WebProWorld

Microsoft is either taking the holiday marketing approach or the Twilight/Vampire trend approach with its latest commercial. The title is Bing: Vampire Decision Engine.

The company uploaded the new commercial to its (Google-owned) YouTube channel. Accompanying the video is a short description:

"When you’re looking for a restaurant that is family friendly, romantic, or maybe something with an otherworldly atmosphere, use Bing’s reviews to stop searching and start deciding."

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said today that more than 3,500 registered state sex offenders have been removed for social networking sites Facebook and MySpace.

Under New York’s e-STOP law, which was written by Cuomo, Facebook was able to identify and disable accounts linked to 2,782 registered New York sex offenders, and MySpace was able to identify and shutdown accounts linked to 1,796 sex offenders.

In most pie charts that feature Google, the search giant dominates the circle, and a new one from the Fair Syndication Consortium follows that pattern.  Unfortunately for Google’s reputation, the chart’s titled "How unlicensed use of U.S. newspaper content is monetized."

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a 2-day workshop on "Journalism and the Internet Age" today and tomorrow. Featured at the event are a number of high profile media executives and gurus. The cast ranges from News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch to Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have committed nearly $3.4 million in grants to improve Internet connections for libraries in five states.

Nationally, libraries report that demand for high-speed Internet access is growing faster than their ability to provide increased bandwidth. An American Library Association study found that 60 percent of all libraries say their current Internet speed is insufficient.

CNBC reports that the deal between GE and Comcast over a majority stake in NBC Universal is complete, and will likely be announced officially Thursday morning. This comes from what CNBC attributes as a "source close to the merger".

According to the report, GE and Comcast are waiting on Vivendi to sign an agreement, selling its 20% stake, which is worth about $5.8 billion. CNBC’s David Faber outlines the deal:

People may or may not have mobbed stores this Black Friday – your humble author hid inside and didn’t watch any live TV – but they definitely spent some time at their keyboards.  Google has stated that searches for "Black Friday" increased by more than 20 percent on a year-over-year basis.

That’s actually a sort of low number, too, at least among the group of them that Google tossed out.

AdSense is an important fixture in a lot of people’s lives; it can represent anything from spending money (hey, little splurges do the heart good) to what pays the mortgage.  And now, individuals have a chance to shape it more to their liking, as a new Product Ideas for AdSense page has launched.

Try not to get your hopes up; as word spreads and more people contribute ideas, the odds of any one suggestion making it in front of an important Googler will decrease.  Also, there’s no guarantee that any of the recommendations will be implemented.

U.S. online retailers reported strong holiday sales results on Cyber Monday (Nov.30) 2009 compared to the same period last year, according to a new report from Coremetrics.

Cyber Monday sales were up 24.1 percent compared to Black Friday 2009.  Consumers spent more per online order ($180.03 versus $170.19 for an increase of 5.8 %) compared to Black Friday.