Almost everybody searches, eBay and Amazon reap the results, news and weather are important to some, but home and fashion gets the least attention in the last two weeks of October.

If your business is at all related to the world of personal computers, a recent Gartner Inc. release says that their analysts are increasing their projections for fourth quarter PC shipments. According to their recent forecasts, worldwide PC shipments will total 47.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2003, a 12.4 percent increase from the same period last year.

As summarized in eMarketer, The Kelsey Group estimates that small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) will spend $22 billion on advertising this year, with 46% going to yellow pages advertising. A sizeable portion of SME media spending this year should go towards Web sites.

InStat/MDF reports that with the recent releases of third quarter 2003 cable TV operator financial statements, US-based cable operators like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Charter Communications are continuing to reduce spending on everything from consumer premise equipment such as set top boxes and cable modems, to infrastructure transmission equipment like head-ends and video servers.

According to the STORES Magazine 2003 Consumer Credit Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, the average consumer has at least two credit cards in his wallet; affluent consumers have several more. The majority of consumers carry VISA (64%), and nearly as many carry MasterCard (54%). Ranked third was the Discover Card (24%), and 11 percent hold American Express cards.

According to the Cambridge Consumer Credit Index report by Allen Grommet, Ph.D. Sr. Economist, nearly half (46%) of Americans said that someone in their household was making at least one monthly loan or lease payment on a car. When looking towards the next six months, 6% said they were very likely to make additional auto purchases with an additional 11% somewhat likely to buy or lease. It appears that there is still significant potential for continued auto sales and financing in coming months, despite robust sales in 2003.

America Online and Digital Marketing Services recently surveyed kids between the ages of seven and twelve in the US to find that 46% go online four times during the week. Furthermore, the survey determined that 20% go online every day. As for the major US markets where most kids are using the Net most, AOL found that the Tampa/St. Petersburg area has the highest percentage of kids going online between five and seven days per week.

According to the latest Pew Internet and American Life Project reports, spam is beginning to undermine the integrity of email and degrade life online. The report goes on to conclude that "The huge increase in email spam in recent years is beginning to take its toll on the online world.

According to the release of recent reports by Nielsen//NetRatings@Plan Fall 2003, married surfers took the lead in e-commerce activities. According to the data, 10 percent more married surfers made an online purchase than was expected as compared to the average. More than 52 percent of married surfers made an online purchase during the period as compared to 47 percent of singles making an online purchase.

According to the latest release from Arbitron Internet Broadcast Ratings, three classical stations were ranked within the top 50 in the for the week of October 13. WQXR ranked number seven with 222,890 hours of Total Time Spent Listening (TTSL). AOL Classical 101 ranked number 33 with 75,405 hours of TTSL, and KING-FM ranked number 35 with 73,863 hours of TTSL.