by Shankar Gupta, Thursday, Oct 13, 2005 6:00 AM EST

BY THE SECOND QUARTER OF next year, MSN Messenger users and IM Yahoo! Messenger users will be able to seamlessly send each other messages, as part of a deal between the two companies announced Wednesday. The arrangement, which provides for interoperability between the two messaging services, will allow users of each service to IM their contacts on the other, but doesn't entail any combination of the actual programs.

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Thu Oct 13, 7:25 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Where else does a pagan witch vie for listeners with the mighty BBC, or President George W. Bush joust for airtime with amateur porn stars or Ray and Viv, a couple who dole out 'good home cooking' from their kitchen in Ohio?

Every hour, of every day, "podcasts" -- the latest front of the online revolution, let listeners download audio files and homemade radio programs onto personal computers or take them on the move with iPods or MP3 players.

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Telephia recently reported that Internet-based telephone service (or Internet telephony) is replacing traditional landline phone service among those who have chosen VoIP, a technology that allows consumers to place telephone calls over the Internet. Fifty-three percent of high-tech households subscribing to Internet telephony have completely replaced and disconnected their landline phones. High-tech households are identified as those who currently subscribe to at least three bundled or emerging services (e.g., wireless data, video-on-demand, Internet-based telephony, satellite radio, broadband, DVR, etc.), or expressed an intent to purchase four or more services.

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By Kevin Newcomb | October 12, 2005

What do you get when you cross About.com, Wikipedia, blogs and social networks? If you're author and online marketing guru Seth Godin, the answer is Squidoo -- a new company he launched to host Web pages written by experts in various topics

These pages, which he calls lenses, aim to highlight one person's view of a topic and hopefully distill the information into the perfect starting point for researching a given topic. An ideal lens will provide a searcher with the "big picture" on the subject, with annotated links to the most relevant sites on the topic -- similar to the guidance a trusted librarian would offer.

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by Rok Hrastnik

We were waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. Yahoo!, one of the key providers of mass-market RSS aggregators, finally took a step forward and published their RSS whitepaper, covering their own findings with RSS, based on their usage data.

1. YAHOO!'S KEY FINDINGS

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by Ross Fadner, Tuesday, Oct 11, 2005 7:34 AM EST

IN WHAT APPEARS TO BE a second dot.coming, offline media may be poised for a boom from an unexpected advertising category: online media. Online retailers, or so-called "dot.coms," have hefty ad plans to drive sales during the holiday shopping season, and they plan to spend almost all of it offline. According to a well-regarded survey released Monday, the 2005 Shop.org/BizRate Research Online Holiday Mood Study, nearly all Internet retailers will advertise offline this year. A robust 93 percent of the online or multichannel merchants surveyed said they would not rely on the Internet alone to market their Web sites to consumers this year. Direct marketing was the most popular offline marketing tactic cited by the survey respondents. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) plan to mail catalogs to consumers this holiday season, while 59 percent will send direct mail to drive online traffic. Print ads were the second most popular response among the Internet retailers surveyed: 54 percent plan to invest in magazine ads, and 41 percent will buy newspapers. Over a third of the Internet merchants surveyed said they plan to buy television, while 32 percent will buy radio spots.

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Marketers on RSS: The Best Of

by Rok Hrastnik

What do savvy marketers have to say about RSS? What are their top tips?

We set to find that out end of 2004 to collect the best possible insights on RSS marketing from top marketers and RSS developers and leaders, for Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS.

Let’s get started …

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by Gavin O'Malley, Tuesday, Oct 11, 2005 6:00 AM EST

TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH current trends, Yahoo! Monday launched a suite of podcasting tools to search for, arrange, and rate the multitudinous digital audio files flooding the Web. The free service, which has yet to be monetized, is intended to make it easier for consumers to sort through the tens of thousands of podcasts available online today. The service can be found at podcasts.yahoo.com.

Unheard of until last year, podcasting is the act of uploading audio programs to the Web, following which the files can be played via personal computer or downloaded to multimedia players for listening at a later date.

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Google and Sun - a Partnership to Kill Microsoft or a Deal with the Devil?

by Rob Sullivan

While the implications could be huge and far reaching, only Google knows for sure what it wants. We can speculate however and that’s what this article is all about. Is such a deal good for Sun (and Google) or is it a pact with the devil?

At first glance, such a deal doesn’t seem like much. After all java to most people is just a plug in for your Internet browser. What good would such a deal be to Google? Well lets take a look at what Java can do. The following is taken straight from Sun’s website:

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By Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. said on Monday it will begin featuring the work of self-published Web bloggers side by side with the work of professional journalists, leveling distinctions between the two.

Yahoo News, the world's most popular Internet media destination, is set to begin testing on Tuesday an expanded news search system that includes not only news stories and blogs but also user-contributed photos and related Web links.

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A Gentle Warning To All Webmasters About RSS

by Titus Hoskins

RSS is fast becoming an obsession for me. I didn't plan for it to be that way. It just happened.

I have been interested in RSS for a couple of years now but it was only around this time last year that I started taking a serious look at this little syndication standard that's changing how we communicate on the web. Really Simple Syndication. Simple phrase but it changes everything.

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by Shankar Gupta, Monday, Oct 10, 2005 6:00 AM EST

GOOGLE FRIDAY UNVEILED THE BETA version of Google Reader, a free tool for Really Simple Syndication feeds. Unlike many other RSS readers, Google's product allows users to search for feeds, rather than cutting and pasting the location of XML files. The product also saves subscription lists for Gmail users. The same week that Google released its RSS reader, rival Internet company Yahoo! and research company Ipsos Insight published a study reporting that only 12 percent of the Internet users are aware of RSS by name. But Yahoo! also reported that nearly one in three--27 percent--of Internet users consume RSS content--without realizing that they're using an RSS service.

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by Robert Murray

WELL, IT'S GETTING TO BE that time of year again--the time when well-adjusted, relatively normal human beings (and I use the word "normal" very cautiously) find themselves willing to go to the mat over a parking spot at the local mall. There's no denying it. The joys of the holiday season are practically upon us. In fact, I think I hear the faint murmur of sleigh bells off in the distance. But for Internet retailers, this season starts a bit earlier, with a lot longer prep time required than for Aunt Mildred's lead-bottom fruit cake.
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Publishing E-zines via RSS

by Rok Hrastnik

It's clear that RSS and e-mail in fact need to be used together, as opposed to either one replacing the other.

While RSS might not be used by as many people as e-mail, you can be sure that those that do use it and subscribe to your feeds will get your content without fail. In addition, many already prefer to receive information via RSS instead of e-mail, making RSS an absolute must as a supplement to e-mail delivery.

Let’s now take a detailed look at exactly how RSS and e-mail can work together.
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Dispute between Level 3 and Cogent causes e-mail, Web site management woes.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of Internet users have struggled to send e-mail and keep their Web sites running after a dispute between two service providers left large portions of the Internet unable to talk to each other.

Computer technicians scrambled to shore up their networks after Level 3 Communications Inc. refused to accept traffic from rival Cogent Communications Group Inc., rendering large portions of the Internet unreachable by others.

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What NOT To Do With RSS

by Richard Keir

Everybody is hot on using RSS to increase their traffic, promote their sites and do their marketing. Why?

Well, it's newish - at least within the internet marketing segment. Not as new as it was a year or so ago, of course. Getting significant results is a little harder as the competition increases.

With the profusion of blogs and spam blog-pinging to attract the search engine spiders to index static pages, the utility of this approach has been seriously impaired by unscrupulous overkill.

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Newspapers Brace For Google Free WiFi Plan
by Ross Fadner

IF GOOGLE SUCCEEDS IN ITS bid to provide San Francisco with free, city-wide WiFi, analysts say that telecommunications firms and Internet service providers won't be the only companies feeling threatened. Local newspapers, which generate much of their ad revenue from local businesses, could find themselves competing directly with the global advertising giant for local ad revenue. Preston Gralla, a former editor in chief of a chain of local newspapers and a blogger for Networking Pipeline, writes that a Google-powered WiFi network could spell financial ruin for many papers, because a city-wide network would enable the sponsored listings provider "to deliver ads literally on a block-by-block basis."

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Taking The Easier Route To Generating RSS Subscribers

by Rok Hrastnik

RSS is certainly still far from being user-friendly, which is especially evident once you try and left-click on an RSS subscribe button.

In most cases your browser will simply display the XML code of the RSS feed ... which does not go far in making internet users comftorable with RSS.

Heck, if you didn't know what RSS was and clicked on an RSS button only to get a page full of code you don't understand, would that aid in turning you in to an RSS user?
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Network feud leads to Net blackout

By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Two major Internet backbone companies are feuding, potentially cutting off significant swaths of the Internet for some of each other's customers.

On Wednesday, network company Level 3 Communications cut off its direct "peering" connections to another big network company called Cogent Communications. That technical action means that some customers on each company's network now will find it impossible, or slower, to get to Web sites on the other company's network.

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Do you have a product or service that entrepreneurs can purchase as Holiday Gifts for their clients? If so, join the Holiday Business Gift Bazaar, a one-stop shopping experience for busy entrepreneurs who are looking for the perfect gifts for their clientele.

The Holiday Business Gift Bazaar opens on November 5, 2005, and you can advertise your offers for only $5 per product, with all proceeds going towards press release position on PR Web. Vendors are also required to share the invitation to the Holiday Business Gift Bazaar with their distribution lists, making this truly a joint venture. [Read More!]

How To Use Testimonials As An Additional Marketing Tool

by Abe Cherian

It's been said before that one unsatisfied customer will go out and tell 10-20 of their friends and family about their unsatisfactory experience, but the opposite doesn't seem to occur. Your customers, vendors, suppliers and associates might think you walk on water, but they won't seem to tell everyone else how great you are unless you show them how and give them an actual reason to do it.

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AOL Makes Move on Blogosphere With Weblogs Acquisition

By Jennifer LeClaire
TechNewsWorld
10/06/05 12:00 PM PT

"This exciting and groundbreaking combination allows our audiences to be able to do a 'deep-dive' into a vast array of compelling topics that keep them interested and entertained on our network of properties, day after day," said Jim Bankoff, executive vice president of Programming & Products at AOL.

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Product Placement Gains Traction
By Seana Mulcahy

Good morning. I'm writing to you on the heels of OMMA East. Like many of you, I will be in New York for Advertising Week. It's sure to be a whirlwind of excitement, networking, events, and seminars. On Tuesday I'll be joining some esteemed panelists to talk about the value of celebrity endorsements, product placement, and branding through search. It's a loaded topic so I thought I'd ask, when you think about it, what comes to mind?

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RSS Security

by S. Housley

RSS is growing at a lightening speed. What was once only known as a 'techie tool', RSS is becoming a tool that is continuously being used by the general population. Along with the good comes, the not so good. And while some have mentioned the emergence of RSS spam, where content publishers dynamically generate nonsensical feeds stuffed with keywords, the real concern relates to security. While an annoyance to the search engines, spam in RSS feeds pales in comparison to the possible security concerns that could be in RSS' future.

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Blog and Boost Your Search Engine and RSS Traffic

by Kamau Austin

One of the more recent secrets people are using to get their websites in the search engines, the last couple of years, is with Blogs. Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily dairies on the web.

Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to share their lives with other people on the web, without having to learn very complicated web design applications like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.


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Why Google Blog Search Matters to Your Business

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

According to Google, Google's Blog Search is 'Google search technology focused on blogs'. It includes search engine results specific to blogs not just in the Blogger.com community, but across the blogosphere at large. You can access it at Google Blogsearch.

What the Big Deal Is

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KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid
By Mark Naples

Anyone who enjoys the game of golf knows this expression. Some stores even sell golf shirts with the phrase emblazoned upside down on the shirt as a reminder to swingers as they address their ball.

I ran into trouble because I didn't keep it simple in this space two weeks ago. I feel kind of silly for how I depicted Atlas DMT as being in the business of buying media against which to gather user data. The ad-serving company is not in that business, of course.

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EU Wants Shared Control of Internet

By AOIFE WHITE, AP Business Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The

European Union

" name="c1" /> News | News Photos | Images | Web

" name="c3" />

European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance.

A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in aUnited Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over.

EU spokesman Martin Selmayr said a new cooperation model was important "because the Internet is a global resource."

"The EU ... is very firm on this position," he added.

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Google Blog Search - What You Should Know

by Titus Hoskins

Google is moving in so many directions, it can be somewhat difficult to keep track of all the services and tools offered by this premium search engine. For the seasoned webmaster as well as the ordinary surfer, keeping a clear picture of what Google is offering is sometimes a little overwhelming.

Recently, there has been a deluge of new products from Google. If you hit the 'more' button on the Google Home page, you will see a smattering of Google services and tools. Including Desktop 2, Print, Maps, Google Earth... you can even search and browse mail-order catalogs.

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