The company that grew out of business.com -- a search engine used by businesses to find products and services -- is now on the auction block, and could fetch anywhere between $300 million and $400 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

Closely held business.com is expected to attract a host of interest from the likes of media companies such as Dow Jones & Co. and New York Times Co., these people said. Requests for comment from Business.com and the New York Times were not returned yesterday evening. Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment.

Business.com does the kind of things publishers are trying to do more of: Drive readers to spend money with merchants who will pay a bounty for the traffic.

Their interest shows how, well into the Internet age, media companies are still eager for properties that can deliver online revenue and growth. Business.com, Santa Monica, Calif., has 2007 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $15 million, the people familiar with the matter said, with its online traffic growing by 50% in the first quarter of 2007, compared with the year earlier.

For IT professionals, Clark must have one of the most enviable jobs in the world. After all, after spending several years at enterprise software maker Autodesk, he now oversees a 10,000-square-foot data center--Clark said that might equate to the size of a Google data center, or one run by a financial institution, though those types of organizations would operate more of them--that houses the computing guts of the Lucasfilm empire, the corporate umbrella for Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasarts, Lucasfilm itself and StarWars.com.

The data center, which is housed on a lower level of the Letterman Digital Arts Center where Lucasfilm is headquartered, opened its doors in 2005 as Lucas was moving much of that empire to San Francisco's Presidio, a former army base in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge, from its previous home across the bay in San Rafael.

And while a major data center move for any company would be disruptive, Clark and his team had to find a way to minimize the impact on the many major motion pictures, video game projects and other initiatives it was involved in at the time.

"If the systems go down here in corporate, you might not have your e-mail for a couple hours," said Greg Grusby, ILM's technical publicist. "If the systems go down in this data center, you lose $50 million."

In fact, Clark said, the data center "far exceeds" the computing power of any other production house in the world.

Though it debuted only five months ago, YouTube.com attracts 6 million visitors each day to watch two-minute video clips that amount to the Internet's version of "America's Funniest Home Videos" meets "American Idol." Every day, users stock the site with 35,000 homemade videos of lip-syncing, dancing, silly animation and commentaries on any topic, all of which are commented on and rated by viewers.

Fast Internet connections and digital video cameras are giving average people a new avenue to fame. With other homegrown phenomena such as Web logs, or blogs, and radio-style podcasts, the Internet is changing people's relationships to the media and putting more power into the hands of consumers.

Big corporations want in on the action, and giants such as Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., AOL LLC and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN have launched video sites of their own. But YouTube's do-it-yourself popularity, fueled by word of mouth, catapulted the site past its bigger competitors in months. That success is drawing the attention of mainstream media.

"Marketers are already interested in looking at how to invest in it," said Lucian James, president of Agenda Inc., a brand marketing firm. "It comes at a perfect time when brands are looking beyond the 30-second commercial and are looking for new ways to connect to their audience."

The number of Danish websites alone - those carrying a ".dk" suffix -- knocked offline in the past week numbered 578 between 30 January and 6 February, according to Zone-H.org, a cyber-crime observatory that tracks website defacements. Hundreds more websites of European, Israeli and American companies and private citizens have also been defaced during that period, with the vast majority occurring after the re-publication last week of the cartoons in European newspapers.

"The number is nearly doubling every day," said Roberto Preatoni, the founder of Zone-H.org. A team of Zone-H technicians collect and verify reports of sabotaged Web sites from both victims and hackers. The number of attacked Web servers has been at record levels since the controversy reignited last week, Preatoni said.

"This is the largest ever attack directed against a single country, bigger than the Intifada, the Chinese-U.S. spy plane incident, and even the war in Iraq."

The web-based reality series will run across several sites on the AOL network, including AOL.com, AIM.com, Moviefone.com, and MapQuest.com. Challengers will be able to hunt for clues across the sites and look for hidden treasure buried across the United States.

The clues and the online reality show will also be promoted on television, print, and cell phones. Mr. Burnett said he was amazed by the number of fans who communicated online about his TV series.

He believes that with more people able to watch content on their computers during the daytime, the hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. could become the equivalent of the next prime time on the TV programming schedule.

Gold Rush! will begin with 13 trucks containing solid gold, burying 13 caches of lucre around the United States, according to Mr. Burnett in an interview Tuesday. Clues regarding the whereabouts of those caches will be embedded online through the AOL web sites and other media.

Sling Media's first product, the Slingbox, is a consumer electronics device that turns existing cable and satellite TV feeds into packets and then sends them across the Internet. Slingbox allows consumers to select regular TV programming they see at home and see it on any Internet-connected Windows-based laptop, smart phone or PDA.

The product is popular among business travelers, who, for example, can watch their hometown sports team while on the road. The device costs about $250, and there is no ongoing subscription fee to use the service. Slingbox is already sold in more than 3,000 retail locations.

I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable. There was more:

"John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."

At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com.

I had heard for weeks from teachers, journalists and historians about "the wonderful world of Wikipedia," where millions of people worldwide visit daily for quick reference "facts," composed and posted by people with no special expertise or knowledge — and sometimes by people with malice.

At my request, executives of the three websites now have removed the false content about me. But they don't know, and can't find out, who wrote the toxic sentences.

I think this is by far the most exciting announcement since I started! Today, we announced that TiVo intends to support iPod and Sony PSP as new portables in our service update first quarter of next year. This means that you will be able to use the TiVoToGo feature to transfer shows from your TiVo box to a PC connected to your home network. Then you can choose to have the transferred shows prepared for synch to your iPod automatically once the transfer is complete.

I don't currently have the new video iPod—they came out with it one week after I bought my first iPod—the Nano. Which. I. Love. But I might just have to run out and buy the new one so it can cross-pollinate with my TiVo box!

The New York Times Co. said Wednesday it had signed up about 135,000 paying subscribers to its new online service that offers access to Op-Ed columns and other premium content.

The new service, TimesSelect, launched Sept. 19, and is free to home delivery subscribers. Non-subscribers can get access to the service for $49.95 a year or $7.95 every month.

Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. Although revolutionary in concept, electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronics to create this new material. The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.

"Electronic paper" is a display technology that makes possible flexible or even rollable displays which, unlike current computer screens, can be read in bright sunlight.

But, much like when LCD displays came to the market, consumers are first likely to see the technology in clocks and watches. The popular example of an electronic newspaper that automatically updates itself wirelessly is still years away.

A number of companies are currently working on such displays -- LG.Philips LCD and Massachusetts-based E Ink announced last month that they have developed a prototype 10-inch display, and Fujitsu showed a color display in July.

And actually, I think podcasting or whatever it morphs into over the next two or three years is here to stay and will remain popular. What was interesting about podcasting was that, while everyone was waiting for digital video for so many years, kind of like waiting for Godot, podcasting arrived. And it tapped this latent demand for being able to hear what you wanted when you wanted it. It unleased all these indie voices and encouraged the traditional media companies to let their content go mobile.

Like the record labels, television stations are now lamenting the iPod, and are worried about lost revenues, reports the Wall Street Journal. Shouldn't they be worrying about lost audiences, thanks to bad programing, instead of blaming the technology. I agree with Mark Cuban when he says, "Bob Iger has saved Network TV ... By completely changing the economic model." This is the new economic model that takes into account that most consumption patterns are changing, and media like everything has to fit our supremely busy lives.

News Corp. said the new deals, along with its existing sites, would increase its total Web traffic to 70 million unique monthly users.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter. In July, IGN filed for a U.S. initial public offering of as much as $200 million in common shares.

The targeted "virtual reality" television would allow people to view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, in addition to being able to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor.

"Can you imagine hovering over your TV to watch Japan versus Brazil in the finals of the World Cup as if you are really there?" asked Yoshiaki Takeuchi, director of research and development at Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

While companies, universities and research institutes around the world have made some progress reproducing 3D images suitable for TV, developing the technologies to create the sensations of touch and smell could prove the most challenging, Takeuchi said.

Researchers are looking into ultrasound, electric stimulation and wind pressure as potential technologies for touch.

The magazine will feature articles on shopping for electronics, how to set them up at home, Q&A articles with experts, polls, and editors' picks on key products.

TiVo has struck a deal with the Independent Film Channel to transmit several of the cable channel's shows through a broadband connection as part of a trial program. Participating customers will begin receiving the shows next week, said TiVo spokesman Elliot Sloane.

Sloan confirmed that TiVo sent messages to its customers - later posted on the technology Web log Engadget.com - offering to transmit three IFC shows beginning Aug. 19, before they aired on the cable channel.

An extraordinary statement by the US government has sent shockwaves around the internet world and thrown the future of the network into doubt.

In a worrying U-turn, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) has made it clear it intends to retain control of the internet's root servers indefinitely. It was due to relinquish that control in September 2006, when its contract with overseeing body ICANN ended.

The decision - something that people have long feared may happen - will not only make large parts of the world furious but also puts ICANN in a very difficult position. The organisation has slowly been expanding out of its California base in an effort to become an international body with overall responsibility for the internet.

The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.

Since more and more people are using the Internet, there are more and more diverse views about the policies and control. This is clearly making consensus more difficult and ICANN is one of the groups which is having to adapt to the increasing number of inputs in the consensus process. This is all the more reason to work harder to keep everything together. Please. Lets fight to keep the Internet and not let it turn into the internets... It is a difficult process with various flaws, but if we give up, it will be very difficult if not impossible for all of to talk again very soon.

Internet file-sharing services will be held responsible if they intend for their customers to use software primarily to swap songs and movies illegally, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting warnings that the lawsuits will stunt growth of cool tech gadgets such as the next iPod.

The unanimous decision sends the case back to lower court, which had ruled in favor of file-sharing services Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. on the grounds that the companies couldn't be sued. The justices said there was enough evidence of unlawful intent for the case to go to trial.

ComScore Networks' global visitor numbers tell the story. In 2002, WSJ.com was averaging around 1 million unique visitors a month, FT.com 1.3 million, Fortune.com 1.7 million and Forbes.com, 1.7 million. Three years on and WSJ.com is averaging around 3.3 million unique visitors; FT.com, which gated much of its content in mid-2002, is around 1.8 million; Fortune.com, which allows viewers to see a little free content before shuttling them to a subs sign-up form, averages 1.3 million. And Forbes.com? It’s at about 7.8 million.

Time Warner (TWX ) has decided that it's go-for-broke time at AOL, as the beleaguered online division launches a last-ditch gamble for survival. To generate growth even as its Internet service loses subscribers, the online company is launching one of the most radical strategic shifts in years -- throwing open its content for free in a bid to cash in on a gusher of online-ad revenues.

The refurbished aol.com is taking a different approach than the other big portals, such as Yahoo! (YHOO ) and Microsoft's (MSFT ) MSN, which hit their stride before broadband usage took off. AOL's site, to launch in July, will put streaming video and audio content front and center -- including exclusive live concerts, celebrity interviews, and film shorts.

America Online, with 28 million members, has assigned a full-time employee to handle next-of-kin requests. Before releasing account information, the company requires a copy of the death certificate and documentation proving the person requesting the e-mail information is the legal beneficiary or the estate representative, said America Online spokesman Nicholas Graham.

MSN Hotmail will provide account contents on CDs or floppy disks to relatives of deceased members after it verifies the legitimacy of the request, said Brooke Richardson, MSN lead product manager, in a statement. ``We have tried to institute a policy that is very focused on privacy, but at the same time honors the requests of bereaved family members.''

After Lance Cpl. Justin Ellsworth of Michigan was killed Nov. 13 while inspecting a bomb in Iraq, his father, John Ellsworth, wanted access to his son's Yahoo email account. But Yahoo, whose policy is to terminate email accounts upon a user's death, would not give him the material until a probate judge ordered the Sunnyvale company to do so.

Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco non-profit that often gets involved in digital-privacy issues, said it's difficult to find the right balance between personal privacy and a family's desire to get all of a loved one's possessions.

``We are sympathetic to the pain families go through,'' he said. ``On the other hand, there are a lot of things people want to keep private from their close relatives. You need to have some way to do that.''

"As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run," he said in an interview published in Thursday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

"You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface -- like the iPod today -- and then lost its position," Gates said.

snip...

"If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I'd bet on the mobile phone for sure," Gates told the newspaper.

Yahoo gave no indication how long it would keep its initial pricing of its Music Unlimited service, which is 6.99 dollars a month or 4.99 dollars for those who buy a one-year subscription.

Additionally, Yahoo will be offering consumers permanent downloads at 79 to 99 cents a song, cutting into the turf of Apple's iTunes service, but also others including RealNetworks and Napster.

a new "show video full screen" button that lets you easily watch full-screen movies that have been organized in your iTunes Library, as well as options to view movies in a separate smaller window, or within the main iTunes pane.

They were totally hush hush about this update, so it's got to mean all the pieces of the puzzle aren't quite together yet. Apple quietly rolled out iTunes version 4.8, which includes playback support for QuickTime video content. So what does it all mean? Video iPod? iTunes Movie Store? Just plain tease? What do you think?

Currently, Google's news search returns results based on how recently a story was posted online and how closely the story appears to align with the keywords in related stories. However, the search giant has filed for a patent on an improvement that seeks to filter stories by certain measures of quality as well.

Critics are already noting that the approach might be flawed or at least misleading. Short of having news stories read by experts who could rank them based on quality, the technology will instead rely on pre-determined factors such as the reputation of a news site, how much Web traffic it generates and how old and large the organization that produced the story is in terms of news bureaus and employees.

It's one matter when the search engine caches a page you can't get anymore; that's a copyright violation but an all-in-all benign one in the sense that it's only giving you content you could not otherwise see (no different from, say, the web archive).

But it's quite another matter for Google to get in the way of serving current content. This means that the page is served from Google rather than from a publisher's server, which means that the publisher cannot count the traffic and serve targeted and dynamic advertising.

It also means that Google is copying content on its servers and serving it from there and thus is violating copyright.

And it means that Google is in a position to snoop on data on consumers' usage of sites that Google does not own: That is, Google will know what the consumers on my site are doing better than I will for these "accelerated" pages.

Even Google, the Web's self-proclaimed "Do no evil" company, is experimenting with a technology called AutoLink that inserts button-shape links on other people's Web sites that lead back to Google or to Google partners like Amazon.com. Google says it is still only experimenting with AutoLink but, ominously, adds that it is exploring ways to increase the technology's scope. If that happens, predicts New York intellectual property lawyer Jeffrey Neuburger, "There will be some litigation."