Reuters reported today that for almost two weeks now, Microsoft has been limiting the number of emails their Hotmail users can send in a 24-hour period to 100. According to the company spokeswoman Reuters quoted in the story, the 100-email limit is "well within the level" of how many emails an average person sends a day. While Reuters was very excited about this new anti-spam measure, I think this new limit will be as effective in fighting spam as a cold compress on a cancer sore.

Online advertising remains the best opportunity for most online media businesses (as everyone in this business would hope), but paid content today got a bright prognosis from the Jupiter researchers.

In the last few days, MediaPost has had to cover everything from commercial-free broadcasts of the war on cable networks to some advertisers pulling their campaigns because they don’t want to be, as Dana Blankenhorn put it, the company “this war is brought to you by.” It’s all painting a potentially dangerous picture.

Despite all our hopes for a peaceful resolution, the war has begun. Looks like the cable news networks will be covering the unfolding conflict commercial-free for the next 48 hours (at least) and all the general population can really do is wait and watch. With this war, however, consumers have more choices.

Good news for online automotive advertisers. According to the latest comScore report, 48 million Internet users - approximately 33% of all U.S. Internet users - visited the automotive category in February.

If only the U.S. government was an ad-supported business... That may be a dangerous - and somewhat ridiculous - thing to say, but Nielsen//NetRatings says that more than one-third of all Internet users visited a government site last month.

The biggest story of the day is, of course, Yahoo! Platinum. The more interesting story, at least in my humble opinion, is SF Interactive’s launch of the Ad Cube.

If you’re curious about what your employees did last week, chances are they’ve either balanced their online checkbooks or spent some time at Dilbert.com. At least that’s what Nielsen//NetRatings is reporting today.

Every time a research-related press release crosses my path I feel like a statistic. That’s probably because I am one, especially when it comes to the way I surf the web. Long gone are the days when I would let the web take me wherever it wanted. Now I either type a URL directly into the browser, or “Google it.” Turns out, most of the world does the same thing, and “Googling it” is increasing in popularity.

Today, AOL announced an initiative to offer a pop-up blocker to its subscribers (ironic as it is, considering AOL itself pioneered the pop-up concept in the early days.) The odd thing is, while pop-up advertising has grown in the past year, they still just make up a small percentage of ad impressions served.