Yahoo expanded its FareChase beta travel search program yesterday to include hotels search, enhancing revenue opportunities when the program launches. Hotel bookings are potentially a more profitable area of the online travel market, Internet analysts say, as the airline search market has grown increasingly crowded and competitive with major players Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Priceline, the airlines themselves and a host of other sites.

The patent-infringement suit filed by Yahoo!'s Overture against FindWhat.com is heading for trial later this month, after surviving the latter firm's efforts to have the case dismissed. A decision in the case could settle once and for all the issue of who owns the bid-for-placement technology that has fueled the paid search advertising boom.

Over the last few years, many book authors have discovered that they can increase awareness of themselves and their works by maintaining an online presence, often in the form of a blog. But until recently, the opportunity for using the web's multimedia capabilities for book promotion has been limited.

The home-brewed audio programs known as "Podcasts" are catching on with people who own iPods or other digital-music players, according to a survey released on Sunday. Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults who own MP3 players like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod say they have downloaded podcast programs from the Internet, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found.

If last year was the rebirth of online advertising, 2005 is the year of big-pipe dreams. Up until six months ago, broadband was still regarded as a workplace phenomenon, but by February, according to online measurement service Nielsen/NetRatings, more than 56% of Internet users in the U.S. had tapped into broadband cables at home, turning the Web into a whatever, whenever consumer experience -- like a TV that the user can program.

Friday's announcement that Google was doubling the storage capacity of its free email service to a full two gigs deserves some elaboration. I explained how this move was a clever way to trip up the marketing efforts of rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft as they look to upgrade their free email users to more lucrative premium offerings. But it's even bigger than that.

Viacom's CBS has reorganized all of its Web and digital properties under a single, newly created division. It has hired MarketWatch founder Larry Kramer to head the unit. The division, called CBS Digital Media, will unify both programming and ad sales for CBS.com, CBS SportsLine.com, CBSNews.com, and UPN.com. Kramer will work closely with JoAnn Ross, president of CBS Network Sales, to bring together existing ad sales operations. He'll also work with the presidents of the television, sports, and news groups, who will continue to be involved in program development.

Google Inc., which took the first shot in the free e-mail storage battle with the release of its Gmail product last year, said on Thursday it is doubling free storage to 2 gigabytes shortly after Yahoo Inc. matched its original offer.

Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said it was filing 117 lawsuits against unknown Internet site operators it charged were engaged in "phishing" schemes to obtain personal and financial information from unsuspecting consumers. Often scam artists pose as banks or other legitimate businesses, sending out millions of e-mails or pop-up Web advertisements with requests that the recipient update their account information but instead direct them to fake sites.

A week after the Federal Election Commission proposed rules on how the internet should be covered by campaign-finance laws, one thing seems clear: The growing ranks of political bloggers are watching developments closely. "The real question is where do we go from here," said Mike Krempasky, co-founder of conservative blog RedState.org. "There's not a real understanding of how politics and the internet works at the Federal Election Commission."