After the closure announcement – and then sudden re-opening – of short URL service Tr.im , there’s been some uncertainty about the widespread use of short URLs on sites like Twitter .

Remember when custom Twitter backgrounds were all the rage? We even gave you some tips on how to create one. Though they haven’t gone quite out of style just yet, the buzz seems to have faded a bit, primarily because as marketing tools they’re limited in effectiveness — they’re just static backgrounds

If you’ve been following the story about the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal, the details of which have been leaking out in the last 24 hours, you’re probably confused. The deal itself is very different from what was speculated the first time around . Now, we’ve got the official press release below; we’ll also point out the most important facts about the deal to make it easier to understand