The New York Times today reports that its premium TimesSelect service has signed up 270,000 subscribers in less than two months. We have no basis on which to judge whether that figure is good or bad, but suffice to say, this here Minute is not one of those subscribers.

The latest report about cookies from JupiterResearch advises that Web sites would do well to stop relying on tracking cookies placed by third parties for analytics. That is, sites should serve cookies from their own domains to keep track of data ranging from passwords to which pages users viewed.

Some interesting and notable appointments on this first day of ad:tech. Brightcove, an Internet TV service run by Jeremy Allaire, tapped Dina Roman, a former vice president at Discovery Networks, for the position of vice president of national advertising sales, and Adam Gerber, formerly a new media strategist at MediaVest and a friend of the Minute, to the post of vice president of advertising products and strategy.

Breaking news bulletin: Hilary Duff World debuts on AOL on Monday! She'll appear on AOL's kids' service KOL and on its teen service Red. Quick, take a note. Mark your calendar.

Google this morning opened its impressive virtual library, a searchable database of out-of-copyright books from universities. At launch, the collection includes history books about the U.S. Civil War from the University of Michigan; writings by Henry James from Harvard; government documents from Stanford; and biographies from the New York Public Library.

So yesterday, Microsoft unveiled a new plan to offer its cash cows--Windows and Office--as Web services to take advantage of the growing online advertising market. Both services will be ad-supported. Observers wonder where MSN figures into this new vision.

Adware companies have long complained about software removal firms deleting their ad-serving programs. The companies argue that consumers have chosen to download the programs, which serve pop-up ads based on Web-surfing behavior, and that software removal companies shouldn't interfere in that decision.

Forrester Research today reports that U.S. online retail sales this holiday season will hit $18 billion, a 25 percent increase over last year. The researcher estimates that 2.5 million new households will shop online in 2005, enticed by offers of free shipping and other bonuses.

Lately we've been noticing the increasing amount of original programming on the Web. Of course "original content" can mean anything from entertainment fare to news, user-generated blogs and animated shorts. In some circles, it also means comprehensive Web programs that complement episodic TV shows relying heavily on participation from viewers.

It seems that Web users are going to far greater lengths than anticipated to protect their privacy online. Now, joining the year's barrage of reports stating that users are deleting their cookies, comes a study finding that 30 percent have curtailed their Internet use due to fears of identity theft.