Blockbuster Inc., the largest U.S. video rental chain, on Wednesday cut the subscription price for its online rental service in the latest salvo of a battle for online rental customers.

IAC/InterActiveCorp., saying its growth is being hindered by the perception that it is strictly a travel company, on Tuesday said it plans to split itself in two by spinning off online travel service Expedia.com and related businesses into a company to be called Expedia.

The nation's first federal law regulating spam, called the Can-Spam Act, took effect Jan. 1, 2004, and set off a string of lawsuits and new state regulations criminalizing unsolicited bulk e-mail. The year also marked the 10th anniversary of the first spam message, in what continues to be a serious threat to the efficacy of e-mail.

Chris Gorog is convinced people won't continue to pay $1 a song for online music. That is despite Apple's record string of recent achievements, including 200 million songs sold at its iTunes Music Store, and nearly 4 million iPod digital music players moved into consumers' homes this year.

Gmail. Some people love it, some people love to hate it. No matter which camp you're in, I think it's pretty obvious that Gmail has changed the way we look at web-mail. Gmail has done a lot to radically change the whole web-mail world. Their user interface is amazing. Better than every web-mail system I've seen, and even better than many local MUAs. However, in todays Internet, any e-mail solution is only as good as it's anti-spam technology. I've been testing that out and found some curious results.

On a trip on the Tokyo subway last year, almost everyone ignored the young man talking on one wireless phone, messaging with another and juggling a third. Such cell phone overload would almost certainly get noticed in the United States, which lags the rest of the developed world in wireless use.

The Washington Post Co. said on Tuesday it would buy Microsoft Corp.'s online magazine Slate.

A Rice University computer scientist and two of his students have discovered a potentially serious security flaw in the desktop search tool for personal computers that was recently distributed by Google.

A federal judge has awarded an Internet service provider more than $1 billion in what is believed to be the largest judgment ever against spammers.

The mythical mobile phone iPod may be a creature far from legend - Apple and Motorola "could soon show us" their co-developed solution. A report on Forbes cites Apple vice president of applications Eddy Cue, who says: "We've said we have something coming on this in the first half of 2005 and we're definitely on schedule for that. Hopefully you'll be able to see more about it soon."