Call it the kitty's third life. Roxio bought the Napster brand name and feline logo at a bankruptcy auction two years ago and with the acquisition of another music service, Pressplay, relaunched the once-renegade file-swapping pioneer as a legal music service last October.

Karsten M. Self, who oversees a children's computer lab at a youth center in Napa, Calif., spends about a half-hour each morning electronically scanning 10 PC's. He is searching for files and traces of code that threaten to hijack the computers by silently monitoring the children's online activities or by plastering their screens with dizzying - and nearly unstoppable - onslaughts of pop-up advertisements.

Generic mouthwashes claim to be just as good as Listerine, and store-brand paper towels invite consumers to compare them to Bounty. This kind of marketing doesn't raise many eyebrows. But what if an online radio station says it's just "like" New York City's Z100 or L.A.'s KROQ, and manages to sound pretty much the same?

Communications agency Naked has poached Brad Fairhead, the managing partner of WPP digital agency Outrider and his deputy Tom Johnson to create a new partnership project including creative agency Fallon.

Add America Online Inc. to the growing list of companies and organizations shunning a spam-fighting proposal from Microsoft Corp. AOL cited "tepid support" for Microsoft's so-called Sender ID technology, which seeks to cut down on junk e-mail by making it difficult for spammers to forge e-mail headers and addresses, a common technique for hiding their origins.

The Federal Trade Commission will hold an e-mail authentication summit Nov. 9-10 in Washington, the agency said.

For most of the millions of people around the world who regularly use instant messaging, the communications tool has largely been a text-only experience in which typed emoticons offer only minimal clues to someone's state of mind.

AOL has withdrawn its support for Microsoft's controversial Sender ID technology and is falling back on Sender Policy Framework (SPF).

Back to school for many kids means "back to Internet access" in classes where the best of filtering software is not foolproof, particularly against seemingly harmless Web sites used for invasive marketing.

When Miles O'Brien, a CNN anchor, wanted to know the facts behind an anti-John Kerry ad attacking the presidential candidate's congressional testimony on the Vietnam War more than 30 years ago, he turned to an unconventional source: FactCheck.org.