Create a useful technology, and it's only a matter of time before advertising worms into its heart. Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, is inviolate space no more. A new pilot program from FeedBurner embeds ads in the feeds of a number of the company's content-publishing partners. And while some RSS users are screaming bloody murder, they're likely going to have to get used to the inevitable.

Google has unveiled a search tool for the discovery of academic literature. Called Google Scholar, the new search platform lets searchers query academic publications of many stripes for peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts, technical reports and other documents.

Yahoo and SBC Communications are expected to announce on Thursday that they will extend their three-year relationship and develop online services that will reach televisions, cell phones and home broadband networks.

Clear Channel Radio has announced intentions to create the most compelling online entertainment experience for those visiting music sites. The initiative will complement existing Internet radio broadcasts from the company's local stations. Leading the effort will be Evan Harrison, formerly vice president and general manager of AOL Music and the AOL Radio Network.

Yahoo has announced it hired WPP Group's OgilvyOne to handle its interactive marketing and that the agency will soon open an office in San Francisco. OgilvyOne has hired Mark Yesayian as the office's managing director, according to the agency, which has an office in Los Angeles but not in San Francisco. Yahoo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., in Silicon Valley near San Francisco.

Shopping.com introduced the Cash Back program ahead of the holidays to reward consumers when they buy through the comparison-shopping service at participating merchants. The promotion comes in the same week BizRate.com Inc. changed its corporate name to Shopzilla Inc. and debuted a new Shopzilla.com shopping service as a bigger sibling to BizRate.com.

Shares of Google Inc. fell nearly 7 percent on Tuesday, as selling restrictions were lifted on 39 million shares held by employees and early investors in the newly public Web search company.

Yahoo Inc. late on Tuesday launched Personals Premier, a premium online dating service aimed at attracting serious relationship seekers with deeper pockets. The move challenges eHarmony, a popular online dating site that picks potential "soul mates" for its subscribers based on results from a lengthy personality test.

As many as 18 million Hotmail subscribers will be weaned from a free service that lets them export email to another mail client, under Microsoft MSN's new spam-fighting plan.

One thing that many people agree on is that government bureaucracies are usually very slow to adopt new innovations. So when the little-known National Agricultural Statistics Service last week began offering RSS feeds of some of its news, it was the latest sign that the technology, which allows anyone to subscribe and automatically receive dynamic content on their computers, has hit the mainstream.