Apple, Google, Adobe Systems and Intel have reached a revised deal to settle a lawsuit alleging illegal hiring practices, according to a letter filed Tuesday night with a federal appeals court. The Mercury News cites The New York Times, reporting that the new deal increases an earlier settlement amount from $324 million to $415 million. A federal judge previously rejected the $324 million figure as inadequate, prompting the companies to appeal that decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Marketers know the keyword links them as advertisers to consumers. Keyword optimization is the process of adding, researching and analyzing the terms that marketers believe will perform best. The long-tail keyword must be specific to the product. In theory, the more words that match the description to the search query, the closer the intent to convert, per Kristina McLane. She analyzes volume and efficiency, and performance and lead quality to provide some insight on long-tail keywords. 

The alarm that sounded on the International Space Station Wednesday morning should remind marketers of the importance to closely review automation and data before making targeting decisions. The alarm sounding on the Space Station forced the six astronauts on board to seal themselves in a segment of the orbiting outpost belonging to the Russians. Officials point to a possible failure of a computer card.

Google declines to fix a bug found found in the WebView component running Android 4.3 and below, although about 60% of Android users use the versions. Building a patch for the versions would keep users in older versions of the platform. The company is willing to tell partners about the problem, but not willing to fix it. As Peter Bright writes, (Aw, yes) most phones running Android 4.3 or below could receive updates to 4.4 or 5.0, and eliminate the bug.

About 75 companies signed Obama's Student Privacy Pledge, but Google is not one of them. Among those that did are Apple and Microsoft. Companies signing the pledge agree not to sell student information or to target students based on data about their behavior, per The Wall Street Journal.They also agree to limit how long they retain student data, to support parents' access to their children's information, and to offer to correct errors. Although the company did not sign the pledge, Google is among the 120 companies that supports the privacy think tank Future of Privacy Forum, which created the pledge last year. …

Marc Andreessen, the coauthor of Mosaic and cofounder of Netscape Communications, has turned his blog Pmrca at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz into an ebook. Removing all text and links referencing resources that no longer exist or otherwise outdated, he kept the original formatting, except turning some subheads into headers, and did not do significant editing. 

Links are expensive. They require research, content creation, discovery, outreach, and time to develop relationships or "social love." An in-house labor cost analysis done last year reveals the average time it takes a link builder to land one link is 4.14 hours. The ones that go live in a few emails and several hours are few and far between, per Julie Joyce. Here's her advice.

Technologists have been talking about the Internet of Things since 2002, but this year it looks like device makers are finally ready to make that connection with consumers. As I've written about in the past, SEOs supporting local search will have the most opportunity when it comes to the next wave of connected devices. As Dan Shawen writes, every few years a technology emerges that naysayers claim will put an end to search engine optimization. This one will do just the opposite.

In an effort to compete with Google's YouTube and forthcoming video product from Twitter, Facebook has acquired video content technology firm Quickfire Networks to improve the social network's features and video delivery. The technology will enable Facebook to reduce the need for buffering without degrading video quality.

An upcoming update to Google Translate will allow the app to auto-recognize popular languages and translate them into text in real-time. Google Translate now offers written translation in 90 languages and the ability to hear spoken translations of a few popular languages. The update will automatically recognize if someone is speaking a popular language and turn it into written text. Last month Skype added a translation service.