Oh, the pleasures of holiday shopping. Black Friday looms. But online, it's always a shopping day. Online, the stores are never closed.

After years of news reports about the record and entertainment industry suing file-sharers, the tables have finally been turned. In a richly ironic development, the same company that has so aggressively defended its intellectual property rights is being sued for interfering with its consumers'rights to property--their hard drive

As most of us await fabulous meals on Thursday (we hope!), folks are turning to the Web for new dishes to supplement their well-worn family recipes.

Is it possible that we could one day soon be reading posts about porn for the video iPod from Fleshbot.com via Yahoo? Not that we read Fleshbot.com, of course. And if we did, it would only be for the posts.

New media company America Online this week crashed old media's turf--literally. AOL held a luncheon at the print world's favorite stomping ground--Michael's in New York City--to unveil a plan to promote authors of self-help books.

We attended a party for Salon.com last night. The edgy online mag was celebrating 10 years of feisty cultural commentary, news, reviews, and community--and the New York mediarati turned out in force to party with the crew.

Online content--articles, video, music, sports and the like--is on a growth curve rivaling that of the earliest days of the Internet.

"You've got TV" from Warner Bros. on AOL. Yes, that's right. AOL today announced that In2TV, its broadband TV push, will launch in January 2006 with six channels and episodes from more than 100 popular shows from the '70s, '80s, and '90s.

So, the Minute received an avalanche of mail from Wednesday's column "News Flash: Times Not Selected." While the column mentioned that the Minute isn't a subscriber to the TimesSelect premium service, we found someone who is: our friend Jonathan, a 41-year-old art director who is not a member of the liberal media elite.

The buzz about online advertising at Ad:Tech wasn't unfailingly positive. At least two separate panels at the conference dealt with what many view as an alarming trend--the growing consumer rebellion against cookies.