Apple's digital music store has finally sold more music than offline retailers Tower Records, and Borders, according to research from NPD Group. For the first time since its 2003 launch, iTunes has made it to the Top 10 Sales list, and analysts seem to think it will move steadily higher, ultimately becoming a significant part of the music business. Even so, data from the Recording Industry Association of America said sales accounted for slightly more than 4 percent of the overall market in the first half of the year. According to the research, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, Amazon.com, FYE and …

With a $3 million donation from Google, the Library of Congress today announced plans to build what it calls the World Digital Library, a project that aims to digitize primary materials from national and international libraries. One of the first undertakings will be digitizing documents of Islamic science from the 10th Century from the National Library of Egypt. After that the Library of Congress hopes to make available online materials from the National Libraries of China, East Asia, India, South Asia, and the rest of the Islamic world. As The New York Times points out, the Library of Congress is …

Online daters are taking matchmaking services Match.com and Yahoo! Personals to court, saying they were the victims of dating fraud. IAC/Interactive Corp.'s Match.com is being accused of tricking customers into renewing their subscriptions to the service through e-mails sent from presumed love interests, when in fact the messages come from company employees. The lawsuit also contends that Match.com charges employees to go on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy. Meanwhile, Yahoo! has been accused of posting fictitious profiles on its personals site to make it look like more singles have subscribed to its site. Both companies, of course, …

Google has finally bowed to the wishes of publishers in its AdSense network by giving them more control over how advertisers sign up to market on their site. Analysts note that publishers will now be able to own and manage their advertising relationships. For advertisers, the new feature, called Onsite Advertiser Sign-up, allows them to sign up directly on the Web sites they want to be seen on. Previously, advertisers had to list the sites they specifically market on through their AdWords enrollment page. The new feature will also enable publishers to sign up smaller advertisers without having to worry …

Due to the enormous amount of data it has had to process, Google has temporarily stopped letting people sign up for its free analytics product, and has removed the "Add new profile" link which allowed existing accounts to track up to 40 different Web sites. Nearly 235,000 accounts have been created for Google Analytics in the last week. This underscores an incredible demand for the product--but the delays mean Google Analytics has not started out on the right foot with its customers. Critics have said Google should have employed an invitation-only approach in the same way it did with Gmail …

Google and book publishers have finally agreed on one thing, the New York Times says: information doesn't necessarily want to be free; rather, it wants to be found. What they cannot agree on is how it will be found and how it will be monetized. Publishers and Googlers squared off in a public debate Thursday over Google's plan to digitize the content--books copyright protected and out of copyrigh--of the New York Public Library and four university libraries. Publishers and authors are now suing Google over its plans and the case has landed in federal court. The public debate has an …

Through a series of recent deals, many popular Web logs are becoming available to larger audiences. Just last week, Yahoo! announced a deal that will bring the pop culture critiquing/celebrity stalking content of Gawker Media to its pages, while Time.com said it will publish selected items from accredited journalist Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish. In another deal, America Online purchased Weblogs, a blog network of 85 sites covering topics from travel to parenting, for $25 million last month. The irony in all this is that many bloggers turned to producing their own content out of discontent with mainstream media, but now …

A columnist for Traffick.com argues that Microsoft is going down the wrong path with its proposed ad-supported business software. He contends that since products like MS Office are primarily used for specific business purposes, advertising will, at best, be ignored by users. He also says that pay-per-click ads work because user-initiated action leads to the relevant placement of ads, but when someone is working on a spreadsheet, an ad would simply be disruptive, distracting the user from the task at hand. However, a year and a half ago, people said the same thing about Gmail, and while it is not …

The Walt Disney Co. and Verizon are teaming up to produce a series of short-form episodes on cell phones based on ABC's hit series "Lost." The episodes, produced by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, revolve around the other surviving members of the fateful Oceanic Flight 815 whose stories have yet to be told. The "Lost Video Diaries" are being produced under the supervision of "Lost" producers and writers and will be downloadable for Verizon Wireless' V Cast subscribers in January. The Verizon service costs $15 per month but the company is still undecided about whether to add on an additional fee …

Movielink, an online movie download service, has signed a major distribution pact with 20th Century Fox, granting consumers access to content from all of Hollywood's major film studios. The company, which was formed several years ago as a joint venture of five Hollywood studios, has now added a sixth, and with it, 1,200 Fox titles. As more and more online consumers gain access to broadband, Movielink believes it will soon reach a benchmark of selling 100,000 downloads per month. Currently, most of the site's users are travelers. Following recent announcements from ABC, NBC, and CBS to distribute content online, Fox …