Microsoft is expected to launch a branded video game on AvantGo's mobile platform tomorrow. The effort will promote the company's Office 2003 suite. The trivia-based advergame is part of a year-long marketing relationship Microsoft struck with iAnywhere Solutions, which owns AvantGo.

Amazon.com Inc has approached online DVD rental service companies, including Blockbuster Inc and Netflix Inc., to explore a partnership rather than launching its own U.S. DVD rental service, an industry source said on Thursday.

The head of The Wall Street Journal's empire, Peter Kann, could be sweating over his job, again. Earnings plunged by 54 percent at the newspaper's parent Dow Jones & Co., with its fledgling online operations earning more money for the first time than the flagship Journal and the weekly Barron's.

Web logs -- or blogs, for short -- started out as a way for people to express personal views. Now blogs are moving beyond personal musings and taking on a new role: corporate communications. A growing number of businesses are using the blog format to promote products, interact with customers and shareholders, conduct market research and distribute company announcements.

America Online may face a hard sell with its AOL Enterprise Federation Partner program, a new effort unveiled Thursday that's designed to link IM users at work.

Last week, many netizens cheered when Jeremy Jaynes, the eighth-ranked spammer in the world, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Jaynes, who also went by the name Gaven Stubberfield, was famous for pushing "zoo" porn and operating various spam scams. He fired off millions of e-mail messages, clogging ISP servers and inboxes with various come-ons while amassing a fortune estimated at about $24 million. But that's not why he's going to jail. A Loudoun County, Virginia, jury found him guilty of three counts of forging e-mail headers.

Internet users consumed more bandwidth than ever last year, driven by the growing popularity of peer-to-peer networks and heightened demand for video files. Burgeoning demand also prompted internet carriers to upgrade their network capacity to handle the upswing in traffic, a new report indicates.

In the hands of a preteenager, a cellphone can be a double-edged sword. It can give parents a sense of security because the child is never out of reach. But it can also cause anxiety because they do not know what else the child is doing with it - burning up the family's minutes, perhaps.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch urged newspaper editors to grab on to the digital revolution, stop fearing or ignoring the power of the Web, and do more to serve the young news consumers -- or "digital natives," as he called them -- who are more and more going to the Internet for information.

Kia Motors America has crafted a multimedia deal with ESPN that draws on ESPN.com, uses an online sweepstakes, and employs the media company's offline assets to drive traffic to the interactive elements. The campaign, to promote the Spectra5 hatchback, is an example of the multimedia "surround sound" campaigns that some industry experts expect to flourish as media becomes more fragmented. Spending wasn't disclosed.