Mastery of other forms of Internet advertising isn't enough to ensure success with Adwords.

Shawn Fanning, once reviled by record labels as the creator of renegade song- swap service Napster, on Thursday launched a new service designed to turn the threat of still popular peer-to-peer services into an opportunity for music companies and artists.

Digital archivists aren't giving up on their efforts to free out-of-print books, movies and music from overreaching copyright laws, despite a recent setback in court.

Microsoft's MSN has introduced a beta version of its new blogging tool, MSN Spaces, which it expects will eventually be supported by advertising. It's available in 14 languages and 26 markets worldwide. The tool competes directly with Google's Blogger and AOL's Journals, and less closely with Yahoo!'s GeoCities and Yahoo! Photos offerings. The Redmond software giant also declared its intentions to compete with Yahoo! in the RSS aggregation space, saying MSN's feed aggregator was coming soon. Yahoo!'s RSS aggregator launched in September.

In another consolidation in the hot-again business of Internet advertising, a Web video specialist called Viewpoint has agreed to buy Unicast Communications, which delivers ads to Web sites for marketers, for about $7.4 million.

Online job postings grew to their highest level in over a year in November with more workers needed to support retail orders for the holiday shopping season, said a survey published Thursday.

Overriding severe objections from Sharman Networks, an Australian judge allowed an antipiracy company to testify at the trial against the owners of the peer-to-peer software Kazaa.

A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year's presidential campaign tops U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's list of the 10 words of the year. Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks," was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

Three California cities topped the rankings of the most wired shopping cities in the United States, while New York slipped from eighth place to No. 10. San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego were first, second and third on the list compiled by America Online Inc. in its third annual online shopping cities survey. Findings were based on a composite ranking of the number of times respondents research and buy online monthly.

Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN sports television network is launching its own brand of mobile phone service in a deal with Sprint Corp. intended to lure new users with sports news sent over a next-generation network, the companies said on Wednesday. Sprint would effectively rent out space on its network to ESPN, which would become a pioneer among U.S. media companies aiming to take their wares to the smallest screen.