NEWS // Industry

As Seen Online - Local Business Finally Figures Out the Internet (and Newspapers, Yellow Pages May Feel the Pinch) November 22, 2005 A catering company in a suburban Connecticut town eliminates its Yellow Pages advertising, which once ran to $12,000 a year, in favor of promoting its website. For a growing number of small businesses, local Internet marketing is proving cheaper, and more successful, than traditional local advertising. more details >>> website >>>

Surfers love the web, but won’t give up TV November 3, 2005 Canadians who go online are still avid consumers of traditional media such as newspapers and television, according to a new study of how Canadians use and view the Internet.   website >>>

Ask Jeeves To Retire Mascot September 23, 2005 The smiling butler that has welcomed visitors to search engine Ask Jeeves for nearly 10 years will soon be laid off.   website >>>

Bell, Rogers join forces to deliver wireless broadband September 20, 2005 In a massive pooling of wireless broadband resources, telecom competitors Rogers Communications Inc. and Bell Canada are hooking up on a national wireless network, the companies said Friday.   more details >>>

Canadian online advertising grows dramatically in 2004, 2005 September 13, 2005 Online Revenues will exceed $500 million dollars in 2005, according to the annual revenue survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB). The survey estimates that the year-end total for Online advertising in Canada in 2005 will be $519 million, a full 43 percent more than the 2004 figure.   website >>>

The Age of Review Blogs September 1, 2005 Consumer power is getting stronger, and it's all thanks to blogs. What started out as online diaries are now becoming some companies' worst nightmare. The CBC's technology columnist Tod Maffin, now, on the emergence of the "reviewblog" and its increasing role in the digital economy.   website >>>

More Canadians shopping online August 18, 2005 TORONTO, Aug. 16 /CNW/ - The proportion of Canadian households online has plateaued according to TNS Canadian Facts' continuous tracking study of Canadian Internet usage. Almost the same number of Canadian households are online today (73%) as there were two years ago (72% in 2003). However, e-commerce has increased, with 34% of online Canadians having purchased something in the past year, compared to 29% in 2004.   website >>>

The Underdog of Search August 17, 2005 Alfred Tolle is not the type of man to let sleeping dogs lie. When the former Bertelsmann executive became CEO of Lycos earlier this year, he found a moribund company with shattered morale and no sense of what it wanted to become. Tolle was brought in to kick this dog awake, and he has a plan to take over an underserved but rapidly growing niche in search: He wants Lycos to become the best place to find user-generated content.   website >>>

The Rise Of RSS August 17, 2005 NEW YORK - What's the hottest brand on the Web these days? The orange RSS icon.   website >>>

Pimp My Browser August 17, 2005 HBO miniseries will change open-source browser into a royalty- and license-free advertising palette. Home Box Office, in true open-source style, on Wednesday debuted a new application for the popular Firefox browser.   website >>>

Young Canadians spend more time on the internet than TV: study August 17, 2005 A study released last week by Canadian polling company Ipsos Reid suggests young Canadians are spending more time on the internet than watching TV. The study says Canadians use the internet almost 50% more per week than they did just three years ago.   website >>>

CIRA picks Fuse to market dot-ca August 16, 2005 The Canadian Internet Registration Authority has picked Fuse Marketing Group Inc. to develop new marketing strategy.   more details >>>

Online Shoppers Growing Wary Of Sharing Data August 16, 2005 Spooked by a steady stream of data breaches and reports of identify theft, consumers are increasingly unwilling to share personal information with Web sites, according to survey of nearly 1,000 consumers conducted by personalization software vendor ChoiceStream Inc. Reflecting their conflicted feelings, the findings indicate that while 80% of consumers want personalized online experiences, 63% are concerned that the personal data they provide may not be secure.   website >>>

Newspapers Compete Harder For Online Ads August 16, 2005 Local advertising is the lifeblood of daily print newspapers, but in the online world they haven't been able to compete successfully with Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. for pay-per-click local ads. That may change as Quigo Technologies Inc., which last fall began offering a private-label version of its pay-per-click AdSonar Exchange marketplace, adds to its customer list. The vendor last week said it has signed more than 130 customers to use its technology, which lets newspapers provide a local advertising tool on their Web sites so sellers can manage their ads and bid on local news content that would trigger their pitches to appear.   website >>>

Apple and Google Partnership? August 16, 2005 According to TheStreet.com, Apple and Google may be planning a partnership that would involve Google offering iTunes through their site: There's "speculation of an iTunes launch," says Paul Foster, an options strategist at Theflyonthewall.com. "Google is going to offer iTunes somehow on their platform," according to the rumor, he says. The combination would pair the leading search engine with the leading online music store.   website >>>

Blog world continues rapid growth August 15, 2005 Bloggers are the dream target of Internet advertisers: according to a new study released by ComScore Networks, blog users are richer, younger, and more avid online users than average web surfers.   website >>>

Microsoft to fight crime with spammer's money August 11, 2005 Software giant Microsoft will invest the $7 million it is expecting from a damages settlement with "spam king" Scott Richter into fighting Internet crimes, paying its legal bills and "rewarding" the state of New York.   website >>>

Web search ads to top banners by 2010 - Jupiter August 9, 2005 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Internet search advertising is set to overtake more commonplace online banner advertising by 2010, as online sales double to $18.9 billion, up from $9.3 billion at the end of 2004, JupiterResearch said on Monday.   website >>>

Google Now Accounts For 15% Of U.S. Online Ads August 9, 2005 In a review of the online advertising space, SG Cowen said it remains positive on shares of Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) as the average keyword cost-per-click has decreased 2.2% quarter-to-date.   website >>>

The Internet Continues To Impact Consumers' Usage Of Other Media August 9, 2005 Weekly Online Usage Has Increased 46% To 12.7 Hours Per Week Among Internet-Using Canadians.   website >>>

Bridging the Google Ad Gap August 4, 2005 If you think about it, Google, with its $82 billion market cap, offers just a hint of the potential for online advertising. The average web surfer spends less than 5 percent of his time using a search engine, according to the Online Publishers Association's Internet Activity Index. That means Google earns almost $3 billion a year from people who devote 95 percent of their time on the internet to doing something else.   website >>>

Technology 'optimists' turn off TV -- study August 3, 2005 Broadband Internet surfers in North America watch two fewer hours of television per week than do those without Internet access, while those using a dial-up connection watch 1.5 fewer hours of TV.   website >>>

E-tailing in age of refinement August 2, 2005 When Sears Canada Inc. launched its website nine years ago, it offered a meagre 50 items and sold them only to customers with a Sears credit card. Today, virtual shopping at Sears.ca, one of the most popular e-tailers in Canada, is a radically different experience. It features more than 100,000 items, comparative shopping tools, full-colour photos with detailed product information, infomercials, and a variety of payment options.   website >>>

AskJeeves Launches Google-Style Ad Service August 1, 2005 Moving into territory dominated by Google and Yahoo, AskJeeves.com on Monday introduced its own automated search advertising program. The new Ask Jeeves Sponsored Listings is Ask Jeeves' parent company InterActiveCorp's attempt to capitalize on a growing demand for sponsored links.   website >>>

Firefox Downloads Top 75 million, Mozilla Expands July 28, 2005 As it marked the 75 millionth download of its Firefox browser this week, the Mozilla Foundation said it was expanding, reports CNET. Mozilla staff has quadrupled during the past six months, to 40 employees, and the open-source foundation's email reader, Thunderbird, is approaching its 10 millionth download. Its browser for small devices, Minimo, reached a milestone as a prerelease version appeared with tabs, a bookmark manager and RSS feeds.   website >>>

Web kiosks to show missing kids July 28, 2005 Public Internet kiosks are being used as modern-day milk cartons in an effort to find missing children. SurferQuest, a Philipsburg, Pennsylvania-based supplier of about 1,000 computer kiosks throughout the United States, is donating screen space to disseminate photos and information provided by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.   website >>>

FOLLOW UP: Old Web Material Doesn't Disappear July 27, 2005 Earlier this year, executives at Dell Inc. tried to shut down DellComputersSuck.com, a Web site promoting an obscure brand of computers. Dell's lawyers dispatched a stern letter, and within a few days, the site's owner revamped it into an online discussion group about computers. The old version disappeared from view. The PC giant still wanted to seize the address, a move permitted under rules governing the use of domain names. But Dell had to prove to an arbitration panel it had been used in "bad faith." So Dell's legal team turned to the Wayback Machine, a massive archive of Web pages dating back nine years. There, Dell found copies of the deleted site and was able to prove that its owner, Innervision Web Solutions, had used it to redirect consumers to another Web address selling PCs with names such as ZMachinez and Jetbook. In May, an arbitration panel ordered the domain name be transferred to Dell.   website >>>

Survey: Teens more wired than ever July 27, 2005 A new survey says that the Internet has all but saturated the youth market. The report compiled for the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly nine out of 10 young people, ages 12 through 17, have online access -- up from about three-quarters of young people in 2000.   website >>>

Microsoft introduces compulsory Windows piracy checks July 26, 2005 Microsoft has gone live with its blocking technology that will require people to validate their copies of Windows before being allowed download access to updates. The novelly titled Genuine Advantage 1.0 program will check that anyone accessing Windows Update, Microsoft Update for Windows or the Microsoft Download Center has a genuine Windows operating system before allowing any downloads. Security updates will however be exempt from the ban.   website >>>

The Web cookie is crumbling – and marketers feel the fallout July 21, 2005 Internet cookies used to be a treat for marketers looking for ways to measure advertising response, but lately they've become a lot less tasty.   website >>>

Pay-per-click speculation market soaring July 21, 2005 The number of web sites being opened purely to publish pay-per-click advertising links from the likes of Google Inc and Yahoo Inc is rocketing, according to VeriSign Inc, which runs the .com and .net domain names.   website >>>

Google investors find new project July 20, 2005 Google rainmakers and venture capitalists John Doerr and Ram Shriram, whose early investment in search giant Google paid off in spades, have invested $16 million in Menlo Park, Calif.-based Zazzle, a 2-year-old online marketplace where people can buy and sell artwork in the form of customized gifts, T-shirts, stamps, posters and prints.   website >>>

How much does Google know about you? July 18, 2005 NEW YORK (AP) -- Google is at once a powerful search engine and a growing e-mail provider. It runs a blogging service, makes software to speed Web traffic and has ambitions to become a digital library. And it is developing a payments service. Although many Internet users eagerly await each new technology from Google Inc., its rapid expansion is also prompting concerns that the company may know too much: what you read, where you surf and travel, whom you write.   website >>>

Firefox Continues to Spread July 15, 2005 The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser nibbled off a small market-share portion from Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) in June, continuing a consistent monthly trend this year. Firefox increased its market share to 8.71 percent, up from 8 percent in May, while IE's share shrank to 86.56 percent from 87.23 percent, NetApplications.com, an Aliso Viejo, California, maker of applications for monitoring and measuring Web site usage, said this week in a statement.   website >>>

For television via Internet, future is now July 15, 2005 Six-month pilot project rolled out to about 9,000 Time Warner customers; 'savvy PC users' here reason S.D. was chosen In what is billed as a nationwide first for a cable company, Time Warner Cable is letting its customers in Mira Mesa and Tierrasanta watch television over their home computer's high-speed Internet connection.   website >>>

A record company's best friend July 14, 2005 By ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN A week or so before the Detroit rock duo the White Stripes released their much-awaited recent CD, a few fans in Memphis, Tenn., began streaming the entire album over the Internet. A leak like that would usually draw a menacing letter from somebody's lawyer, but when V2 Records heard about it, the New York label's on-line marketing guy sent the perpetrators a friendly e-mail asking them to hold off for another week.   website >>>

Coalition Publishes Spyware Guide July 14, 2005 Like pornography, spyware has been one of those things that most people can't define but know when they see. No longer. ADVERTISEMENT The Anti-Spyware Coalition, an anti-spyware industry group, on Tuesday published a document that aims to put spyware in its place by defining key terms and behaviors that characterize spyware programs.   website >>>

Keeper of Expired Web Pages Is Sued Because Archive Was Used in Another Suit July 13, 2005 By TOM ZELLER Jr. The Internet Archive, which stores snapshots of ever-changing Web sites, is on the defensive in a legal case that represents a strange turn in the debate over copyrights.   website >>>

Google and the Copyright Act July 13, 2005 The following letter was received in response to Jack Kapica's story Could Googling become illegal? (July 12): Dear editor: As the issue of so-called "educational use of the Internet" will come up soon, this question of different configurations of the Internet must be well documented. What copyright lawyer Howard Knopf noticed in the current Bill C-60 text is just part of the larger attack from the incumbent old-media industry associations and collectives against the Internet and other new media.   website >>>

Blogging + Video = Vlogging July 13, 2005 It was inevitable: Bloggers who previously wrote endlessly about everything from politics to tech tips to how to fry an egg on a hot sidewalk can now take their commentary, advice and random experiments to the next level by filming and broadcasting their work, thanks to the latest web trend -- video blogging.   website >>>

I Want My Streaming Video July 13, 2005 Live and on-demand concerts and comedy shows will be the foundation of a new joint venture for delivering entertainment via the internet, satellite, wireless and other platforms. The joint venture involves America Online, XM Satellite and Anschutz's AEG unit, which owns sports and entertainment arenas and produces concerts and other shows.   website >>>

Could Googling become illegal? July 12, 2005 By JACK KAPICA Could it be possible that Canada will make Google or any other Internet search and archiving engines illegal?   website >>>

ICANN Approves Domain for Mobiles July 12, 2005 ICANN has formally licensed the .mobi domain to mTLD Top Level Domain and the group now has to build the infrastructure to manage it for the next 10 years. Generic titles like travel.mobi and restaurant.mobi will be auctioned off to the highest bidders.   website >>>

Bloggers learn the price of telling too much July 11, 2005 CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Blogs are everywhere -- increasingly, the place where young people go to bare their souls, to vent, to gossip. And often they do so with unabashed fervor and little self-editing, posting their innermost thoughts for any number of Web surfers to see.   website >>>

Blogs And The Influence On News And The Media July 8, 2005 Many On-Line Canadians Believe Blogs Influence Public Opinion (41%), Media (33%), And Politics (29%) –- Among Blog Readers, Majority Believe Blogs Influence Public Opinion (58%), Four In Ten Believe They Influence Mainstream Media (45%), And Politics And Public Policy (41%)   website >>>

2005 Top 100 Sites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without April 6, 2005 The Web is a monument to humanity (feet of clay included). We created it, but it's so vast and deep we can't chart the whole thing. There are wonders 'round every corner—and dangers lurking in unexpected places. It's incredibly useful, fun, informative, quirky, and surprising, and it has, with amazing speed, become an irreplaceable part of our lives. Will PC Magazine ever run out of "undiscovered" sites—the ones we think most of you haven't seen before—to declare the new top 100 of the year? We doubt it. We still have the unenviable task of culling our list to just 100 new and 100 "classic" sites.   website >>>

Canadians Winning The War Against Spam March 10, 2005 Spam Volumes Dropping For The First Time In Four Years, And Attitudes Towards Email As A Communications Tool Are Improving   website >>>