WebProWorld

Google has introduced some new features for the Google Search Appliance (GSA). There are about ten of them, but the one the company is really touting is one that allows the GSA to learn the habits of searchers and use that information to fine-tune its information retrieval process to increase relevancy.

WordPress has launched a couple of new mobile themes for bloggers who use WordPress.com. The themes are designed to display automatically when the blogger’s blog is accessed with a compatible mobile device.

Making moves to get blogs to display properly on mobile devices is a good move considering recent research, which found that consumers are generally not pleased with the way mobile web sites display.

 More people plan to shop online during the holiday season this year (55%) compared to last year (49%), according to a new survey by MarketLive and the E-Tailing Group.
More than a quarter (26%) of shoppers plan to buy more gifts online, up from 21 percent last year. Eighty-five percent of consumers report the main reason for shopping online is still time savings, but 40 and 38 percent of shoppers respectively also rate wish lists and reviews as increasingly important.

Plum Organics, a company that makes baby food, has issued a voluntary recall of a "small portion" of its Apple & Carrot Baby Food in Portable Pouches. The reason is that a routine test determined the formulation was incorrect.

Virgin America has partnered with Google to offer free in-flight WiFi to all of its passengers during the holidays.
From November 10 to January 15, 2010, passengers on all Virgin America flights will be able to access email, shop online and visit social networks free of charge. In May Virgin became the first airline to offer Gogo Inflight Internet service on every flight.

Eyeblaster released its Research Global Benchmark report for 2009, which provides an analysis of the performance of different types of display ads like banners and rich media ads. The research found that while clickthrough rates for standard banners improved with an increase in size, size did not factor into the performance of clicks on rich media ads.

"In rich media, size is only one component of banner visibility on the site," says Eyeblaster.

Update: According to FOX News, the Federal Court in Australia will leave it up to individual judges to decide if court cases can be covered live on Twitter.

Original Article: A California court is making jurors sign a declaration that they will not use the Internet to look up details about facts related to cases. This comes apparently at the request of a San Diego lawyer.

The majority (78%) of new media users interact with brands via new media sites, an increase of 32 percent from 2008 (59%), according to a new report from communications firm Cone.

Facebook has changed the design of its Groups feature. Now Groups look similar profiles and Pages. They have a wall.

Update: Google has expanded the campaign to additional countries:  U.K., France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore.