I hate to start a weekly link wrap-up this way, but I feel it’s my duty. If you haven’t already heard about the tragedy Northern Illinois University then Andrew Careaga over at Higher Ed Marketing has a good wrap with links to other bloggers reactions. My prayers go out to them.

This weeks links has about 50/50 between news and how to articles. What is the feeling about the weekly link wrap-up? Do I have too many links, not enough, or just right? Do people like news or more how to information?  The weekly wrap-up is still morphing as this is the fourth or fifth installment and I’m learning and changing them as I go.

• Scientists Make First Map of Man’s Marine Footprint - The first comprehensive analysis of human impacts on marine ecosystems shows that humanity has profoundly affected nearly half of the world’s oceans, with just a few spots remaining pure.
• Page Titles - Best Practices - Title tags are vital from both usability and SEO perspectives. We use the following format for page title tags: Page Title - Department Name - University Name.
• What’s Next for YouTube (Video Editing, Recommendations, Advertiser Analytics)- Last night at an event in NYC dubbed “Videocracy,” YouTube gave marketers a sneak peak at some upcoming initiatives.
• Woman hits Best Buy with $54M suit for losing laptop - Lawsuit is meant to publicly embarrass Best Buy into changing its privacy policy and to expose its ‘disregard for customers’ personal information,’ woman says
• The University Tube - One Source for College Videos! - Found this new College Video Site
• BREAKING: MySpace Announces ‘Post to MySpace’- Our friends over at MySpace have sent over an announcement for a feature allowing you to promote your content with your MySpace profile.
• Cue Up the Acne-Fighting, 128-Meg MP3 Player- In Tokyo, acne control rocks. The 1.2-ounce MP3 player promises to improve a gal’s complexion while pumping out J-pop.
• Fifty Percent Chance Lake Mead Will Be Dry By 2021, Models Show- Lake Mead was created by the Hoover Dam’s blockage of the Colorado River. The dam, of course, was one of the prototypical mega-engineering efforts of the 20th century and a symbol of how human ingenuity could conquer any obstacle, including supplying water…
• 42 Ways To Distribute Your Content - Are You Making Your Customer More Intelligent, Or Interrupting Them? Not Sure? Try One of These…
• Internet Marketing Strategy: A Step-by-Step Diagram - Internet marketing is not SEO. It’s not PPC. It’s not e-mail or web design, or social media. It’s the sum of many parts.
• Is the Government Pushing Ethanol Too Aggressively? - The federal government has decreed that we will use 9 billion gallons of ethanol this year, which begs the question of where it’ll come from and where we’ll buy it.
• 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design - Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has become a standard approach…
• 100+ Useful Web Resources for Small Business and Non Profits - creating, maintaining, and optimizing an online presence from small businesses and non profits; how to get into search engine results, how to redesign an old site, what tools are available that are useful, inexpensive or free.
• Social Media and Social Network Starting Points - Organizations have a lot to consider once they decide they want to jump into social networks and social media. There are many opportunities to slide off the rails, or worse, to let the effort fall into disarray.
• How-To Tuesday: RSS Feeds- How-To Tuesday from SquarePeg. Each week we’re going to try and pick a topic and do a quick demo or show some neat benefits of using it. This week I’m talking about subscribing to RSS feeds.
• Best Buy To Recommend Blu-ray Hi-Def Video- The consumer electronics retailer said it will showcase Blu-ray hardware, DVD titles, and software products in its stores and online in the United States, dealing another big blow to the competing HD DVD format backed by Toshiba.
• MySpace Quietly Launches Games Site- Still number one social networking destination MySpace has entered the casual flash games market with games.myspace.com.
• Looking for the next big thing? Social gaming startups heating up- As the Facebook Platform matures (i.e. Facebook cracks down on application spam and users become more skeptical/tired of applications), entrepreneurs and investors are looking for ways to break away from the mold of the now over 15,000 applications…
• Netflix Opts for Blu-Ray High-Def DVDs- Netflix Inc., the online movie rental company, said Monday it is switching exclusively to the Blu-ray format for high-definition DVDs, following four major movie studios in selecting the Sony technology over one pushed by Toshiba Corp.
• YouTube - Link Building 101 Rap - There are no words to describe this… you just have to watch for yourself!
• 10 Insights From 11 Months Of Working At Google- What it is has been like working at Google. Interesting, fun, surprising, insightful, inspiring, impactful, and more such words. This post shares that experience.
• Studies Say Biofuels Worse Than Gasoline- When all relevant factors are accounted for, biofuels produce more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels.
• Wikimedia’s 2007 Financials Posted- Wikimedia Foundation posted their audited 2007 financial statements last week. Their fiscal year actually ends June 30, so these are already almost eight months old, but they reveal some interesting information about the entity that controls Wikipedia…
• Social Networks Still Growing Strong, Engagement Leveling Off- Looking closer at the engagement metrics, it’s notable that MySpace users still spend the most time on the site versus users of other social networks.
• 6 Basic Questions to Ask When Picking an Email Marketing Solution- There are all kinds of solutions out there, but I’m primarily focusing on software solutions that streamline your email marketing efforts, companies like Constant Contact, Emma, ExactTarget, MailChimp, Bronto and Vertical Response.
• It’s Official. People Love Online Videos. Billions Of ‘Em.- It would seem people spent quite a lot of time in front of their computers in December watching online videos. According to the latest numbers from Comscore, a total of 141 million unique viewers, an increase of 2.5 million, watched 10,156,199,000 videos.
• Safari is about to get crazy fast- Apple has really run with the KHTML engine, forking it off, renaming its development version “WebKit” and making it faster and leaner than Firefox on the Mac and both Firefox and Internet Explorer on the PC.
• How Many Times Can This Work? SponsorMyLoans.com - Most recently, Luke Livingston has started Sponsor My Loans in an effort to pay off his student loans — in $200 monthly increments.

Have a great weekend!