Anyone with a modicum of experience with web publishing knows that counting web traffic is never as precise as you would expect. Quantcast, Google Analytics, Compete.com, comScore and Nielsen report different numbers for the same site, sometimes by a huge margin.

You would think by 2010 we would have this figured out, but it turns out you better count your traffic twice. When someone asks you can always give them the bigger number.

Yahoo has been successful at getting premium ad rates for content created by professional journalists in the past so this acquisition is a big endorsement for the new school of wide and shallow journalism.

Amid announcements of mass layoffs (around a third!), AOL revealed that it’s now “Aol.” to you, punk.

Arigato, running man.

So this ridiculous Cocoa Krispies Box implies that eating sugary cereal will protect your kids from H1N1 aka Swine Flu. Obviously this is a dubious claim but the fact is, of course, that H1N1, while scary, is a only a minor threat to the well-being of America’s youths.

This fact did not deter USA Today from publishing an article resulting in Kellogg’s removing the claim from their box. Perhaps a compelling argument for self-regulation?

I’m reminded of this cartoon by xkcd which serves as proof that marketers will always find a way to irritate me via cereal boxes.

The Texas Tribune, a non-profit news website, launched this week. It’s hard not to be cynical about the future of a such an organization while traditional journalism is struggling to define its raison d’etre to the YouTube generation. It’s made especially difficult for the Tribune after it gets called out by the Austin Chronicle for paying its top 5 employees a total of more than $800,000 per year, a hefty sum for a nonprofit startup.