Airborne Internet closer to reality
Starting this week and over the next few months, several airlines in the United States and Europe are due to begin testing new digital services on some of their p***s.
- Airlines discover passengers are willing to pay more for real meals

Universal to expand its online reach
Universal, owned by Vivendi, agreed Monday to provide songs from its artists in exchange for part of the ad revenue generated by the site.
- Nokia and Universal Music make digital music download deal

Screenwriters dig in their heels in battle for respect
Five weeks into a strike that now promises to drag on well into the new year, it suddenly became clear that guild leaders were serious about their writers' revolution.

Nokia says it was far ahead of Google on new cellphone technology
For a decade, Nokia has had its own army of software developers, writing applications for the next generation of mobile telephone services.

A commercial 'phenomenon' in Italy: teenage fairies
With a No.1 movie in Italy and an IPO in the offing, the Rainbow production company thinks it has the next big thing: Winx fairies.

IHT and Reuters forge business news alliance
The International Herald Tribune was to announce plans Monday to transform its daily business section online and in print next month, creating a report that publishes news from both organizations.

Yahoo makes new foray into streaming-video finance
TechTicker, a new program from Yahoo, will report exclusively on technology stocks, offering daily streaming-video segments and blog posts, as well as some live coverage of breaking news.

After a lecture, students can play it again on their laptops
These days, students who miss an important point the first time have a second chance. After class, they can pipe the lecture to their laptops or MP3 players and hear it again while looking at the slides that illustrate the talk.

No slowdown seen in ad spending on the Internet
For Internet companies, or nearly any media owner in a developing country, the outlook for advertising spending for 2008 looks rosy, with several leading forecasters predicting a strong acceleration.

James Murdoch: Ready for the throne?
Anyone expecting a carbon copy of Rupert Murdoch may be disappointed. But James Murdoch has shown enough of his father's media mettle to persuade analysts that he is up for a bigger job.
- Murdoch said to have plan for shake-up at Dow Jones

Clearspring Technologies, the leading independent provider of "widget" software for syndicating Web site features or content, said Monday that it was introducing a network for distributing advertising.

The Widget Ad Network will allow Web publishers to run ads on affiliated sites inside widgets, which are Web tools or games that a user can embed on their social network profiles, home pages or blogs and share with friends.

Clearspring said it was the first to offer a widget-based advertising network that ran across independent sites. It builds its widgets so that users can quickly embed content on social networks like MySpace, Facebook or Friendster.

Microsoft on Monday started placing advertisements on the U.S. version of MSN Mobile, a Web portal for cellphone browsers that connects users with Hotmail, instant messaging, search, news and other content.

Microsoft said the cellphone ad service is a mix of its own efforts and those by two companies it acquired this year - the online advertising company aQuantive and the mobile ad group ScreenTonic.

Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom, Ford Motor's Jaguar and Bank of America were among the first to peddle their brands to U.S. mobile customers.

EURONEWS, which is partly financed by the European Union, said it would start broadcasting in Arabic next year. The broadcaster said it already had a substantial audience in the Arabic-speaking world for its English and French language versions and hoped to increase viewer numbers significantly.

ONLINE SALES GROWTH in the United States slowed last week to 20 percent as retailers lowered prices to lure shoppers during what may be the worst holiday shopping season in five years. Internet retail purchases rose to $4.58 billion in the week through Friday, ComScore said.

USA TODAY, the largest U.S. newspaper by circulation, will start a lifestyle magazine in March. "Open Air" will be available four times a year in Friday editions, said USA Today, which is owned by Gannett.