Music Choice and Sprint are launching a music service that allows mobile phone users to view short videoclips and listen to radio-like programming on their handsets.

As Yahoo! works to expand usership and distribution of its mobile content, the portal is also courting advertisers. So far, the company has run three campaigns on its WAP portal over the last several months, in an effort to promote its sponsors and its data services.

eBay announced late Thursday that it had agreed to acquire the apartment rental service Rent.com for $415 million, the latest move in its expansion beyond Internet auctions.

One year to the day after the original CAN-SPAM bill was signed into law, the Federal Trade Commission issued final regulations specifying what constitutes an e-mail with "commercial primary purpose". The ruling closely follows the text of the proposal released on August 13, with important new specifics that seek to dispel the ambiguity around determining the primary purpose of dual-use messages, said Catherine Harrington-McBride, staff attorney for the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.

Charities looking to fill their stockings this year over the Internet are encountering a new generation of donors promising to change the face of philanthropy.

America Online Inc.'s settlement with the Justice Department imposes a strict new set of controls on the company, including requirements that the Internet giant hire a corporate monitor and disclose serious wrongdoing discovered internally to the government.

As the Federal Trade Commission's two-day workshop exploring peer-to-peer technology ended Thursday, both sides in the debate expressed a willingness to work together but found little common ground. The FTC is collecting preliminary information on P2P technology and software, which detractors claim often mislead consumers by giving them the impression that they can legally download copyright works without permission.

Advertisers participating in Google's contextual advertising network have seen a 50 percent increase in their return on investment in the past year, the company said yesterday. The Mountain View, CA, search giant conducted a study with Atlas DMT that examined conversion data culled from Google's free conversion tool for advertisers and those using Atlas to track conversions.

This time of year, columnists tend to put on their prognostication caps and tell readers what they think will happen next year. Or in "year in review" columns they remind you what already happened, often packaged as Best of the Best or Worst of the Worst lists. For this column, however, I want to relate five things I hope will happen next year in online media.

ESPN and Footlocker.com teamed up to create a direct marketing brand, ESPN Shop, consisting of a catalog and Web site, the partners announced this week. The first issue of the catalog, which mailed Dec. 14, and the Web site, espnshop.com, offer various ESPN-brand and non-branded athletic footwear, apparel and equipment. The Web site also can be accessed through ESPN.com.