Link TV's new digital-media hub, ViewChange.org, will tap the latest in search technology to enable users to find content complementing the hub's fund of video stories that highlight "progress in reducing hunger, poverty, and disease in developing nations," according to the Link TV site.

Now, Google gives brands with fan pages a funnel to Facebook from the search engine. Although it's not clear if everyone's public pages will end up indexed in Google, experts suggest people and brands need to pay closer attention to privacy settings -- and also watch out for spam.

Google has been known for collecting mounds of consumer data in each user search for products and services. Still, the deal between Yahoo and Twitter announced this morning could have those tracking privacy concerns paying more attention to the No. 2 search engine. In the new partnership, Yahoo will integrate Twitter streams across Yahoo properties.

About 80% of the advertisers tapping into Google's Ad Builder these days are new to display advertising, according to Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google. Most have a history running paid search ads, she tells me. So I ask her if advertisers benefit from running both display and paid search ads simultaneously. Since results may vary by advertiser, Wojcicki declined to speak definitively without data to back up the claim. But a recent study could do the explaining for her.

An online survey of 371 experts and 524 Internet users reveal more than three-quarters believe the Web will make people smarter by 2020 -- while 21% think the Internet would have the opposite effect and could even lower the IQs of some who use it all the time. The study, released Friday from the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Internet Center at Elon University looked at the Internet and its effect on human intelligence.

Microsoft will acquire Yahoo Search, a thought I've been contemplating since the two companies first announced an alliance last year that would eventually lead Bing through a backdoor API to power the Sunnyvale, Calif., firm's search engine.

Set the entrepreneur loose, allow him to develop the application you want, and reel him back in, along with the technology for a sweet cash and/or stock deal. This seems Google's pattern lately, though the trend also hearkens back to Eric Schmidt's comment during an earnings call that the company would make at least one small acquisition monthly during the coming year.

Curt Dalton has found a way to turn marketing on its head. The 36-year-old economics major will launch a search engine by the end of the month that identifies demand for products and services, so marketers can fill the supply. The search engine, NowRelevant.com, will also support a paid search campaign tool that alerts marketers when trending topic opportunities arise.

Hewlett-Packard typically runs President's Day paid search and display ad campaigns, but this year Catherine Paschkewitz, director of marketing for HP Direct, tried something a bit different: She bought broader keyword terms, with the ability to change the message frequently.

Cloud computing is the future of digital storage and computing resources served up remotely from data centers, also known as the cloud. Consumers can access multiple applications from any portable device that supports little processing power. These devices save energy and can access the information from anywhere for as short or as long as required because they take less electricity to power.