Call me a mobile Luddite, but it's only in the past few weeks that I've acquired an iPod Touch, a device that's basically a phone-less iPhone, whose beauty lies in being able to enjoy most of the functionality of the Web, including browsing, searching, and e-mail. After using this device for a few weeks, I've come to a number of conclusions about searching on mobile devices, not all of them pleasant.

Last month, I wrote about the apparent lack of a common thread in most advertising. Suddenly media properties are selling bundled solutions through a single salesperson. And while this checks the box for economies of scale, it provides little incremental value unless media efforts are bound together by something more substantial from the communications plan. But what happens when the ties that bind are sliced apart by consumers?

I love debate. I love defending my ideas, and in the process, shaping, refining and sometimes discarding them as they prove to be too unwieldy or simply incorrect. My last two columns have generated a fascinating debate around the concept of branding in search. Fellow Search Insider Aaron Goldman, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, his senior vice president of search and media, James Lamberti, Erik du Plessis, Millward Brown executive and author of "The Advertised Mind" (fascinating book, by the way), as well as a host of others, have taken up the debating gauntlet on this particular topic.

It's time to reveal numbers 6 through 10 in the Search Insider Summit Buzz-o-Meter. To all those who think I should've built some suspense in my last column, rather than crowning the top five right off the bat, I say, "Buzz off!"

ahoo SearchMonkey is finally here. It's one of the most important developments affecting search engine optimization, and one that can vastly improve the search experience for users. It could be the most significant, revolutionary, unique search development this year. Yet in its current form, hardly anyone will use it.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to digest the thought-provoking, inspiring conversations that occurred at this year's Search Insider Summit. It's clear to me that we as an industry are beginning to view search more holistically. Yes, we still call it "search marketing," but let's face it: search is a behavior among many behaviors and interaction points, ultimately leading down the path to the golden ticket: an action (conversion, page view, subscription, lead, etc.). Here are some tough issues for us to wrestle with as the industry continues to evolve.

At my college reunion, I bumped into a former classmate who had clearly tired of repetitive small talk. I can't remember the exact question I asked him, but I know it had something do to with New York City real estate developers. It was clearly, as I recall, aimed at eliciting salacious and outlandish tales of graft, kickbacks and double-dealing in Manhattan construction projects. My classmate did not take the bait. His response to me was polite but purposefully terse. But he knew what I was up to, so to cap off his brief response, he left me an opening: …

In my last column I opened up the search "branding" can of worms regarding unclicked search ads and generated a fascinating discussion with Gian Fulgoni and James Lamberti from comScore, as well as Aaron Goldman from Resolution Media, who has unpublished research that sheds new light on the subject and counters my argument. I think it's fair to say that the value of an unclicked search ad still needs further research to resolve the question.

Since its inception, I've been a fairly regular reader of Sphinn, the social news site for search engine marketers. For those not familiar with how social news sites like digg or Sphinn work, headlines are posted on the front page based on their ability to hit popular critical mass, as determined by their respective community. So theoretically, the most popular, interesting, newsworthy, and buzziest stories get the most visibility.

What's the buzz on the latest and most improved buzz monitoring sites? Here's a guide to seven of the best, along with some of their peers and competitors.