, Times, Sun and Telegraph. It also over took Google News UK. Of the main newspaper homepages, only the Daily Mail received more UK Internet visits than Twitter last week.
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New AOL Chief Tim Armstrong is Big Champion of Local – Peter Krasilovsky, Local Onliner

Tim Armstrong, AOL’s new CEO, is a very big believer in local, with personal investments in a New York-area hyperlocal site (Patch) via his Polar Investments. Moreover, as head of sales for Google, he has frequently commented on his interests in developing local.
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Computer Makers Prepare to Stake Bigger Claim in Phones – Ashlee Vance, NY Times

The computer industry has hit upon its Next Big Thing. It is called a phone.

The companies are also shifting gears because their technological feats of the last two decades — smaller laptops with faster chips to deliver snazzier graphics — no longer impress consumers, who increasingly find their three-year-old computers adequate for everyday tasks.
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3G Phones Exposing Networks’ Last-Gen Technology – Matt Richtel, NY Times

Oh, the things modern mobile phones can do. They are music-playing, video-taking, direction-providing multimedia powerhouses. But many people have trouble getting them to perform their most basic functions, like making phone calls.

The underlying problem, industry analysts say, is the complex quilt of the nation’s wireless networks. The major mobile carriers have spent tens of billions of dollars on new voice and data networks that they advertise as superfast wireless express lanes. But analysts say these upgrades present major engineering challenges, and the networks often underperform.

Got Local Search Optimization? Start here! – Aleyda Solis, AleydaBlog

Aleyda has assembled a nice range of articles from the past 3 years of writings in Local Search and the summary provides a great starting point for someone who is just getting started in Local and wants to catch up.