Susan Kuchinskas

“It’s the biggest turkey the President will see all week and he should stuff it the moment it lands on his desk.” That’s how California State Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach) described the anti-spam bill which cleared the U.S. Senate floor Tuesday. Bowen authored California’s 1998 anti-spam law and this year, she introduced SB 12 […]

Microsoft’s Small Business Server 2003 is designed for the approximately 40 million small and medium businesses in the world, and a new report from Jupiter Research said that’s a smart move on the part of the Redmond, Wash., software company. According to Jupiter (which is owned by Jupitermedia, as is Internetnews.com), only 51 percent of […]

Porn is the New Black is an X-rated music video, and editor John d’Addario says it’s the official theme song for Fleshbot, the sex-eccentric blog he launched last week. Part of the Gawker Media family of Weblogs, it got 10 times more traffic in its first week than any previous Gawker title, according to publisher […]

LookSmart signed an agreement with BellSouth that will let sales reps for the print and Internet Yellow Pages provider sell paid inclusion search listings along with its other products. Atlanta, Ga.-based BellSouth will offer the Real Search Engine Solutions package to customers in the southeast region. The paid inclusion listings will run across LookSmart’s partner, […]

According to news reports, IronPort Systems has acquired SpamCop, a volunteer-run spam-fighting company that runs a popular blacklist, for $1 million. SpamCop helps people report spam by cutting and pasting messages into a form on the site. The reporting feature is ad-supported, or users can opt to pay SpamCop then forwards them to the spammer’s […]

The Center For Democracy and Technology released a report criticizing spyware and downloadable adware programs for deceiving consumers and wreaking havoc with their computers. The Washington, D.C.-based CDT is a public policy non-profit that advocates privacy, freedom of expression and open use of Internet technologies — and challenging surveillance on the Net is one of […]

Today, in a courtroom for the Eastern District of Michigan, Wells Fargo got a big rebuff in its lawsuit against WhenU. The bank claimed that WhenU’s ads, which appear in separate branded windows on the desktop in response to a user’s Web site visits, obscured its own Web site and advertising. However, U.S. District Judge […]

America Online is expected to announce Wednesday its acquisition of search firm Singingfish and the launch of multi-media searching capabilities for its AOL Search, including the ability to search for audio and video. The new search features will enable AOL users to turn up both AOL-exclusive content and media files, including streaming media, throughout the […]

Last night, the band Steadman performed what may be the first live concert held in a virtual world. The event was held in 3-D virtual playground There.com, an online destination where users can control digital avatars to move around and interact via chat. Increasingly, those digital avatars are moving around in a virtual world inhabited […]

California State Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach) reacted angrily to a letter marketers sent to Congress yesterday in which they exhorted legislators to move quickly on Federal anti-spam legislation. “Advertisers love the congressional bills because they don’t can spam, they legalize it,” Bowen stated in a sharply-worded press release. Headed, “Spammers Take Aim at California […]

While Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) providers work to move their print customers online, search engines are trotting out local or regional targeting. Will the two clash or cooperate? The stakes are rising as major search players stake their claims in the space. Google launched regional targeting for AdWords in September, and Overture Services is set […]

Evite, the site where people can send invitations and manage guest lists for private parties, unveiled a beta redesign that includes a new look and a broader scope. The updated Evite lets people promote public events to its entire community of users, create personal info pages with a photo, and browse public events. The final […]