Merchants have long believed that it is crucial to reach consumers early. But it has taken online retailers a long time to get wise to teenagers. Rather than acting as if young people operate online in a manner that is even close to the way adults operate, companies like Macy's, Alloy and others are approaching teenagers in a way that, they hope, reflects the shifting and sometimes contradictory signals of this group.

America Online on Monday said it plans to enable users of its instant messaging service to see when friends and business associates are online, even if they're not on the contact list.

Kanoodle, a search-advertising specialist, wants to help turn blogging into small business. On Monday, the company introduced a self-service system that lets online publishers pair advertising with their RSS feeds. Called BrightAds RSS (after the technology format known as Really Simple Syndication), the service takes advantage of Kanoodle's keyword advertising system to match Web content to relevant ads. Once a publisher signs up, an advertising link will piggyback on its syndicated feed sent to third-party news readers.

Not long ago, the radio industry was enjoying something of a renaissance. Station valuations were high, buyers were everywhere and every radio operator, it seemed, wanted an edgy personality, whether it be Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh. Even advertisers liked the medium. Now, Stern is bolting for satellite, the Federal Communications Commission is cracking down on radio content, and everything from the Internet to iPods is threatening to steal its audience.

The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web's next big thing. That step is planned by Odeo, a five-person start-up that is based in a walk-up apartment in this city's Mission District and was co-founded by a Google alumnus. The company plans to introduce a Web-based system that is aimed at making a business of podcasting - the process of creating, finding, organizing and listening to digital audio files that range from living-room ramblings to BBC newscasts.

Hollywood's major movie studios filed a new round of lawsuits across the United States on Thursday against people who trade illegally copied films and TV shows on the Internet. The civil suits against unnamed "John Doe" defendants seek up to $150,000 per downloaded digital file and come as the U.S. film industry prepares for its annual Oscar telecast in Hollywood where awards for top films and stars are given out.

The Mozilla Foundation released on Thursday an update to the Firefox Web browser to fix several vulnerabilities, including one that would allow domain spoofing.

When Andy Rooney starts to complain about advertising being too ubiquitous, as he did on last Sunday's "60 Minutes," then it's time to consider the observation and its rationale. Advertising wouldn't be noticeably ubiquitous unless one of two things were at play. One, it works so well that people can't find enough outlets on which to advertise. Or, the other possibility, it's not working well at all and these are desperate times. I pick the latter, otherwise what I'm about to explain would not go so unnoticed or ignored. It's hard to say how immune or numb people have become …

More than 80% of Fortune 100 companies don't have Spanish-language Web sites, and even the other 19% often fail to offer really useful Spanish-language navigation and content online, according to a recent survey by Forrester Research.

The Internet Advertising Bureau, a supposedly non-profit organization (that is run like a for-profit company) filed a legal action the other day against MediaPost.com. The fellow who runs the IAB has had dealings with Jupitermedia over the years and all of those dealings came close to several legal actions.