Did you say dogging or blogging? Brits confused

By Jeffrey Goldfarb

LONDON (Reuters) - Proponents of the latest Web trends were warned Tuesday that the rest of the world may not have a clue what they are talking about.

A survey of British taxi drivers, pub landlords and hairdressers -- often seen as barometers of popular trends -- found that nearly 90 percent had no idea what a podcast is and more than 70 percent had never heard of blogging.

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You, Too, Could Be in Advertising

By David Cohn

At one point or another, everyone thinks they have a brilliant advertising idea. The problem is that it's impossible to get that idea to the right ears. Now a new website will act as the middleman between companies looking for fresh ideas and would-be advertisers.

Per Hoffman started Adcandy so the public could contribute their original advertising ideas and possibly even see them used to sell their favorite products. "People want to participate in all forms of culture, so why not commercials, for better or for worse?" said Hoffman.

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Melding of cell phones and Wi-Fi will be cosmic, man

Carat: Traditional Media Flat, Decelerating; Digital Surging
by Joe Mandese

AEGIS GROUP, THE WORLD'S LARGEST pure-play media services company, Tuesday marginally upgraded its global ad outlook largely on the strength of accelerated ad spending in Asia. While it maintained its U.S. ad growth estimates--4.5 percent in 2005 and 5.0 percent in 2006--Aegis, the parent of Carat and several other media networks, said there are fundamental shifts taking place in advertising demand among the major media, with traditional media flattening or lagging and digital media accelerating. "We are seeing some interesting shifts in the allocation of advertising budgets," Aegis CEO Robert Lerwill said in the company's revised outlook. Lerwill attributed these changes to Carat's research. "Television's share of advertising spend is leveling out and newspaper's share of advertising is declining, with budgets shifting to the Internet." Noting that online ad spending has already overtaken radio's, Lerwill also said that Aegis also expects it to catch up with outdoor during 2005.

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Spamhaus: Yahoo major phishing site host

By Tom Espiner
Special to CNET News.com

Spamhaus has accused Yahoo of failing in the fight against online fraud, and Microsoft has admitted there is room for improvement.

Yahoo is playing host to thousands of phishing sites and doesn't have sufficiently well-trained staff to address the problem of online fraud, according to a leading anti-spam and security organization on Tuesday.

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WashingtonPost.com Sends Readers To Blogs
by Shankar Gupta

WASHINGTONPOST.COM HAS ENTERED INTO A deal with blog search engine Technorati that will make it easy for readers to find blog entries about Post stories. Technorati already has similar deals with Salon.com and Newsweek.com, but WashingtonPost.com marks the search engine's first major newspaper partnership.

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Nielsen: Online Ad Spend Soars 12.6 Percent
by Wendy Davis

SPENDING FOR ONLINE DISPLAY ADS rose 12.6 percent in the first half of 2005, according to a new report by Nielsen Monitor-Plus. That rate, although more than double the 5.7 percent growth in overall ad spending, was lower than projections by other online ad forecasters. JupiterResearch forecast earlier this month that spending for online display ads would reach $5.1 billion this year, up around 25 percent from last year's $4.1 billion. Other researchers and analysts anticipated even higher numbers. Goldman Sachs predicted that online advertising overall (including search) would soar by 28 percent for the year; Forrester Research predicted that all online advertising would climb by 23 percent this year; and research firm eMarketer predicted a 34 percent increase.

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CBS News counters bloggers with 'Nonbudsman'
By Paul J. Gough

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - After a controversial run-in with bloggers last year that helped sink "60 Minutes Wednesday," CBS has hired a "nonbudsman" to write a blog that will go behind the scenes at the news division.

Former "Hotline" editor Vaughn Ververs will report his findings on "Public Eye," which debuts next month on http://www.cbsnews.com.

Ververs will be a kind of media reporter, mostly focused on CBS News, reporting and writing about how the news is gathered, produced and placed. In addition to providing Journalism 101, "Public Eye" also could offer extended versions of segments that appeared on CBS, interviews with correspondents and producers and maybe even the daily story meeting for the "CBS Evening News."

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The Computer is Fast Becoming The Entertainer

According to the finding of a recent BURST! Media survey of 13,000 web users, 14 yrs. and older, the personal computer is rapidly replacing other ubiquitous appliances such as the telephone, radio and television as the household's tool of choice. Entertainment that used to be accessed on separate appliances is increasingly being played on the computer.

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Verizon Slashes Wireless Broadband Fees
by Gavin O'Malley

CONTINUING ITS AGGRESSIVE BROADBAND PUSH, Verizon Wireless on Monday announced key expansions into several markets along with a 25 percent cut to its monthly subscription fee. The wireless carrier, owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group PLC, dropped the price of its evolution-data optimized, EV-DO, monthly service fee from $79.99 to $59.99. At that price point, according to JupiterResearch analyst Joseph Laszlo, wireless service becomes a legitimate alternative to DSL and cable modem, as well as Wi-Fi services. "At these prices, wired broadband services and Wi-Fi now have some real competition," Laszlo said. "Just like people now forgo regular phone service for their cell phones, wireless Internet services will become a more attractive alternative."

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Bloggers Are Younger, Wealthier and High Speed Connected

According to a comScore Networks report detailing the scale, composition and activities of audiences of Weblogs, commonly known as "blogs," nearly 50 million Americans, or about 30 percent of the total U.S. Internet population, visited blogs in Q1 2005. This represents an increase of 45 percent compared to Q1 2004.

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Yahoo! Revamps Web Hosting For Small Business
by Gavin O'Malley

HOPING TO ENCOURAGE MORE BUSINESSES to start their own Web sites, Yahoo! has redesigned its hosting service for small businesses. The revamped service emphasizes customization, brand autonomy, and a simplified checkout process for the 35,000 merchants who have already created Web sites through Yahoo!

Until now, merchants were given two generic checkout pages to choose from. Now, each is encouraged to customize their checkouts with the same tools they used to design the rest of their sites--controlling the font, colors, and button appearance, as well as the content displayed in designated navigation areas across their sites, from initial browsing to checkout.

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Report: Adware Less Prevalent, Harder To Remove
by Wendy Davis

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT the biggest adware companies are making strides toward ensuring that their ad-serving software isn't installed without users' knowledge. But the bad news is that some smaller players now illicitly install ad-serving programs that are proving far more difficult to remove than in the past, according to a report released this week by Webroot Software Inc., a company that markets anti-spyware software. "The penetration rates of mainstream adware companies are slowing," states the report,"Q2 State of Spyware." But, the report continues, "extremely pernicious forms of adware" have arisen to fill the void.

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Arbitron Reveals 'Pod Meter,' PPM Measures Radio Podcasts
by Joe Mandese

IN A DEVELOPMENT THAT MAY say as much about the future of radio broadcasting as it does about the future of media audience measurement, Arbitron Tuesday announced that its new portable people meter system could successfully track podcasts. While the ultimate potential of podcasts--listener-generated radio programs distributed over the Internet--may be debatable, the technology is one of a progression of digital media applications that are transforming how, when, and why people listen to the medium, and are requiring both radio broadcasters, and the company that measures their audiences, to become more resourceful. In fact, Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio broadcaster, recently issued a request for proposal inviting media research firms to step forward with new "state-of-the-art" methods for measuring radio. Arbitron, which has been trying to convince the radio industry to support the costly rollout of its new PPM system, believes it has the method. In fact, Arbitron worked with Clear Channel on its field test using PPMs to measure podcasts.

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Report: B-to-B Ad Growth Fueled By 'eMedia,' Not Print
by Michael Deibert

A PAIR OF NEW REPORTS reveal that ad revenue for business-to-business publications continues to grow, but the main engine of that growth is no longer print. It's coming from so-called e-media--online and digital editions--and from events and trade shows. That is evident from a new section in the just-released 2005 edition of investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual Communications Industry Forecast, which for the first time documents the growth of non-traditional B-to-B revenue sources.

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Verizon Cuts Broadband Price
by Gavin O'Malley

RESPONDING TO INDUSTRY COMPETITION, VERIZON Communications and Yahoo! said Tuesday they were reducing the cost of their co-branded high-speed Internet service from $29.95 per month to $14.95 per month. The move appears to be an about-face for Verizon, whose CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, reportedly dismissed the suggestion of price cuts as recently as June. Subscribers to the service get download speeds of up to 768 kilobytes, uploads at 128 kilobytes--the slowest speeds offered by Verizon--along with Yahoo!'s premium services, including antivirus protection, on-demand music videos, and unlimited photo storage.

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Google To Offer Free Messaging, Web Phone Service To Gmail Users
by Shankar Gupta

GOOGLE TODAY VENTURED BEYOND THE realm of search with the launch of an instant messaging and Internet telephone service program. The feature, "Google Talk," will be available for free to all users of Google's e-mail program, Gmail. The program allows Gmail users to message or talk via the Internet to any other Gmail users who have installed either Google Talk or another compatible program.

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Mitsui, Dentsu Invest In U.S. Internet Companies
by Shankar Gupta, Thursday, Sep 8, 2005 6:00 AM EST TWO JAPANESE

COMPANIES, MITSUI AND Dentsu, Wednesday announced deals with American media companies, marking three Japanese companies in two days to unveil major financial deals with the U.S. media and advertising sectors. Mitsui & Co., Ltd. said it had invested in Feedster, a developer and distributor of an RSS platform. Feedster, based in San Francisco, boasts an index of over 13 million RSS feeds and blogs. Tokyo-based Mitsui owns businesses in sectors ranging from iron mining and steel production to consumer products and services.

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Start-Up Unveils Searchable, Wiki-Ready, Do-It-Yourself Web Kits
by Gavin O'Malley

FUSING TWO WEB TRENDS, SEARCH personalization and consumer-generated content, a fresh Internet entrant named Jeteye Inc. will announce the beta launch of its shared search platform. The company, started by Internet pioneer David Hayden, is based on wiki-ready Web kits dubbed "Jetpaks." Similar in appearance to a Web page, the Jeteye-branded Web-files can include users' self-selected search results from any popular engine, photos, blog-like comments, and links, as well as links to other Jetpaks. Users can then send their personalized Jetpacks to Jeteye members and non-members alike, and make them searchable within the Jeteye search index.

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It's a Web Buying Spree for Big Media

Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page D05

Sharon Keating, a lawyer in New Orleans, grabbed her laptop as she fled Hurricane Katrina with her family in a three-car caravan. For the past 11 days, Keating has been blogging about her evacuation on the home page of About.com, a Web site owned by the New York Times Co.

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Dell Computer To Respond To Bloggers' Complaints
by Shankar Gupta

DELL COMPUTERS, INC., WHICH CAME under fire this summer from blogger Jeff Jarvis, says it has new procedures for dealing with the blogosphere. The company's public relations department monitors blogs, looking for commentaries and complaints--and, starting about a month ago, began forwarding complaints with personally identifiable information to the customer service department so that representatives can contact dissatisfied consumers directly, said Dell spokeswoman Jennifer Davis. The move appears to have been triggered by a series of "Dell Hell" posts penned by Jarvis about his problems with a Dell computer. Jarvis first wrote about the topic in June, and continued posting updates through the summer.

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Blogs Send Katrina Aid Sites Traffic, Donations
by Shankar Gupta

HOURS AFTER ONE OF THE worst disasters in U.S. history, hundreds of bloggers directed their readers to charities accepting donations for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, inundating sites like RedCross.org and SalvationArmy.org with traffic and donors. According to numbers from Nielsen//NetRatings, traffic at RedCross.org surged 184 percent from August 30 to August 31, jumping from 390,000 unique visitors to more than 1.1 million. The 1.1 million unique visitors to RedCross.org was roughly equal to the number of visitors for the entire month of December 2004, during the Southeast Asian tsunami disaster relief effort, Nielsen's report said. As of Friday, $110 million had been received in online donations, out of a $197 million outpouring of public support, according to a Red Cross spokeswoman.

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For the Niche Film Audience, Studios Are Appealing by Blog

Movie studios typically advertise on television and in newspapers in search of the biggest possible opening-weekend audience. For a new film, "The Constant Gardener," Focus Features is intent on building its audience in a different way: by taking aim at readers of niche Web sites and blogs.

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New Orleans to enjoy free Wi-Fi access

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There is some welcome relief today for those people left wading through the remains of New Orleans - T-Mobile has announced it will offer free Wi-Fi access across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama until the end of the week, and "possibly beyond that if the situation warrants it".

That's how eWeek.com puts it, under the deliciously inappropriate headline "T-Mobile Opens Wireless Floodgates in New Orleans". T-Mobile hotspots can be found in locations including Borders, FedEx/Kinko's, Starbucks, Hyatt Hotels, Red Roof Inn motels, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and US Airways. Those wishing to avail themselves of T-Mobile's generous offer are pointed in the direction of the listings for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

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Yahoo-Verizon to offer cheap DSL

Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Posted: 11:40 a.m. EDT (15:40 GMT)

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) --Verizon Communications Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have teamed up to launch acheaper high-speed Internet service designed to compete against cable operators and dial-up service providers.

For $14.95, subscribers will be able to download Web pages via a digital subscriberline at speeds of up to 768 kilobits and upload data at 128 kilobits.

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Communications Networks Fail Disaster Area Residents

By Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Krim

Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 1, 2005; Page D01

Victims of Hurricane Katrina struggled to communicate with each other and the rest of the world yesterday, using everything from text messages to ham radio as most telephone service in New Orleans and coastal Mississippi remained devastated.

The near-blackout left outsiders desperate for news about loved ones, and in some cases created life-and-death situations as aid workers struggled to get information about people stranded by rising floodwaters in New Orleans.

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Google plans instant-messaging system, report says

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc. is set to introduce its own instant messaging system, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday, marking the expansion by the Web search leader into text and also voice communications.

Citing unnamed sources "familiar with the service," the Los Angeles Times said that Google's Instant Messaging program would be called Google Talk and could be launched as early as Wednesday.

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Flood Waters Can't Sink Net Link

By Joel Johnson

Despite the loss of most public utilities, at least one hosting company in hurricane-battered New Orleans is still online, fighting against time and the odds to keep part of the internet humming.

Occupying the 10th floor of a downtown Big Easy office building, Zipais a typical web-hosting and co-location center, with one key difference: It's sitting smack dab in the middle of some of the worst devastation the United States has ever experienced.

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Contextual Network War Starts With a Blog
By Zachary Rodgers

Google has launched a blog explaining the ins and outs of its AdSense program to publishers.

The outreach effort comes as Google faces its first direct competition from another mass-reach contextual ad network, Yahoo!'s Publisher Network (YPN), along with pressure from many publishers to make AdSense's workings more transparent.

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Marketers Debate a 'Top 500' List for Blogs
By Enid Burns

Feedster is floating a new top 500 list of blogs, ranked according to their accumulation of inbound links. Media buyers say they're watching the list, but they disagree on its value as a consideration tool for ad placements in blogs.

The "Feedster 500," which challenges the long-standing Technorati 100 list and claims to contain "the most interesting and important blogs," will no doubt stroke the egos of many bloggers who appear on it.

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eMarketer Asks - Where Did You Read About It?
By Mark Naples

Maybe it's the single largest natural disaster in our nation's history. Whatever the case, Hurricane Katrina's aftermath has laid waste the lives of millions and simply taken the lives of perhaps thousands more.

By now, on this Thursday evening, what we're left with is the knowledge that the calamity in Louisiana and Mississippi is of truly Biblical proportions, and the news we consumers AND many regional journalists have come to depend on arrives not by any other means than by bits and bytes online.

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Internet Wasn't A Blip, The Recession Was: Report Defines A 'New Media Order'
by Joe Mandese

IT'S NO SURPRISE THAT THE media industry has been undergoing an accelerated pace of change, but a leading chronicler of the industry's economics Monday issued a report saying it has effectively reached a "new order" that shifts power to consumers from advertisers, and to new media from traditional media. The changes, which began ten years ago with the emergence of the World Wide Web, and an explosion of online media, appeared to ebb along with the rest of the media industry following the U.S. economic recession of 2001, but fundamental shifts continued to manifest as both consumers and marketers began rethinking their relationship with traditional, passive, one-way media, concludes the 2005 edition of investment banker Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual Communications Industry Forecast.

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Ad Council Plans Massive Response To Hurricane Katrina
by Michael Deibert

THE ADVERTISING COUNCIL, THE MADISON Avenue's clearinghouse for major public service ad efforts, is planning a massive response to Hurricane Katrina, which has devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi. Working in tandem with the Austin-based GSD&M agency, the Ad Council was set to begin public service announcements for the Red Cross "within days," Ad Council officials said.

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Study: Blogosphere Healthy; RSS Lagging
by Gavin O'Malley

DESPITE ALL OF THE HYPE surrounding Really Simple Syndication feeds, just 11 percent of blog readers--which translates to about 2 percent of U.S. Web users--use RSS tools to manage blog feeds, according to a report released Monday by Nielsen//NetRatings. Nearly 5 percent of blog readers use feed aggregation software, and more than 6 percent use a feed aggregating Web site to monitor RSS feeds from blogs, according to a Nielsen//NetRatings June survey of 1,000 online users who had visited blog sites. Blog readers themselves are a minority, constituting just 20 percent of the U.S. online population as of July.

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After The Storm: Media Rush To Aid Katrina Victims, Big TV Benefits Planned
by Wayne Friedman

AFTER A FLURRY OF ACTIVITY from broadcast and cable networks yesterday, two and perhaps three major efforts are underway to stage concert benefits to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Executives at the six major networks--CBS, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, UPN, and the WB Network--reportedly said they planned to simulcast a concert event similar to what the television industry did with "America: A Tribute to Heroes" benefit after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

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From Web page to Web platform

By Martin LaMonica
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

What do you get if you cross Google Maps with an online gas-price tracker? A shift in the way the Web works.

The advent of the Web 10 years ago opened up vast banks of information to anyone with an Internet connection. Now, clever programming tricks that use data from public Web sites are letting developers mix up that information to suit consumers' particular needs.

Cheap Gas, a Google Maps-powered interface, is part of the phenomenon. Dozens of such nifty "mash up" programs, built by independent developers using tools provided by online businesses, provide services beyond those of the base sites.

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Katrina phishers go trolling
By Frank Barnako, MarketWatch
Last Update: 12:40 PM ET Sept. 1, 2005

WASHINGON (MarketWatch) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into reports of fraudulent online solicitations of funds for hurricane relief.

A spokesman for the FBI warned of e-mails making bogus appeals for support, a practice known as phishing. Read more at Wikipedia.

"The important point is that [people] initiate contact on their own," the FBI's Paul Bresson told the Washington Post.

Web sites with names such as katrinahelp.com and katrinarelief.com have been created. They refer visitors to another Web site that purports to solicit funds. There is no way, however, to know who is getting the money. A survey by MasterCard International found that after last year's tsunami in South Asia, 170 scam sites appeared soliciting money for supposed relief efforts.

Bloggers solicit relief help

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Craig's List vs. Katrina

By Keith Axline

Local community websites have sprung into action to assist hurricane Katrina survivors with everything from blankets to offers of shelter in their homes.

With cell and landline phones mostly down, the web has emerged as a champion amidst the wreckage. E-mail, instant messenger and blogs have proven lifelines for communication.

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TV Tries Shaky Hand at Podcasting

By Randy Dotinga

When CBS tried to simulcast David Letterman's show on 15 radio stations two years ago, even the star joked that it would sound terrible on the radio. He was right. The experiment flopped, cementing a widespread belief that TV doesn't play without pictures.

But podcasting is turning conventional wisdom about TV broadcasting on its head as thousands of people sign up to download and listen to free, audio-only versions of their favorite shows or special MP3-only programming.

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Greco Advises DMers on Reaction to Katrina
By: Mickey Alam Khan and Chantal Tode
mickey@dmnews.com

John A. Greco Jr., president/CEO of the Direct Marketing Association, is saddened by the devastation left this week by Hurricane Katrina. But he also has advice for direct and interactive marketers nationwide looking for ways to reconfigure marketing and business efforts in the Gulf Coast states.

"As with any citizen or corporate citizen, our hearts and thoughts go out to all of the people and businesses that have been affected by this devastating storm," Greco said. "We have alerted our DMA members to the state of emergency declaration and to the impact that it might have on their businesses. So, for example, our members should not be telemarketing into that area."

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