The man who packaged the Internet to the masses is trying his hand at television, but for a more discriminating audience. In April, America Online co-founder Steve Case rose from the ashes of his company's ill-fated merger with Time Warner by declaring his intent to build a new empire based in the health care industry. His private holding company, Revolution, has been on a buying binge funded in part by $500 million of his own fortune. Among the companies acquired was Wisdom Media Group, a small, family-run cable venture based in Bluefield, W.Va., not too far from AOL's Dulles, Va., …

Sony is joining 20th Century Fox in a new broadband experiment aimed at promoting movies with full-screen, near-DVD-quality video viewed straight off a viewer's hard drive. Executives at Fox say the technique has helped drive interest in their films, including "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

Google acquired a competing Brazilian search engine last week. Akwan Information Technologies, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, operated search site todobr.com and provides search services to users and companies in Brazil. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Google, Mountain View, CA, also said it is launching a new Latin America research and development center at Akwan's headquarters to help it develop products for the Latin American market.

Microsoft has released a beta version of Virtual Earth, a web-based application that combines local search with maps and aerial photography. MSN has offered satellite imagery with maps with its local search results for quite some time. What's different with the new MSN Virtual Earth is that, like Google Earth, the display is focused primarily around maps and aerial views. You can zoom in and out of maps or images, and drag the images around within the display.

Google Inc. on Thursday asked a California judge to invalidate a non-compete agreement central to Microsoft Corp.'s lawsuit against a former vice president hired to head Google's new research center in China. In a filing to the California Superior Court in Santa Clara County, Google charged that the non-compete provision signed by Kai-Fu Lee while he worked for Microsoft was "overreaching and unlawful."

Admit it. You don't know what podcasts are. Your plan is to do that thing of half-reading tech articles and waiting in denial until it's scarily mandatory that you really understand it -for instance, you have to create your own podcast for some random reason in one hour - and then desperately turning to Wikipedia or a teenage relative for a last-minute explanation. Just as you did long ago with the World Wide Web.

Escalating the war on spam, a California company wants to let thousands of users collaborate to disable the Web sites spammers use to sell their wares. A leading anti-spam advocate, however, criticized Blue Security Inc.'s Blue Frog initiative as being no more than a denial-of-service attack, the technique hackers use to effectively shut down a Web site by overwhelming it with fake traffic.

Podcasting and RSS feeds may be the latest craze in high-tech circles but the general public is largely unfamiliar with the Internet terms. A study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project also finds that Internet users aren't all that familiar with "phishing," either.

Do you get a little choked up over a good Hallmark commercial? Would you reach for that tissue box if you saw the same spot online, while checking up on where to order monogrammed gifts for your clients?Traditional broadcast advertising has proven time and again creating an emotional connection with a brand affects purchases and purchase intent. People look favorably on brands they can personally identify with. No medium has done this better than TV. Can the Internet deliver a message as powerfully as TV can? Can it elicit an emotional response and persuade users to click, try, and buy?

Remember a time before cable, when everyone just got broadcast TV for free? That's kind of where the internet is right now. Don't expect it to stay that way.