There is no question that IM is entrenched in the enterprise. More than 90 percent of businesses report IM activity, according to Osterman Research. A main reason, as we discovered in "Getting serious about enterprise IM," is the improved productivity and reduced communications costs that IM delivers. What should concern CIOs is that unsanctioned consumer IM networks -- such as those from America Online, ICQ, Microsoft, and Yahoo -- make up 80 percent of corporate IM use today, and the number of users of these unsecured IM networks is growing at a fast clip, according to The Radicati Group.

While the title of the punk band Dead Kennedys 1987 album, "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death" may be a little extreme, people today have gotten pretty bellicose in their demands for service. And one of the areas in which we are most thwarted is in our desire to use the Internet while traveling on planes. Oh sure, we can surf in the airports, but once we set foot in the cabin, the laptops go off and our In Boxes lie fallow.

The Justice Department has made 150 arrests and filed 117 criminal complaints and indictments in a roundup of online fraud, spam and cybercrime cases, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday.

Security experts downplayed media reports that an "electronic jihad" aimed at Israeli Web sites will start Thursday.

Celebrity impostors no longer need plastic surgery to be like the stars they covet--not when they have blogs.

In a study released this week, mobile marketing solutions provider Enpocket examines mobile phone use in the US, including a comparison of mobile phone penetration among a number of demographic groups. Its findings are based on 1,000 telephone interviews conducted by NOP World in late July 2004. Overall, 61% of the country uses a mobile phone. But by breaking the population down into gender, age and income groups, Enpocket finds that penetration percentages vary greatly.

Movie director Spike Lee has won his cybersquatting case against a Philippines-based operator who misused the domain name, spikelee.com, to redirect surfers to a pornographic Web site, arbitrators ruled Friday.

Options on Google Inc. this year's hottest new stock, will debut on U.S. options exchanges on Friday under a new streamlined listing procedure.

The Justice Department is expected to announce today a series of arrests in spam cases, including the first legal actions to arise from the Direct Marketing Association-financed Operation Slam Spam initiative.

Really Simple Syndication is starting to attract some real money. This is especially true after Technorati -- one of the leading blog and Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, tracking services -- acknowledged Monday it recently closed a multimillion-dollar round of venture capital funding. While Technorati's haul is in and of itself impressive, it's the expected ripple effect on other RSS technology developers that has some in the industry excited.