This week, Internet traffic soared to new heights following the United States’ dramatic win at the World Cup, LinkedIn added new features to up engagement, Google garnered buzz thanks to speculation that it’s working on a proprietary music service and Bing rolled out a new Entertainment page in addition to some key updates to its iPhone app.  Read our full summary below and be sure to check out this week’s POV on SMS Marketing if you haven’t already. It’s the third installment in our summer-long mobile series — and its completely free to read and download.

Report: U.S.-Algeria Game Might Have Set a New Internet Traffic Record

Mashable reports that Wednesday’s stunning World Cup game between the U.S. and Algeria – in which the Americans won in dramatic fashion, advancing to the second round by a heroic goal in the 91^st minute – just might have set a new record for Internet traffic.

Mashable came to this conclusion by monitoring Akamai’s Net Usage Index, which tracks visitors per minute on 100+ news sites in the Akamai network. Following Landon Donovan’s epic goal in the game’s final moments, Mashable says that traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute – a figure greater than the previous high which occurred after the 2008 presidential election.

These figures aren’t yet set in stone, but by early estimation it looks like matchup will go down in history as one of the most exciting sporting events – as well as one of the most highly-trafficked time periods – of recent times.

Read the full article »

Over the weekend, under the gaze of a painting of the Dalai Lama at Tibetan Kitchen, I savored my dessert of bhaktsa marku while thinking of all the search engines that helped get me to that place. And by “that place” I don’t mean the Tibetan restaurant, but rather my new Manhattan neighborhood where my wife and I dined out for the first time as residents. Below are ten search engines that helped with the moving process. Read the full article

Earlier this week on “The Daily Show,” Larry Wilmore reported on how Beverly Hills is coping with today’s economic hardships, where women are waiting longer to get their Botox refills and plastic surgeons are taking on reconstructive surgery cases just to pay their golf dues.

That’s hardly the case in digital media, where the plastic surgeons of the Web have their hands full. It seems like every other major site and software program is getting its digital version of Botox lately. These sites want to look better, and generally more youthful, without calling too much attention to themselves. We’ll review the latest round of e-Botox projects and see who wears their new looks well. (more…)