We’re pleased to announce our 22nd blog: The Unofficial Yahoo! Blog. Like our Microsoft and Google blogs the Yahoo blog tracks news about the company thanks to tips from inside, outside and all around the firms.

Please be patient while we populate this latest blog, and if you’ve got insider tips, news or links let us know!

The Google-obsessed Forbes has yet another story about Google. This time it is about their recruitment tactics.

Forbes: The leading search-engine company drew some 200 prospective recruits to its Santa Monica, California offices, many of them eager to work in an office featuring an open kitchen, cushy chairs, a surfboard at the entrance and a dazzling array of lights projected on the roof.

“Google and this event are still kind of holding on to the tech bubble mentality,” said Nathan Schurr, a doctoral candidate in computer science at the University of Southern California who came to the party to see what Google had to offer. What it did offer, at least for one night, were hors d’oeuvres from the kitchen of legendary chef Wolfgang Puck, car parking by a band of beautiful women who call themselves Valet of the Dolls and multiple open bars.

Mark Glaser wonders if VoIP and the spread of wifi could mean the end of the cellular industry in the Industry Standard (the website on life support that is based on the failed dotcom magazine).

Mark: Could VoIP completely eradicate cell networks? Not likely, unless WiFi mega-networks start covering the land.

Skype is an amazing piece of P2P software that let’s you do voice over IP (make a phone call over the Internet). They just added a feature that lets you do conference calls over the Internet. Amazing, no more paying a couple of dollars a minute for 800 number calls (at least when everyone is at their desk and tehy have a microphone and headset combo).

From the Press Release: Skype Technologies S.A., the Global P2P Telephony Company that offers consumers the ability to make free voice calls using their broadband connections, today announced the world’s first peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet telephony conference calling feature, allowing up to five friends to talk with each other simultaneously, regardless of geography. Skype Beta 0.97 furthers the unique feature set that has made Skype the breakout VOIP-category product in the 6 months since its initial beta launch in August, 2003. Skype is currently offered in 15 languages and has nearly 3 million users from more than 165 countries. Skype is averaging approximately 15 new user registrations per minute.

Webpronews has a story about a talk by Rick Bruner where he explains the various types of blogs out there, what they’re good for and if they can make money.

Shockingly he doesn’t think they can, even though there are numerous people already making money from them. The reason he gives for them not making money is “Because blogs are basically just a great marketing tool.”

Uhhh that makes no sense. Sure they are a great marketing tool, but do you think Nick Denton, Weblogs, Inc, and the dozens of other sites out there already making money from blogs are in this for marketing?

Anyway, I suppose it is good news for Brian and I that people don’t think you can make money from blogs. The longer people think blogs are not monetizable the longer we can do the slow burn over here at WIN (the Weblogs, Inc. Network).

From Webpronews.com: When asked whether it’s possible to monetize a blog, Bruner replied without hesitating, “No.” Why? Because blogs are basically just a great marketing tool. There are, of course, some people who do successfully monetize blogs. Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report became a blogging millionaire through paid advertisements that make a lot of money due to the high number of site impressions. Meanwhile, political blogger Andrew Sullivan managed to raise $1,000 through one fundraising event.

Found this basic story on the Google toolbar over at Webpronews.com. It had one interesting tidbit, esentially the cached version of your website is the last time Google spidered your site. I guess that is obvious, but I didn’t know that.

When Google spiders your site it records the latest version of your site that it has spidered and this can be viewed using the Google Toolbar by going to the Page Info button and selecting cached version. Your browser must be on the page you would like to see the cached version of at the time you choose to do this.

How can this help you with your SEO campaign?
If you have optimized your website in hopes of increasing your search engine results in Google, this will indicate whether or not Google has updated their database with the new version of your page. If the Googlebot visits your site regularly the cached version of your site will be updated more frequently than otherwise.

There is something scary going on in the world when the people running our country are busy taking Howard Stern off the air, stopping gay people from getting married, using government funds to subsidize religion, and trying to tell women what to do with their bodies.

I’m conservative in many respects, but I still believe in the basic tenants of our democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of choice, everyone being created equal, and the separation of church and state.

We’ve got real problems in this country like job creation, national security, record debt, and a faltering education system. What exactly are our public servants focusing on?

That’s it. I just had to get it off my chest.

Inan interesting move by Yahoo, the search engine will accept ads with brand names in them. Google, of course, is not accepting these type of ads after the ads brought up trademark issues over the last couple of months.

On Feb. 6, Oceana placed two advertisements with Google. Google removed the ads after two days, citing the cruise pollution ad for “language that advocates against Royal Caribbean,” and the general ad for using “language advocating against the cruise line industry and cruisers,” even thought the ad itself made no mention of the cruise industry. Google’s public editorial guidelines, however, declared no such prohibition, stating only that the company reserves the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising it accepts.

“We hope that Google will reconsider its stance and place our ads,” Sharpless said. “But we are very pleased that Yahoo! has accepted them and that our message will get out despite the apparent efforts to block it.”

The Grey Album is total genius. Copyright law is holding back art, it’s time for people to start thinking outside the box and supporting this kind of experimentation.

Why don’t we all just PayPal a $5 to DJ Danger Mouse and Jay Z. When 100,000 people have done that maybe we’ll have a new model.

Steve Jobs help us, you’re our only hope! Just call the parties involved and blow this album out on iTunes for a fiver and show the music industry what a business online music can be.

In the meantime can someone get me DJ Danger Mouse’s email or snailmail address? I’m going to send him a ten spot.

WIN (The Weblogs, Inc Network) blogger Judith Meskill got a huge plug in the Guardian a first for a WIN bloggerexcellent! They may have gotten your name wrong, but they got your URL right!

The expansion of the internet has brought this simple idea to the mass market, as illustrated by the emergence of at least two dozen Friendster-style websites including Microsoft’s experimental Three Degrees (Judith Meskell (sic) is busy cataloguing more than a hundred at the Social Software Weblog. Most of the sites allow you to fill in your own profile, upload a photo, and add other people as friends.