Now if you're wondering about all those poor people down in Mobile, Ala., Biloxi, Miss., and New Orleans, well, many of us checked up on them via the Web. We monitored online news reports and video and for all intents and purposes, the coverage was superb. The television reports were also very, very good. We wondered if we would hold up as well as some of the correspondents that were battered by rain as sharp as nails. Online news leader MSNBC.com reported that by end of day Monday, Aug. 29, it had racked up 9 million video streams, including …

Taking a page from the book America Online wrote with its Live 8 coverage this summer, MTV this week streamed its Video Music Awards show live, and also made it available on the Web on demand. While the idea was good, its execution left a lot to be desired. The live streams performed poorly on Sunday night; the Minute's attempt to view them were met with error messages. The on-demand streams were an improvement, but still took a long time to load and the video was choppy at best. On more than one occasion in a single track, the …

Jealous lovers or spouses who take to cyber spying on a beloved, take heed. Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara, the creator of a software program that enables jealous lovers to spy on their partners' online activities, has been indicted for allegedly violating federal computer privacy laws. The 25-year-old Perez-Melara was indicted on Friday on 35 counts of manufacturing, sending, and advertising "a surreptitious interception device and unauthorized access to protected computers," according to an Associated Press report today.

Brangelina... TomKat... Britney's baby... Paris...Who can keep up with all the celebrity chatter? Actually, if you must know, we can. The Minute receives all the celebrity mags in the office and has the annoying habit of reading them on the subway on the short commute to work. Former "Friend" Jennifer Aniston shows up nearly every week on the covers, but she's also the hot topic online. No surprise there. Date.com, an online dating service, reports that Aniston and Orlando Bloom are the two celebs U.S. singles would most like to bump into in an online chat room.

Verizon and Yahoo! made headlines this week with their new co-branded DSL service, which will be offered at just $14.95 a month. The package appears to make broadband available at competitive -- and in some cases cheaper -- rates than dial-up access.

Have we reached critical mass on consumer broadband penetration in the United States? Well, apparently JupiterResearch says we have. Jupiter reports that more than 43 percent of online households now connect to the Web via broadband, thus constituting critical mass. Jupiter projects that broadband adoption will reach nearly 80 percent of online U.S. households, or 69 million households, by 2010. The market researcher maintains that portals and content sites can leverage these increases by experimenting with personalization features, Flash-based home pages, customizable RSS feeds, and other advanced functions.

While everyone agrees that the blogosphere is growing at a phenomenal rate, it's unclear just what that rate is. Consider: The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that there are now 12.5 million blogs, compared to 6 million in April; the San Jose Mercury News wrote on Friday that there are at least 70 million blogs worldwide.

Sure, you've heard that Google is on a hiring tear seeking scientists but also sales and marketing minds. But did you know that Microsoft's MSN is also making a huge push for marketing talent? We checked in with Eric Hadley, director of marketing for MSN, to find out what's going on there. MSN's laser-like focus on paid search, and the deployment of its adCenter product, the pay-per-click search platform that's being tested in France and Singapore, have sparked a hiring spree. While there is no specific date for adCenter's launch in the United States, MSN is working like crazy …

Online newspaper publishers' revenues are on track to hit $1.4 billion by year's end, according to a new report by eMarketer. The data aggregator reports that online newspaper publishers saw revenues rise 38 percent last year and that the first half of 2005 looks like it will perform similarly. The eMarketer report attributes the online newspaper gains to strong consumer online readership and marketers shifting their ad budgets online.

Google undoubtedly has assembled many of the best and brightest people in the world to develop its technology. There's no doubt that, substantively, Google's ideas have been brilliant. From its search algorithm to the user interface to the continually evolving new features, Google has revolutionized the way people access information.