On this day, the Minute is happy to report that the adware misery it suffered last week was successfully resolved.

I've been seeing lots of promotion on the FoodNetwork for the new, souped-up version of "Iron Chef" premiering on January 16.

Okay, I'm officially pissed off - my home computer is now infected with a parasite that has spawned tons of pop-up ads, myriad offers to resolve the problem, and alerts from Microsoft trying to advise me about how to tackle the situation.

Okay, here's a new one - "cyberbullying."

We mentioned last week that the online holiday shopping season was rather robust, according to data from various researchers including comScore Networks, which yesterday released its holiday and full year (2004) online spending figures.

America Online today said it's renaming its cable music video channel "AOL Music On Demand," representing the latest in a series of moves designed to direct a wider Web audience to AOL content. AOL's cable music video channel was formerly dubbed "My Music Channel."

Yesterday the Minute addressed online holiday shopping and the fact that several research organizations noted robust increases for the recently passed November-December period, versus the same period a year ago.

Online shopping tallies for the holiday period have come in courtesy of eMarketer which today reports that its own projection of a 29 percent increase in sales from November through December, was on the money.

People around the world have flocked to humanitarian Web sites in the last week to donate funds to relief organizations aiding victims of the tsunami.

The tally is in on online holiday shopping. Shoppers spent a whopping $23.2 billion online from November 1 to December 26, up 25 percent from the same period a year ago.