The flow of data on the state of Internet Advertising continues to be encouraging. In recent weeks, enough positive information has come to the surface that it might finally be time to think less about the rising tide lifting all boats, and more about seeing the cream rise to the top.

Remember the McDonald's "French fry" shaped like Abraham Lincoln -- the prop for those humorous ads the restaurant chain ran recently? Well, it sold for $75,100 -- and that's no joke. An Internet casino, GoldenPalace.com, said it had secured the winning bid for the fry -- which is not real but was a prop used in a McDonald's ad -- and plans to take it on a nationwide tour along with the "Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich" the company bought on eBay last November for $28,000.

Over the past eight months, bloggers have covered two political conventions; claimed credit for forcing the resignations of two prominent journalists (former CBS news anchor Dan Rather, ex-CNN news chief Jordan Eason); outed a conservative faker with a taste for gay porn credentialed to cover the White House; and risen from relative obscurity to media darling. They've done this while attracting impressive levels of web traffic (and advertising dollars) and conjuring up a cottage industry and community devoted largely to, well, themselves.

aQuantive, buoyed by an upbeat online ad market and its acquisition of SBI.Razorfish last summer, reported a 74 percent rise in profit for the fourth quarter, posting growth in all three of the company's divisions.

A new crop of tools aims to help turn the Web -- be it on the public Internet or a company network -- into much more than a collection of documents one visits like a museum: Look, but don't touch.

Britain has emerged as the world's biggest market for downloading pirated TV, driven by tech-savvy fans who are unwilling to wait for popular U.S. shows such as "Desperate Housewives." Britain's status as a TV downloading hotspot, revealed in a study by UK technology consultancy Envisional on Thursday, could pose problems for UK broadcaster BSkyB, which is counting on high-profile U.S. shows such as "24" to draw new subscribers to its satellite TV service.

It's like the old Napster all over again: all the music you want for free, as long as you're willing to get a little geeky. Blogs were buzzing Tuesday about the resurgence of an old technique for recording music on a computer, reapplied to Napster's all-you-can-eat subscription music plan. Using software freely available from America Online's Winamp division, it's possible to turn Napster's copy-protected downloads into unprotected files that can be burned by the hundreds or even thousands freely to CDs.

Hallmark Cards, one of the world's best-known makers of greetings cards, apologized to its clients on Wednesday for problems they experienced trying to access its Web site on Valentine's Day. An army of love-struck Internet users seeking to pick up or send Hallmark electronic cards on Feb. 14 was turned away from the company's site, which was off-line for a large part of the day.

The freewheeling days of Internet political advertising may be coming to an end. The Federal Election Commission plans to begin reviewing next month whether the Internet should continue to enjoy its privileged status as exempt from some of the stricter dictates of a 2002 campaign finance law.

Online ad sales representation firm Gorilla Nation Media (GNM) landed an exclusive deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) to handle media sales across all its labels, beginning with Def Jam and Island Records. All online ads for UMG's labels and their associated artist sites will be sold, served, and tracked by GNM. The company signs only exclusive representation agreements with vertically focused niche properties in various entertainment categories.