ABOUT IACNews Headlines
 Telegraph.co.UK - November 12, 2009 Find out what is going on in the world and what the most influential movers and shakers are thinking with the best online sources for up-to-the-minute news and comment.  By Jefferson Graham If you're one of the estimated 25,000 small businesses in America, then – whether you realize it or not – video is in your future.  Florists' Review Magazine - November 11, 2009 New, Free iPhone App Makes Finding the Perfect Pair of Shoes Fast, Fun and Easy  By Josh Lowensohn Video host Vimeo on Wednesday is launching support for users on iPhone/iPod Touch and Google Android devices. The company has re-encoded the entirety of its staff picks and HD video showcase, both of which are the most heavily trafficked areas of the site from Vimeo's members, and referrers like Twitter.  By Jeremy Kellel The lack of Flash support on the iThings (i.e. phone, touch) and all but one Android device has made it rather difficult for Flash-based video sites to penetrate the ever-expanding smartphone video-consuming market.  Electronista - November 11, 2009 Vimeo on Wednesday announced plans to extend its movie service onto the iPhone and Android platforms, according to CNET News.  Softpedia - November 11, 2009 Including Craigslist, Sensobi and Urbanspoon apps  By Ronen Halevey We mentioned Urbanspoon’s service a bit back but they just released a BlackBerry app at DevCon. They sent me an email that their new app lets you choose restaurants near you with a sort of slot machine for picking a favorite.  Examiner.com - November 11, 2009 InstantAction, an online gaming platform (and part of the company responsible for the Resurrection of Starsiege: Tribes) has relocated from Eugene, Oregon to Portland -- and now they're hiring.  By Rick Turoczy Yes, yes. I realize some of you never had to go through the pain and heartache of putting your quarter up to reserve a video game. Only to have some pushy guy cut in front of you. You’ve been spoiled by having video games at your disposal ever since you could remember. I mean, you’ve even got them on the Web with companies like Instant Action.  By MG Siegler In major metropolitan areas, the BlackBerry at lunchtime is a force to be reckoned with. And now it can be a device to help those urbanities actually find a place to eat with the launch of Urbanspoon for BlackBerry.  By John Cook One of the most popular iPhone apps of all time is coming to the Blackberry. Urbanspoon -- which has recorded more than seven million downloads of its restaurant guide on the iPhone -- today introduced a free mobile app that works on most new versions of the Blackberry.  Portland Business Journal - November 10, 2009 Internet gaming company InstantAction is leaving its long-time Eugene home and splitting its operations between Portland and Las Vegas, company officials said Tuesday.  By Jennifer Van Grove v  By Mark Walsh Is "Fred" dead? In the latest ranking of the most popular Web shows, hyper-obnoxious YouTube sensation "Fred" has been knocked from its perch atop the rankings by adult-themed animated series "Happy Tree Friends."  By April Joyner Small-business owners are more active than consumers on sites such as Yelp, according to a recent survey.  By Staci D. Kramer Joey Levin moves from corporate M&A and finance to CEO of Mindspark Interactive Network, the IAC collection of “fun web products” like Zwinky, succeeding John Park, who wants a more entrepreneurial life after a decade with IAC.  By Nicholson Carlson IAC's new M&A boss is company vet Shana Fisher.  By Jennifer Bosavage Five years ago, Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 browser debuted to almost immediate acclaim with a million downloads in the first week that pushed that 2005 server infrastructure and the Mozilla team to the brink.  By Richard Alley The World Wide Web, with its seemingly unlimited information and eternal reach, is a beast. For the average surfer, any attempt to keep up with it all -- every news stream and nugget of gossip -- is mere folly.  By Gina Damron The 50-plus crowd is among the fastest-growing group of Web daters  By Vern Seward I have a friend who loves words and the subtle variations in meaning they can convey.  By Marc Gerstein Sometimes, a good company can be associated with a bad stock. In other words, the company is fundamentally terrific, but the stock may be way overvalued. Other times, a bad company (one whose condition or prospects are mundane or worse) may be a great investment opportunity.  Internet Retailer - November 6, 2009 To no one’s great surprise, e-retailers entered November with prominent home-page displays of special offers ranging from free shipping on all orders to discounts of 50% off regular prices, according to a survey this week by Internet Retailer.  By Jenn Abelson Shoebuy.com, an online shoe retailer based in Boston, is launching an online flower company, FloraFlora.com, that guarantees the freshest arrangements and eliminates delivery charges and hidden fees.  By Josh Smith If there's an online industry that likes to add to your purchase price with fees more than Ticketmaster, it has to be online flower-sale companies. It's nothing for a $30 birthday celebration bouquet to turn into a $50 purchase by the time you hit the pay now button. Once you add in delivery fees, which can change on a daily basis, and other miscellaneous extras, you can easily spend another $20. But now a new company, Flora Flora, is shaking up the world of online flower sales with a pricing model that has no additional fees.  By Emily Steel Web Sites Bring In New Tools Allowing Marketers to Buy, and Sell, More Data to Follow Potential Customers  By Barry Schwartz Google Operating System has added a new search option named “page preview.” If you go to Google, search on something and click on “show options,” you can then look towards the button on the left hand side and click on “page previews.”  By Brian Womack YouTube executive Jordan Hoffner, who helped forge deals with Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co. as director of content partnerships, is leaving the company. By Rafat Ali Jordan Hoffner, the head of content partnerships for YouTube, is leaving the company, and joining Ben Silverman's new content venture at IAC, we have learned.  By Richard Bradley For CEO Jeff Zucker, hiring Ben Silverman as the co-chair of entertainment at NBC Universal, the man responsible for primetime programming, must have seemed like a good idea at the time, and in many ways it was.  By Benny Adams InterActive Corp (IAC) topper Barry Diller has revealed further details of his joint venture with former NBC Entertainment co-chairman and Reveille boss Ben Silverman, which is to be called Electus.  TBIVision.com - October 28, 2009 Barry Diller's programming joint venture with Ben Silverman will be a cornerstone of a push by InterActive Corp into production, the IAC CEO said yesterday. TBIVision.com - October 28, 2009 Barry Diller's programming joint venture with Ben Silverman will be a cornerstone of a push by InterActive Corp into production, the IAC CEO said yesterday.  Seeking Alpha - October 28, 2009 Interactive Corp. (Nasdaq: IACI) — Service Magic Displays Growth, Diller Delivers  By Holly Sanders Ware With the Google juggernaut showing no signs of slowing down, media mogul Barry Diller is now giving serious thought to getting out of the search business. By Nat Worden Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp., said Tuesday his company is open to a "consolidating transaction" in Internet search while noting his digital-media conglomerate isn't likely to be the "consolidator."  The Business Journal of the Greater Triad Area - October 28, 2009 A national tour that brings free financial advice to consumers will make a stop in Greensboro in January. By Nathania Johnson Yesterday, on the IAC earnings conference call, CEO Barry Diller said that he'd be open to selling Ask.com. The media took off with the comments as if they were new and a deal was imminent. It's not.  By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson Barry Diller has signaled his willingness to part with Ask.com, the search engine that IAC’s chairman and chief executive once said had the potential to become “one of the great brands on the internet and beyond.” By Nathania Johnson Ask.com and Citysearch parent company IAC released its third quarter earnings for 2009. Overall revenues came in at $336.6 million down 9% from the same quarter last year. However, profit for the quarter came in at $21.7 million, up from the $14.8 million loss suffered last year. The profits are largely due to the sales of OpenTable and Match Europe. By Staci D. Kramer Don’t think big thoughts when you look at that $1.8 billion-plus in IAC’s bank account: Barry Diller is sticking to his guns when it comes to major acquisitions.  By George Szalai Ben Silverman's new company named Electus  By Dan Fost Firms are building fan bases on the social networking website and using it to connect with customers.  By Jon Ogg IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them.  By Eric Savitz IAC/Interactive (IACI), Barry Diller’s Internet conglomerate, this morning posted Q3 revenue of $336.6 million, slightly ahead of the Street consensus at $335 million.  By Rachel Metz IAC reports 3rd-qtr profit, helped by one-time gains as ad revenue still slumps  By Yinka Adegoke Barry Diller's Internet media company IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O) posted a third-quarter profit on Tuesday on gains from asset sales but revenue fell due to the weaker advertising market. By John Kell IAC/InteractiveCorp. reversed a year-earlier loss caused by write-downs in the third-quarter and the parent of properties including Ask.com and Match.com reported better-than-expected results.  By Brier Dudley Something big is shaking at Urbanspoon, the Seattle company behind a hugely successful iPhone restaurant-finding application. By John Reese While stocks are up more than 60% from their March lows and the financial system is light years from where it was during last fall's crisis, the U.S. economy still has a number of problems it's working through. Unemployment remains high, consumer spending is still tight and the longer-term effects of the government's massive rescue and stimulus efforts are unknown.  Telecompaper - October 26, 2009 Search engine and IAC operating business Ask.com has announced the promotion of Doug Leeds to president of Ask.com US. In addition, Tony Gentile has joined the search engine as Ask.com US's senior vice president of product management.  By Dan Havlik One of the biggest success stories to emerge out of the Digital SLR/HD video boom is video-sharing site Vimeo. Once just a shadow to online giant YouTube, Vimeo has ridden the wave of popularity of HD-DSLRs by providing an easy way for photographers to post their high-def videos.  By Dianna Dilworth Ask.com is running video banner ads and a Facebook-integrated microsite to promote its Ask Deals retail price index search engine. The search Web site indexes prices from around the Web to help consumers save money.  ZippyCart - October 23, 2009 As ecommerce traffic starts to spike getting closer to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you will see almost every site promoting their holiday deals. Cyber Monday has only been around since 2005 when Shop.org created the promotion, but despite the name, it is not the most popular day for shopping.  By Daniel Nations Dragon Age: Origins is one of the most highly-anticipated games this holiday season. Developed by the legendary Bioware studios, the game has been in development for over five years, and it will finally be released on November 3rd.  Marketing Vox - October 20, 2009 Providers of social networking applications, telecom providers, carriers and ISPs are bracing for the expected announcement this Thursday of new net neutrality rules by the Federal Communications Commission.  By Marguerite Reardon Internet giants Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and a slew of other high-profile tech companies weighed in on new rules that are currently being written to keep the Internet open. By Gavin O'Malley With the help of Agency.com San Francisco, search engine Ask.com has launched a multichannel campaign to promote its new Ask Deals service.  By Brian Morrissey Search engine seeks to pair bargain-hungry consumers and Internet self-expression By Amy Schatz Fed up with a barrage of letters that arrived at the FCC last week from net-neutrality opponents (or lawmakers urging a cautious approach toward the new rules), a coalition of Internet companies are urging the FCC chairman to hold steady.  By Jenna Wortham At first glance, Foursquare, the location-based mobile application capturing the fancy of hip, young urbanites, is a fun bar game that lets users compete for points and badges for going out at night.  By Ivor Tossell It's like the real world, but with subtitles By Nicholas Carlson US spending on virtual goods will reach $1 billion this year and $1.6 billion in 2010, according to Inside Virtual Goods.  By Helena Humphrey When ex Vanity Fair and New Yorker Editor, Tina Brown, turned her back on print to launch The Daily Beast website, many were left open mouthed. Brown had enjoyed a highly successful career and was at the top of her game - so why the decision to leave a world she knew so well for a foray into the unfamiliar territory of cyberspace? And more importantly, would she be able to pull it off? By Jay Yarow Tina Brown's web experiment, The Daily Beast is already performing well after just a year on the web, with 3.9 million unique visitors. But like any good startup, it wants to get bigger, the FT reports. By Nicholas Carlson Finally angling for the big bucks, New York microblogging startup Tumblr is selling t-shirts. By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson When Tina Brown turned her back on magazines a year ago to launch a website called The Daily Beast, some scoffed in the media world she once reigned as editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. By Jenna Wortham Most people using the UrbanSpoon iPhone application give their phones a vigorous shake to serve up a list of restaurants in the immediate vicinity.  By Kim-Mai Cutler Two big entrants in the world of augmented reality today brought their apps to the iPhone today. By Barb Dybwad The mobile augmented reality space continues to heat up, with Wikitude and Layar on Android and the Yelp Monocle debuting AR on the iPhone. Associated Press - October 13, 2009 Ask.com hopes to persuade consumers who are fond of discount Web sites to bring their bargain hunts to its search engine.  By Julie Batten Today's lean economy is changing the way we do business, the way we shop, and the way we live our lives. So it is not surprising that the economy is also changing the way we search -- and in turn, how search engines present us with information.  By Alisha Paul GirlSense.com is celebrating the Halloween season by asking their community of teen and tween girls to design their own frightful fashions and boutiques for a chance to win prizes better than any miniature chocolate bar.  By Kiran Aditham While Campbell-Ewald was bestowed the Match.com account Stateside, Brand Republic is reporting that Mother London will be handling all UK advertising for the brand.  Wireless and Mobile News - October 12, 2009 BlackBerry Tour, Bold, Pearl, Curve and 8800 BlackBerry users can now look up words with a special Dictionary Thesaurus App form Dictionary.com either from the app or writing or reading emails. Also included in the announcement is the news that people with extensive vocabulary are las⋅civ⋅i⋅ous . This article has been titivated by the thesaurus. By Jessica Dolcourt Thanks to Dictionary.com, I won a contest this weekend. The challenge: who could find synonyms for a word fastest (it was "fancy," as in "stop being so fancy about everything.") I had Dictionary.com loaded on an iPhone; my colleague, the BlackBerry Storm browser. Had he had the free Dictionary.com for BlackBerry, my challenger might have beaten me to the word bank. By Leena Rao Earlier this year, we wrote about Dictionary.com’s nifty iPhone app. Since April, the app has seen 3 million downloads and is steadily growing in popularity. Today, Dictionary.com (which as part of the Ask.com network that also includes Thesaurus.com) is launching a similar application for BlackBerry smartphones, which has a few key differentiating factors from its sister iPhone app.  TechBites.com - October 11, 2009 Vimeo, one of the video sharing networks is not as popular as YouTube but it does have some fans and offers high quality videos on the site. Vimeo is offering a desktop uploader for users who have trouble in uploading through browser or for those who want to batch upload videos.  Louisville Courier-Journal - October 10, 2009 Ask.com hopes to persuade consumers fond of discount Web sites to bring their bargain hunts to its search engine.  By Frederic Lardinois Vimeo, one of our favorite online video services, just announced a number of interesting updates. In the near future, Vimeo plans to give its users the ability to use an Adobe AIR desktop tool to upload videos to the service. These videos will also play in a larger video player. In addition, Vimeo plans to introduce a more advanced stats package for users with paid accounts.  By Rick Aristotle Munarriz If you're feeling good about the market, you're not alone. Take my hand as we go over some of this week's more uplifting headlines.  By Virginia Nussey Information and innovation were this week's superstars, front and center at the online marketing conference SMX East 2009. Financial savings and hot deals, meanwhile, are top-of-mind nearly every day as we're all on the lookout for ways to relieve pressure on the pocketbook.  NetImperative - October 8, 2009 Ask has launched a new service that scours the internet for online coupons, as the IAC-owned search engine looks to capitallise on the growing trend for online discounts. Associated Press - October 7, 2009 Automated pill reminder; newspapers' source material; mining online coupons  By Patrick Phillips The co-founder and editor of The Daily Beast describes the first year of her Barry Diller-backed news site as a mission to "establish a voice." The second year will bring more multimedia — but no content fees. By Jay Yarow After just a year on the web, Tina Brown's Daily Beast is humming along rather nicely, she tells I Want Media. By David Westphal It's been a lot of fun, this long-running sniper's war between Old Media and New Media. We've all enjoyed some hilarious slap-downs, all marveled at the sheer idiocy of the morons on the other side. (Oh, and let's not forget their over-the-top mean-spiritedness.) But all fun things must end. It's time to put the Old vs. New Media war to rest.  By Erika Morphy Ask.com is a distant fourth among Internet search engines, but it may be able to differentiate itself and draw more users with new functionality that corrals coupons and deals offered online. "Google and Yahoo don't have anything similar to this," said Nick Stamoulis, president and CEO of Brick Marketing. By Brett Pulley Barry Diller’s Ask.com is introducing an Internet search tool that scours the Web for coupons and discount offers on products. By Miguel Helft Ask.com, a perennial niche player in Internet search, is making another attempt at staying relevant in a market that is dominated by giants like Google  By Patrick Roble Everyone loves a deal and that's especially true when times are tough. So it's no surprise that bargain hunting online has become an even more popular pastime for consumers. From coupon sites to cashback sites, consumers looking to spend money have plenty of ways to get more bang for the buck. By Greg Sterling Online coupons have been around for many years, at least a decade. Despite this no publisher or site has arisen to yet win the space. There’s no Facebook of coupons, no Twitter of coupons and, dare I say it, no Google of coupons. Google itself would seem to have missed or mishandled the opportunity with its peek-a-boo approach to local coupons.  By Ryan Singel It's a search of the times.  By Juan Carlos Perez Ask.com's search engine can now find coupons and product discounts, a new capability the company believes will attract new users, especially with the approach of the holiday shopping season. By Laurie Sullivan Ask.com made it easier Tuesday to search and discover discounts on hundreds of items through a search tool it dubbed AskDeals. Consumers can search a database of more than one million deals that refresh daily. The deals aim to save consumers money on merchandise from national and local merchants across hundreds of product categories, from travel to apparel at Best Buy, Macy's and other popular stores.  By Amandeep Dhaliwal The Ask search engine's Tuesday-launched 'Ask Deals' service helps consumers save money while shopping online, as facilitates their search for online coupons and bargains listed from various popular coupon Web sites, including retail Web sites, message boards and blogs.  TechWhack - October 6, 2009 Ask.com is one of the few search engine companies which still manage to count amongst the top 5 search services on the web.  By D. Warburton Ask Deals service finds the best consumer bargains. Determined to retain its modest share of the search engine market, Ask.com has introduced a new service aimed at guiding users to the best discounts online. By Dana Oshiro In an attempt to provide further incentive to users, Ask.com just launched Ask Deals. The new service already offers more than 1 million discounts from national and local merchants across the country. From clothing sales to restaurant discounts, the IAC search engine is using its search technology to offer savings to its online audiences. By Tom Krazit Ask isn't giving up on efforts to expand its niche in the search market, this time hoping that coupon clippers will make it their search destination of choice. By Staci D. Kramer Drew Buckley has left Terry Semel’s Windsor Media to work as a senior executive with Ben Silverman, paidContent has learned and confirmed with IAC. An IAC spokeswoman said details would be forthcoming. Silverman is still putting together the “dream team” for his latest plan with Barry Diller to change the video space; Buckley is among the first. Silverman told me in July, when his departure from NBC Universal to start a new venture at IAC was announced, that he planned to run a lean operation. USA Today - October 5, 2009 Which U.S. city can claim the most brainpower? The Daily Beast crunched the numbers for 55 of America's largest cities and came up with Raleigh-Durham, N.C.  By Cara McCoy< A study by The Daily Beast Web site shows Las Vegas ranks among the bottom on its list of the country’s smartest cities.  By Andrew S. Ross Residents of the San Francisco metro area, that's who. At least according to the Daily Beast's ranking of "the relative intelligence of every major American population hub, from first-to-worst."  By Jaynelle Ramon Ask.com and Bobby Labonte are teaming up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure to honor breast cancer survivors and to pay tribute to those who died from the disease at the Oct. 17 race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.  By Chris Chamberlain We have seen comments that sometimes the authors of this blog seem to visit the same places over and over. By Motoko Rich Having ramped up her metabolism from magazines to online journalism with The Daily Beast, Tina Brown now wants to speed up book publishing. By Joseph Tartakoff The Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s 11-month old web magazine, is going into the books business. A new Daily Beast - Perseus Books joint venture, Beast Books, will print books written by Daily Beast staffers, according to the NYT. The niche: Uber-quick turnaround times. Authors will write up their texts in one to three months and e-book versions will come out a month later; followed by print copies. “There is a real window of interest when people want to know something,” Brown tells the NYT. “And that window slams shut pretty quickly in the media cycle.”  By Jay Yarow The Daily Beast will start publishing short books this winter to fill a gap that's opening as magazines struggle to stay in business, the New York Times reports.  By Joe Windish Tina Brown wants to speed up the publishing cycle of books:  By Jessica Pallay While many argue that the luxury customer is retreating, Shoebuy.com is banking on demand for high-end brands and has launched a new Website, Designer.Shoebuy.com.  By Shamila Janakiraman Citysearch, an online local guide and an operating business of IAC reportedly announced the addition of new features to its Mobile by Citysearch application for BlackBerry smartphones, which is available on BlackBerry App World.  MacNN.com - September 28, 2009 GarageGames has released its Torque 3D cross-platform game-creation software, after its six-month beta period. The app features a variety of tools for designing and editing either a game or simulated environment. The software's rendering capabilities work with photo-realistic simulation to create custom styles, and supports per-pixel dynamic lighting or normal and parallax occlusion mapping. With the integrated “world editor” users get full-access to all Torque subsystems, along with shader definition, terrain editing, or river and road creation functions. By Kate Kaye The Web is flooded with branded videos attracting rapt attention and millions of views from consumers through viral distribution. Many of the most popular viral videos are humorous. It's not a new concept, but the notion of producing funny video clips on behalf of brands in the hopes of obtaining viral buzz has become an advertising discipline in its own right.  By Daniel Lyons Nobody in their right mind believes the future of the news business involves paper and ink rather than pixels on a screen. We all know where the news business is headed, and what's more, we've known it for at least a decade. So why on earth are people talking about a bailout for newspapers?  By M. Amigot Magnify.net social video hosting and sharing site has launched a free iPhone app to let 3GS users submit videos to any Magnify video site. Later on, the app will be developed for other smartphones, including the Blackberry and Android.  Wireless and Mobile News - September 25, 2009 The Citysearch Blackberry Smartphone app has been updated with more social aspects including integration with Twitter and calendar.. Citysearch offers relevant information about neighborhoods all over the country. By Steve Smith For conference programmers like me, the last panel of the last day of a two-day event can be a dead zone of participation. You attendees know the drill. Fly-ins are catching the earliest plane possible. Your headliners are already gone off to their next high-level meeting. That final late afternoon panel at the bitter end can have more people on the panel than are in the audience.  BlackBerry Cool Blog - September 24, 2009 Citysearch have updated their BlackBerry app with more social functionality. The app offers relevant information for over 75,000 neighborhoods nationwide.  By Nicholas Graham The start of the schoolyear. Shiny lunchboxes. Dew collecting on new sneakers at bus stops cloaked in dawn. First tissues popping out of boxes. Antibacterial gel bottles already near empty. Lunch tables sprayed and re-sprayed with alcohol. Admonishments to “Wash your hands!” ring out twice as loudly, and often, this year.  By Jessica Pallay Shoebuy.com has joined the ranks of companies offering designer footwear on the Web.  Erictric.com - September 23, 2009 No doubt, YouTube is the central spot on the internet for video watching. It seems like everyone and their mothers know what YouTube is. Let me put it straight though; the player sucks. Sure, it does its job — but it looks like absolute sheisser. Who’s come to love those ugly shades of gray? Does it even really matter?  By Maria Woehr It seems like some bankers at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are seeking acquisitions and not only advising on them. By Scott Brown To: A. Sorkin, D. Fincher; cc: Hollywood; Re: Facebook Movie  By David Chartier The White House has introduced Apps.gov, a sort of App Store of government-approved social media services that agencies can use to hop on the cloud bandwagon. The directory is fairly large for a 1.0 offering, but more interesting is the fact that the US General Services Administration had to negotiate directly with social media services to amend their TOS.  By Olga Kharif For many consumers, the appeal of low-cost Web-based calling has long been clear. But many investors have kept their distance from companies specializing in Internet telephony out of concern the industry would struggle to make money. By Juan Carlos Perez Ask.com has launched a special version of its search engine site devoted to raising awareness and funds for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. By Kate Kaye As Ask.com struggles to carve out a niche in the search market, it is tailoring its site to appeal to specific audiences. The IAC-owned site plans to unveil a new target market in the next few weeks, and in the meantime, is setting its sights on the more general female audience through a new program tied to a breast cancer-fighting charity.  By Navneet Kaushal Ask.com, a leading search engine and operating business of IAC, today announced the launch of its Search for the Cure® program and charitable commitment to Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, the world's largest and most progressive grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists fighting to save lives and end breast cancer forever By Ruth Nightengale Despite the innumerable times the work we do is described as “not curing cancer,” there is now a search engine trying to do just that. Or at least help the cause along. Starting today, Ask.com allows you to personalize your Ask homepage in an effort to educate other users about the fight against breast cancer. While the focus of this partnership between Ask and the non-profit Susan G. Koman for the Cure is attention and education, Ask will also be donating up to 50 cents for each user who selects the Search for the Cure page skin and answers the questions on their branded ad panel at the top of their search page:  By Frank Reed What’s a great way for a search engine that struggles to be mentioned with the top search providers in the marketplace to get some traffic? Do something for someone else. That’s exactly what Ask.com is doing with its ‘Search or the Cure’ campaign which is designed to raise one million dollars to Susan G. Komen for the Cure group who raises money for breast cancer research. By Laurie Sullivan Ask.com launches Monday the Search for the Cure campaign, donating a percentage of the proceeds to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which supports a grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists. The search engine has agreed to provide support to Susan G. Komen for the Cure through 2010. By Neil McMahon Tina Brown has a knack for encountering talent meeting luck, and having both commune with the times in which she finds herself. By Elizabeth Judge The search site, which wants to take market share from Google, says it can carve a niche for a certain kind of user  Crain's New York Business - September 13, 2009 FreshDirect, known for its speedy delivery service, is taking convenience a giant leap further: The online grocer is installing in buildings across the city vending machines that spit out gourmet meals. Some 25 corporate cafeterias, including those at BBDO, the Associated Press and IAC/InterActiveCorp, are already on board.  By Peter Schwartz The family finance website, FiLife is sponsoring a contest called "Fix U.S. Healthcare In Just Three Words." Never mind that FiLife uses seven words to let us know about it! To enter the contest, you can submit a phrase via your Twitter account such as "Impeach Barack Obama" or "Hogtie Insurance Executives." My favorite would be "More Elmo Band-Aids." By Laura Ruane Tweet. Meet. Give.  By Peter Kafka College Humor dude Ricky Van Veen has graduated from his old gig to a new one, running a TV and Web video production company for Barry Diller. But he’s not leaving his old crew behind: They’re about to pack up and follow him to Diller’s IAC headquarters. By Kara Swisher Brad Garlinghouse’s appointment to a new job at AOL today as its new communications czar is yet another sign of an interesting trend for those keeping score of the comings and goings of top Internet execs.  By Ki Mae Heussner How to Choose Photos, Create Profiles, Draft Messages and More  By John D. Sutter Sometimes it seems like Barack Obama rules the Internet.  By Edward Barrera Social networking sites accounted for more than 20 percent of all display ads viewed online, with MySpace and Facebook combining to deliver more than 80 percent of ads among sites in the social networking category. VirtualWorldsNews.com - September 2, 2009 The last time VirtualWorldsNews spoke with Techno Source interactive director Ginny McCormick, it was shortly after the company released its Clickables line of toys. By Claire Cain Miller A Web site for local news hopes to fill the growing void in professionally reported local news by recruiting citizens armed with iPhones as reporters. By Catalin Cimpanu Time nominates websites like Flickr, Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia By Gina Piccalo The rise of the likes of Sarah Silverman and opportunities for up-and-comers like Harris Wittels testify to a change in audience appetites. By Andrea Fuller Amid unrelenting bad news, the Postal Service is striving to make the case that mail is here to stay.  By David Migoya Homeowners are returning to home-remodeling projects as the economy thaws, according to a new survey, though they remain tentative and large-scale makeovers are no longer the norm. The analysis by ServiceMagic.com in Golden found that in the second quarter of the year, home-remodeling projects, though picking up, are shrinking to more manageable and affordable sizes, such as countertops or small bathrooms.  By Jen Matteis If you remember Streeter Seidell from high school (he graduated from Daniel Hand High School in 2001) perhaps you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he’s now the co-host of a new MTV show called Pranked.  By Mai Ling If buying a home isn't an option right now, a remodel might be just what you need.  By Pete Barlas One of the big questions of the pending Yahoo-Microsoft search pact -- Will Yahoo replace its search on mobile devices with Microsoft's search? -- remains unanswered. By Geoffrey A. Fowler Emailing has done little to make communication more expressive. But now Yahoo is trying to make emailing more social.  By Michael Shields Just a month after the company relaunched its heavily-trafficked homepage, Yahoo unveiled a series of improvements to three of its core products: Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Search. By Vince Veneziani and Nick Mokey You don't have drive to a Neiman Marcus to find great clothes. By using the Internet, you can save yourself time and money, while creating a unique fashion style. There are tons of web sites offering all kinds of fashions, from geeky t-shirts to designer jeans.  By Nat Worden IAC/InterActive Corp. used to be a growth stock, but recent events have shown that its hodge-podge of Internet businesses has now become a ripe target for value investors. By Joseph Tanz And you thought your coworkers were jerks. Since 2007, writer-comedians Amir Blumenfeld and Streeter Seidell of fratty yuk-yuk site CollegeHumor.com have engaged in an escalating prank war, duping each other with gags like nonexistent blind dates and hostile stand-up audiences. They posted seven videos over two years, drawing 10 million viewers to their ante-upping antics. In the last installment, conducted in March after an 18-month hiatus, Seidell tricked Blumenfeld into believing he'd won $500,000 for sinking a half-court basketball shot while blindfolded. (He totally missed—psyche!) Wired spoke with the duo about the philosophy and morality of hoaxing: Is there such a thing as going too far? By Tom Krazit Yahoo! increased the social graces of its core products Monday, with a nod to its new home page and a declaration that it's not done with search just yet. By Paula Marttila Videofy.me is a Swedish startup enabling online video content publishers to monetize their content. The company was founded in August 2008 by Robert Mellberg and Oskar Glauser, both having their background in Internet communications and advertising. Neither one of them is a huge video blogger but as working in advertising they kept witnessing the fastly growing gap between the online video content on blogosphere and the lack of ad solutions available for the long tail content publishers. Since the release of the first beta for four months ago they’ve been gaining traction among content publishers. By Maxine Shen The divisive daughter of Sen. John McCain -- Democrats kind of dig her softer side of the right wing ways; Republicans kind of don't -- will return to guest host the chat show for a three-day stint, starting on Sept. 9. She's stepping in for famously conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who is out on maternity leave. Tampa Bay Business Journal - August 20, 2009 Going out on a date in a recession can be a challenge, but according to Match.com, Tampa Bay is among the least expensive U.S. metros for a romantic night out. By Georg Szalai Music application has more than 50 mil users. By David Coursey Amid some harsh criticism there is actually a case to be made in favor of MySpace's acquisition of iLike, the "social music discovery service." No, iLike won't make MySpace high culture, but the purchase could benefit even small players in the music industry.  NPR - August 18, 2009 Obsession and perfection — those are just two of the themes in the articles that Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of the Web site The Daily Beast, recommends you read online this week.  Game Industry News - August 17, 2009 GarageGames, the leading technology provider for cross platform development, has announced a 50% discount off Torque 3D, its flagship game engine, for all current Blade3D owners. Blade3D is a game development SDK that recently announced it will soon cease operation. By Alex Ahlund We are just past of a year since the App Store launched and there are more than 60,000 applications released for the iPhone and iPod Touch. When we wrote our 2008 year-end app wrap-up, we had just surpassed the 10,000 app milestone. In early June 2009, the store reached 50,000 apps. At present, we are looking at a staggering 300 new applications being released every single day. How does the average iPhone user find the gems in this deluge?  By Kris Graft Non-profit PC gaming supporter PC Gaming Alliance said Wednesday that it added eight companies to the consortium, including major games retailer GameStop and Supreme Commander dev Gas Powered Games. Virtual Worlds News - August 12, 2009 The PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit organization focused on promoting the PC gaming industry, said today it had secured membership from a slew of new companies. Among the new members is freemium game portal InstantAction, in the news recently after hiring on Electronic Arts executive Louis Castle -- Castle was recently named InstantAction's chief executive. Among the game companies which recently joined the Alliance is Gas Powered Games. Its founder, Chris Taylor, had this to say about the PC Gaming Alliance: "By joining the PCGA, [we] hope to make contributions that keep PC gaming at the forefront of the industry, help it to overcome its challenges, and continue to fulfill its amazing potential." Already members of the PC Gaming Alliance are Dell, Microsoft, and Capcom. By Carly Milne Forbes is always awesome for telling us about the richest people in the world, top-earning tweens and the most financially powerful women in entertainment, but this time they're rating the best cities for singles based on coolness, cost of living, job growth, online dating participation, nightlife and the ratio of singles to the entire population of the city (the ranking is explained here). The results?  By Tom Kanshige It's one of the world's most successful retail launches in recent history: the Apple App Store. In only a year since its debut, the App Store now offers some 65,000 different apps. Apple claims more than 1.5 billion apps have been downloaded from its virtual shelves.  By Dylan Stableford Tina Brown’s Daily Beast continues to lure talent into its IAC-owned belly.  By Cord Kruse Gamasutra has published a new interview with Louis Castle, the new CEO of InstantAction parent company IAC. In the interview Castle discussed his reasons for joining the company, future plans for the browser based gaming service, and the launch of a new studio to create original titles.  PlayBBG.com - August 11, 2009 Betting that he can generate revenue by distributing casual games on the Web, Barry Diller recruited a former top Electronic Arts Inc. executive to run IAC/InterActiveCorp ’s gaming division.  By Tim Parry When do you know it's time to redesign your e-commerce site? That question was posed to a panel of three merchants during a session at eTail in Baltimore last week, and no one person had the same answer.  By Colbern Uhl IAC gaming operation launching two new studios  By Chris Palmeri ServiceMagic.com, a company that links home owners with local contractors, has come up with a formula to figure out if your house is a money pit. According to a survey the company did, 23% of Americans believe they are spending way too much to keep their house maintained. By Tameka Kee Looks like Electronic Arts can’t stop the exodus of senior talent ... gaming vet Louis Castle has left to head up InstantAction, the online gaming unit of IAC. Castle is replacing CEO Josh Williams, who will move into the role of chief technologist. By Christian Nutt InstantAction parent company IAC announced today that former EALA exec Louis Castle is the online game publisher/developer's new CEO, confirming earlier reports of a job change for Castle, who also founded Westwood Studios. By Kate Kaye Yahoo's search ad deal with Microsoft has been touted as a boon for competition. Yet, whether the deal will actually help Ask, the fourth largest search engine, is debatable.  By Brian Steinberg Tolerance of 'Messy' Media Prompts Testing of Top-to-Bottom Ads  The Independent - August 9, 2009 The Daily Beast is heading for Britain. After the success of Tina Brown's news and opinion site in the US, I can reveal that Brown has plans to launch a UK version within months. By Bill Carter When Regis Philbin sat in a movie house in Manhattan watching “Slumdog Millionaire” last year, the quiz-show scenes took him back. By Joe Nocera So you think your business has problems.  By Rebecca Gladden When internet search engine Ask.com decided to invest in NASCAR, it did so in a big way.  By Shawn Collins Epic Advertising has published the first issue of their new magazine, Winning the Web. Subscriptions are available for free at WinningTheWebMag.com.  By Keith Richman It has become fashionable to claim that it is impossible to profitably produce original video content for the web. After all, many high-profile digital studios closed after burning through millions in venture capital, while established media companies are finally making real money by streaming prime-time shows on their websites and through ventures like Hulu. The future of entertainment on the web, these people suggest, will continue to be driven by expensively produced “premium content” that looks a lot like today’s prime-time TV. Nothing could be further from the truth. By Barb Dybwad While it looks like the fate of the original CollegeHumor show is still up in the air, hosts Amit Blumenfeld and Streeter Seidell have inked a deal on a second show with MTV dubbed “Pranked.”  By Dan Frommer IAC's CollegeHumor just landed a second series on Viacom's MTV.  By John Cook the wildly popular online restaurant directory -- is hosting a big bash tonight in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. No specific reason was given for the party in the invite, but the company certainly has a lot to celebrate: a recent acquisition by IAC and an iPhone app that's recorded six million downloads.  NPR - August 6, 2009 Even when summertime seems to slow down the news, great stories continue to emerge — often at an overwhelming pace. So Steve Inskeep spoke to Tina Brown, the editor of The Daily Beast, for some thoughts on what's worth fishing out of that river of information. Here are her recommendations:  By Meliza Solan Tomasz Imielinski of Ask.com says search engines should be able to say, 'I don't know the answer'  By Andrea Walker Executives from the country top’s retail Internet sites are in Baltimore this week for an “e-tail” conference at the new Hilton convention center hotel. By Ronald Grover The onetime ABC programming exec and creator of the Fox Network has subtly shifted his IAC/InterActiveCorp's focus from e-commerce to media By Cindy Grayson Tired of the coffee and muffin scene? There are several full service restaurants that offer free Wifi in Seattle. Here are some websites that list local Wifi hotspots. By Todd Krieger The dog days of summer are fast approaching. When it comes to online video and online video advertising, these days aren't exactly hives of activity.  By Joe Mont How does Twitter make money?  Denver Business Journal - August 3, 2009 Online contractor listing service ServiceMagic.com said Monday it expects to hire up to 200 new employees at its Golden headquarters by year’s end.  By Karl Burkart A new report finds a whopping 200% growth in online video since 2006. What are the carbon implications?  By Ethan Lyon Are you trying to entertain, simply blast facts or engage your audience? How to convey a message is critical in the digital age, where news is no longer a commodity and perspective and presentation is everything. Depending on your message, there are numerous ways to communicate it. Through multi-media, experts, content aggregators and many more online tools, web sites can convey a relevant and targeted message to their audience. In this week’s top five, we will explore the many web content strategies to effectively communicate with online users. By Brad Kelly Most people in today's Internet age start their home-purchase mission online, where a seemingly endless supply of real estate Web sites confronts them. But which sites offer the most listings, and which the greatest bang for the browse? By Taylor Wimberly Sherpa is a new location-based service from Geodelic that was set to launch with the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G on August 5. Luckily, however, the app got an early release to the Android Market and it's now available for download. By Rachel Metz IAC reports 2nd-qtr profit though revenue is hurt by weakness in Internet ad sales By Kermit Pattison Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening.  RTTNews - July 29, 2009 Wednesday, IAC/InterActiveCorp. (IACI: News ), an operator of diversified Internet businesses, reported profit for the second quarter from loss a year ago, benefiting from other income, lower costs and expenses and the absence of loss from discontinued businesses. By Bryan Way Advertising: Truthful. Match.com offers plenty of specifics when it comes to who one wants to date and carries with it a guarantee that if a match is not found after 6 months, they’ll give you another 6 month subscription free. Their reputation is well earned. And at least they have a sense of humor.  C21 Media - July 29, 2009 US online video network Blip.tv has struck distribution deals with YouTube, Vimeo, NBC and Roku.  By Gillian Reagan After ten years creating online comedy content geared toward making frat boys chuckle from their laptops, CollegeHumor co-creator and editor in chief Ricky Van Veen is graduating to a new venture at Barry Diller's IAC. By the end of this year, he'll transition into a position as chief executive of Notional, a CollegeHumor spinoff production company that will create programming for the Web--and traditional TV--for all demographics, even (gulp!) girls. By Lucia Moses Meredith Corp., parent of women’s brands including Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle, struck a content-sharing deal with ServiceMagic.com, a database of 60,000 rated home-service professionals.  By Beth Wilson Navigating the Gap: So how can media companies, advertisers or bloggers really make money on the Web? Tina Brown, one of the keynote speakers at last weekend’s 2009 BlogHer conference in Chicago, said she may be closer to finding an answer. At The Daily Beast, which receives more than two million unique viewers but has yet to make money, Brown said the site is collaborating with brands to cocreate nuanced advertising that blends into its format. “You can create an environment that’s more subtle. That’s where the skill comes in,” she said, noting sponsored content will be clearly marked. “We’re very careful without being prissy.” By Lauren Shreman It hasn't been an easy year for New Yorkers, what with the fall of Wall Street, a media-industry shakeout and a significant decrease in consumer spending that has forced many of the city's venerable retailers--including jeweler Fortunoff and women's clothing chain Searle--to file for bankruptcy protection. By Ronald Grover Hiring NBC's co-chairman is more likely to lead Barry Diller to greater Web experimentation than back to television, says BW's Ronald Grover By Ronald Grover Diller, Silverman: Expect the Unexpected By Nat Worden Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, will leave after the fall TV season to head up a new media-content venture funded by IAC/InterActiveCorp. (IACI), the digital media conglomerate controlled by Barry Diller. By Andrew Vanacore Ben Silverman will be leaving his job as co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Movie Studios to head a new venture with Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp focusing on producing and distributing multimedia content. By Staci Kramer Add Ben Silverman to the growing list of entertainment execs who think they can change the programming world by knocking down the barriers between programming, advertising and marketing. Silverman, the outgoing co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios, spoke with paidContent soon after he shook up what should have been a quiet July Monday by announcing a move to IAC to start a new-look production company for former backer Barry Diller. He told me he let NBC Universal know a couple of months ago that he wanted to stay through the launch of what he sees as his first development slate for the network, including Jay Leno in prime time, then start a company that mixes his experience as a talent agent at William Morris, an entrepreneurial producer at Reveille and a Big Co. media exec. By Georg Szalai Video content firm spawned from CollegeHumor website  By Brad Tuttle and Erik Torkells User-review sites have changed the way most people plan their travel, giving us an enormously useful tool for evaluating hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and the like. TripAdvisor.com is the big kahuna, with more than 20 million reviews, mostly of hotels — but also less traditional lodging like B&Bs, villas and private homes — as well as restaurants and attractions. By E. Foley Wondering if Match.com is the online dating site for you? They're probably the most widely known dating site (although eharmony has been plastering our televisions as of late!). By Rafat Ali Earlier today we reported on a new spinoff multimedia production company out of IAC-owned CollegeHumor. Now we have more details on it: the new company is called Notional, and is headed by Ricky Van Veen, the co-founder of CH. He will be the CEO of Notional, and will transition out of his current position at CH by the end of this year. That means, he has plenty of time to buy a decent suit now, to get along with other TV suits... By Kevin Kinder The art of the prank is a delicate balance between fun and danger, practitioners say By Alina Tugend I’ve been checking out Internet dating sites recently. No, I’m not in the market (although my husband is a little suspicious of all this “research”). But since many of my friends use them, I was curious. And because everyone is looking to save money these days, I wanted to know if some sites were more effective — and therefore a better investment — than others. By Ronald Grover The media mogul predicts that Internet TV shows will be monetized as cable scrambles to avoid getting cut out of the picture By Nathania Johnson Dictionary.com is experiencing great success with their iPhone app. It has been downloaded 2.3 million times and has now been listed as one of Apple's 30 favorite apps. Plus, they're the #2 app in the reference category. By Tanya Irwin College slackers open their parents' pocketbooks  By David Needle The famous AskJeeves butler is long gone, but Ask.com is holding its own in the competitive search game.  By Michael French So developer relations with the iPhone and App Store has had its ups and downs (or 'Apps and Downs', ho ho). As we prove in our comprehensive list of facts and figures about the device and its distribution method, most of it has been up. That positive up swing has brought with it wave after wave of praise - and criticism.  By Harumi Ozawa Dressed to the nines on a balmy summer night, a crowd of young Japanese filled the reception area of a Tokyo wedding hall, a white mansion with Greek columns romantically festooned with fairy lights. By Ed Baig IPhone users may not know exactly what an accelerometer is. They're just wowed by some of the cool things an accelerometer lets them do. It's the component that changes the screen from portrait to landscape mode when the phone is turned on its side, or lets you shake the device to simulate rolling dice. It even allows you to turn the new iPhone 3GS into a compass. By Erik Piepenburg What if Tony and Maria had met on Facebook? If Anita Twittered, would she feel tweety? Those are some of the questions posed by “Web Site Story,” a video parody of “West Side Story” that’s making the virtual rounds. By Dan Frommer What's an iPhone visitor worth to Urbanspoon, the restaurant guide service bought by IAC? About 5 cents per month, according to a presentation the company gave last night. By John Koblin Rebecca Dana is leaving The Wall Street Journal for the Daily Beast, Tina Brown's Web magazine at IAC. By Tom Krazit Ask.com is still fighting for a piece of the search market, hoping that Nascar dads can give it a leg up against Google, The Intimidator of search. By Alexei Oreskovic The traditional media industry may be under fire as the weak economy crushes advertising spending, but companies and investors are scrambling to stake out territory in the new world of mobile content.  By Tricia Duryee UrbanSpoon, the restaurant recommendation service that got a lot of attention after being featured on an iPhone commercial and was bought by IAC, is making more than twice as much revenue from mobile users than it does from visitors to its web site.  By Brier Dudley Seattle online tech site Seattle 2.0 today added a new video channel that's going to include original content such as interviews and event coverage and shared clips gathered from the Web. By Mark Cohen The New York Times - July 9, 2009 Before he started Summit Series, an informal society of some 200 of the world’s top young entrepreneurs, Elliott Bisnow was just the head of a $2 million-a-year start-up facing a common challenge for a 22-year-old chief executive.  By Gary Wynn and Taryn Winter Brill 'Unemployed' Is a 'Scary Word': Dating Do's and Don'ts for Jobless Men By Julia Angwin Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley, Idaho, media fest got off to a gloomy start Wednesday, with downbeat panel discussions on the economy (getting worse) and the digital future (looking murky). By Beth Snyder Bulik Anderson Analytics Survey Reveals Consumers' Likely Interests, Buying Habits, Media Consumption By Virginia Nussey What do you look for in a friend? Humor? Compassion? Trust? In some ways Ask.com resembles an old friend.  By Jonathan Marino Like other listed holdings conglomerates, the seller continues to have liquidity issues, and still must repay lenders to avoid bankruptcy. By Joe Flint Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger wasted little time setting the tone for this year's Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. By Yinka Adegoke IAC chief Barry Diller has spent the last year building and then sitting on a pile of cash, which rose to $2 billion in the first quarter — only some $400 million less than its entire market cap of $2.4 billion.  By Dan Lagani I've always liked music and technology, so I was struck on several levels the other day when I heard the Police’s “Too Much Information” while listening to Pandora. First, I had to get over the fact that the song was nearly 30 years old—and that I actually bought the album on vinyl (Ghost in the Machine) when it came out in 1981. After I got past my age issues, what really struck me was how relevant the lyrics are today: By Anders Bylund Remember the Google Notebook tool? It's a handy way to organize your online research notes, republish them as blog posts, and generally massage your Google search results into something digestible. Don't get too used to it -- it's a dead tool walking. By Staci D. Kramer Broad-based online dating site Match.com is buying into the targeted subscription dating business with the acquisition of People Media from private equity firm American Capital Ltd. and various investors for $80 million in cash. The deal will add 27 dating sites with a combined 255,000 paying subs to the IAC unit, including BlackPeopleMeet.com, LDSPlanet.com, SingleParentMeet.com, SeniorPeopleMeet.com. By Jefferson Graham Sharing vacation photos and videos with friends has never been easier. New Web tools make it possible to tie together your photos, videos and thoughts in one central place — instead of, say, posting a few photos at Flickr, videos on Facebook or random getaway musings on a blog. By Nathania Johnson With all the attention that Google gets for its mammoth search market share, you would think it's impossible for anyone else to survive. But share does not determine profitability and, indeed, 4th place Ask.com is holding steady despite the volatility of external factors. The Wall Street Journal - July 7, 2009 Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans Tuesday for a research lab, digital-media apprenticeships, a technology-equipment bond program and other initiatives designed to create 8,000 media jobs in New York over the next 10 years.  By Richard L. Brandt Microsoft's Bing search engine is finally giving it the right to brag that it has the technical testosterone to compete with Google. Internet data firm StatCounter reports that Bing took 8.23 percent of U.S. searches in June, up from 7.21 percent in April. In the meantime, Google's share has dropped – albeit very slightly – to 78.48 percent from 78.72 percent before Bing was introduced. By Pete Barlas IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them. By Kenneth Li A debate over paid content that has riven the newspaper business and spread across the rest of the media sector is expected to frame discussions at the annual confab of media and technology power brokers and entrepreneurs in Sun Valley this week. By Robert MacMillan The global recession, shrinking advertising sales and fears that the Internet could render big media empires obsolete provide an ominous backdrop for executives at this week's Sun Valley conference. By Meghan Keane Microsoft's new search engine Bing has been aggressively trying to scrape away at Google's search dominance with a $100 million advertising campaign, but Ask.com has found traction betting a smaller ad budget on the racetrack. By Leena Rao Viralheat, the affordable social media measurement product that scours social video sites including YouTube, Hulu and Vimeo, and Twitter to deliver real-time results of consumer generated content on these sites, has exited private beta and added additional functionality to its monitoring service. You can read our initial review of the site here. Viralheat will now give users a real-time listing of blogs and Web sites that are actively being discussed and shared about a topic or brand.  LBS-zone.com - July 6, 2009 I got this tip off from Michael regarding an interesting contest that could get you some great recognition… and cash! Come up with an idea for a local search app, submit details, wait to be selected, submit a prototype, demonstrate it, Win!!  By Elaine Wong Coca-Cola’s Nestea is the latest brand to tap online-only programming. CTRL, which launches on sites like NBC.com, USANetwork.com and Hulu.com this month, stars Tony Hale of Arrested Development as an office worker with the ability to change everyday reality by drinking Nestea. By Pete Cashmore It’s Independence Day weekend, and as people all across the US enjoy barbecues and fireworks, the top web companies are marking the occasion in their own ways: through custom logos and themes. By Olga Kharif According to a new report from investment banker JEGI, mobile media and technology sector had seen a 46% increase in mergers and acquisitions in the second quarter of 2009. In the first half of the year, the mobile industry had struck 16 deals valued at a total of $146 million. That’s up from 11 deals valued at $107 million in the first half of 2008. Impressive. By Juan Carlos Perez In the past eight months, Ask.com has unfurled a set of changes to its search engine that the IAC unit calls a success, although its share of U.S. search queries has actually shrunk during that time period.  By Anna Isaacs What would you do with a truckload of awesomeness?  By Georg Szalai Digital plans, merger talk due at Sun Valley confab  By Dan Wilson Although Palm is not an iPhone killer, they may be eating into the regular Blackberry market. Like other smartphones, the Pre has a touch screen display and retails for about $199 with a two year commitment from Sprint. We were able to find the Blackberry Storm for around $150 after a two year commitment and $70 rebate. Apple’s phone is about $200 also.  By Nicole Saitta Online dating sites are no longer seen as a taboo way to start a relationship. With the boom of sites like match.com and eharmony.com, it has become increasingly more difficult to make your profile stand out from the sea of other faces and names. By Joseph Tartakoff In January, Ask.com gained some market share, ending six straight months of falling share, according to comScore. Who gets the credit? By Lisa Fung When the much-anticipated revival of “West Side Story” opened on Broadway earlier this year, one of the most-talked about aspects of the show was the translation of songs and scenes into Spanish.  By Michael Smith Search engine gets results in NASCAR, so will it stay? By Chris Holt Fred Graver is an unlikely iPhone developer. His background is in comedy, where he's been both a writer and producer. He has Will Wright's hair, Steve Martin's casual wit, and the nerdy excitement of a Trekkie. He has arguably one of the driest Wikipedia pages ever.: " By Karl Greenberg Six Flags/Jeep Regional theme-park company Six Flags, Inc. is expanding a multi-year promotional relationship with Chrysler Group LLC that includes ride and drives, marketing programs and product placement of Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler vehicles at parks in 10 states. By Sally St. John IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them. By Nadine Maeser Genna Suggs and Clark Harris never thought they’d pursue careers as webmasters.  By Navneet Kaushal Ask.com has come up with a positive news that would be great for the search world. It has recently unveiled the proprietary database of 300 million Q&A pairs for the users in the United Kingdom and United States. By David Sarno T-Mobile today announced its new myTouch 3G smart phone, the next generation of its G1 handset, which was the first to deploy Google's Android operating system. By Tim Mullaney OpenTable Inc., the online reservation service, will grow by gradually adding more restaurants, rather than rushing to make deals with other companies, Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Jordan said. By J.W. Elphinstone IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them.  By Jason Snell In slightly less than two years, Apple’s iPhone has transformed how the world thinks of cellphones. Phone companies and hardware-makers alike have rushed to ape the iPhone’s touchscreen interface, easy access to the Internet, and bustling App Store. The iPhone is no longer the mind-blowing, category-busting product it was in the summer of 2007. Our minds have been blown, the category was busted, and now competitors such as Palm, Google, Nokia, and Research in Motion are fighting back.  Pandia Search Engine News - June 21, 2009 Ask and Ask Jeeves go back to basics and launch an enlarged question and answer database that allows for natural language search queries.  By John Krol While conducting the research and search engine checking I did while compiling this very eclectic list of search engines, directories, tools and stuff related, I realized that there are some very competitive trends in a few directions.  Ad Median Blog - June 20, 2009 We’ve known for awhile now that Answers sites are on the rise. It’s the very core of search - finding answers to your questions or problems. Bing, Hunch, and Wolfram Alpha have all recently launched with the goal of providing answers quickly to searchers. By Judy Foreman Dopamine brings people together and oxytocin keeps them attached, studies show. Is love just chemistry? By Asa Murphy The 2009 Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech) opened in San Jose CA on June 14. According to a conference representative, attendance was up by 25% this year compared to last year. By Virginia Nussey IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them.  By Lucian Parfeni The search site added a new question and answer tab on its homepage  By Phil Muncaster Search firm launches bid to improve market share By Meghan Keane The new iPhone is sliding into mailboxes and Apple stores around the country this week. But beyond all the bells and whistles that get consumers excited — email search, copy and past functions, a compass — the iPhone is also helping a lot of businesses find solutions to their more pressing problems of monetization. By John Roberts A man with unique insight into the events that are playing out in Iran is Moorhead Kennedy. He was the acting head of the United States’ Embassy’s economic section in Tehran when it was overrun by student protesters in 1979.  By David Callaway Commentary: Web revolution meets real revolution  By Scott Duke Harris Is Facebook a phenomenon — or a fad? Even as it has grown to more than 200 million users and become the global leader in social-networking Web sites, many people see it as just a nifty way for people to share information and images among far-flung friends and acquaintances.  PBS - The NewsHour - June 17, 2009 Click HERE to watch or read a transcript of The Daily Beast’s Reza Aslan discuss how social media Web sites like Twitter and Facebook are playing an important role in political protests in Iran. Barron's Online - June 17, 2009 Jefferies says the search giant may be benefiting at Yahoo's expense. By Tom Krazit If those chasing Google have anything to say about it, search on the Internet is going to become more about a conversation than an exchange of keywords. By Josh Lowensohn Netbooks are an incredibly exciting new product category, and one that's undergoing constant evolution. Designed to handle e-mail, Web browsing, and some basic software apps, they are somewhat limited when compared with most full-size laptops, but how limited? I wanted to find out. By Bill Hartzer Got a question? Well, according to Ask.com, they have the answer. By Matt McGee Continuing its move from being a traditional search engine to an “answer engine,” Ask today has announced that its “AnswerFarm” database has tripled in size, from 100 million Q&A pairs to 300 million.  WebUser.com - June 17, 2009 Ask.com has launched a new Q&A database with 300 million answers to common questions. By Eric Savitz New month, old story. SearchEngineWatch.com - June 17, 2009 We've known for awhile now that Answers sites are on the rise. It's the very core of search - finding answers to your questions or problems. Bing, Hunch, and Wolfram Alpha have all recently launched with the goal of providing answers quickly to searchers.  By Deborah Gage Zoodango, a startup that combines a geographical search engine with social networking tools so users can find and rank restaurants and make plans with their friends, is expanding internationally through a partnership with Citysearch.  By Mike Brody In these tough times, any kind of financial guidance is a help. Most people look to traditional economic indicators such as new home sales, retail sales and the gross domestic product when making decisions on their portfolios. By Juan Carlos Perez Bing better deliver a bang for Microsoft.  By Tom Steinert=Threlkeld The outpouring of interest in and passionate argument about IAC chairman Barry Diller’s declaration last week that the delivery of content over the Internet ‘absolutely’ will become a ‘paid system’ was instructive. Al Sacco /> CIO.com/PCWORLD.com - June 16, 2009 Palm's Pre "App Catalog" may be on the slim side, but it's a case of quality over quantity, as these great apps prove.  By Rachel Tompa Seattle-based Zoodango, a social site that combines map-based navigation and ratings of local businesses, re-launched nationwide today as GeoPage, according to a company announcement. The retooled site features new data on businesses around the U.S., resulting from a partnership with Citysearch. GeoPage uses an algorithm based on Citysearch and Yelp reviews, Zagat ratings, user reviews, and other ratings from similar sites to rank businesses in a given area. InternetRetailer.com - June 16, 2009 Title tags are the most important keywords on an e-commerce web site`s landing pages and e-retailers should create unique titles for each one. The titles should describe the pages content and should not be default titles such as "Untitled" or "Page 1," says Marissa Colwell, director of media at ImprovementDirect.com, a web retailer specializing in home improvement products that operates web sites such as FaucetDirect.com. Examiner.com - June 16, 2009 In just a few days, we will see an avalanche of people sporting the new iPhone 3GS, and no doubt many of those people will be first-time iPhone users. Now, I know everyone wants to test out that often-heard Apple motto of "there's an app for that," but before you go delving into that app store looking for the most unique iPhone applications, you might as well download some of the basics.  By Shaun Waterman The U.S. Army will allow soldiers at bases in the United States to access Web-based personal e-mail and some social media and networking Internet sites -- including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr -- from military computers. MSNBC - June 15, 2009 Click HERE to see The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown and fellow panelists on yesterday’s edition of Morning Joe.. The Associated Press - June 15, 2009 New York Observer to take over editing e-mail newsletter Very Short List The New York Times - June 15, 2009 Stephanie Agresta joined Porter Novelli, New York, part of the Omnicom Group, in a new post, executive vice president and global director for digital strategy and social media. She had been running her own consulting company and before that worked for companies like Barnes & Noble, iVillage and Register.com.  By Michael Wolff Over the past number of months a consensus has formed among media companies trying to do business on the Internet that advertising alone cannot support their efforts: It must be advertising plus subscriptions. This view has been most vociferously propounded by Rupert Murdoch, who, to my knowledge, has never been on the Internet, and by Barry Diller, who hosted a conference at the headquarters of his company, IAC, in New York, last week and forcefully declared that someone had to pay.  By Clay Dillow Are you more likely to spoon or to be spooned? Are alien abductions fake or real? How good are you at catching fly balls? Hunch.com wants to know, not for its own benefit, but for yours. Launched today, Hunch helps users find information and make decisions by comparing what it knows about them to what it knows about others like them. Hence all the questions: The more Hunch knows about your preferences, style, likes, dislikes, etc., the better recommendations it can make regarding which magazine you should read, which 1980s cult film you might enjoy or what kind of dog you should own. By Peter Lauria Boy mogul Jared Kushner's Observer Media Group has acquired an 80 percent stake in Barry Diller's cultural recommendation e-mail service Very Short List, The Post has learned. By Andrew Ross Sorkin Jared Kushner’s Observer Media Group has snapped up an 80 percent stake in the Very Short List, the entertainment and media e-mail tip sheet owned by Barry Diller’s media conglomerate I.A.C., The New York Post reported.  By Helena Oliviero Courting may change but romance thrives. Dim economy doesn’t daunt singles in quest for right relationships. By Thomas Rasmussen Recently, we’ve covered the hardships of online advertising companies. However, for a clear example of just how tough the environment really is, we point to the weakness at ValueClick, one of the few remaining publicly traded pure-play advertising firms. Amid an advertising slump and tough competition, the vendor has seen its first-quarter revenue decline 20% from the same quarter last year and its own projections point to a similar decline for the current quarter. With the advertising market seemingly trapped in the doldrums for the foreseeable future, we wonder if an opportunistic acquirer might consider a run at ValueClick.  By Mike Schuster They say there are plenty of fish in the sea; there seem to be just as many online dating services. The social stigma of online dating is long gone, and more social networks and free sites that focus on pairing up the lovelorn pop up each year. This leaves those enrolled in subscription dating sites such as IAC/InteractiveCorp.'s Match.com and eHarmony wondering whether their money's well spent.  By Misty Harris Wordnik: The lexicographer's answer to the Swiss Army knife By Emily Steel Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit has acquired local online media companies Patch Media Corp. and Going Inc. as part of a broader strategy to build the company's position in the relatively fast-growing local online advertising market. By Kate Kaye The local space keeps chugging along in what seems like a million different directions. As of today, though, AOL is the final destination for two little-known local content and community site networks. Small local community network Patch Media Corp. and young adult-aimed entertainment social play Going were scooped up by the firm, though exactly how they'll integrate with the rest of their AOL brethren remains to be seen.  By Helen Croydon Have you started dating in your 60s, 70s or 80s?  Barry Diller: The Internet 'Absolutely' Will Become a 'Paid System'. Time Projection: Within 5 Years By Tom Steinert-Threlkeld The days of the free Internet will draw to a close over the next five years, according to the chairman and chief executive of IAC, the interactive services company which operates a collection of more than 30 Internet sites which produce $1.5 billion a year in revenue. By Caroline McCarthy Barry Diller doesn't want to predict the future. By Staci D. Kramer The backdrop behind the front desk in the lobby of IAC's Chelsea headquarters shows glittering lights on a world map, each one signaling a visit to one of the company's websites?more than 835 million across its network in April from roughly 194 million uniques, according to comScore. Use a blue wheel and you can see a specific site: search engine Ask, Citysearch, Match.com, ServiceMagic, virtual worlds Zwinky and GirlSense, Daily Beast and more. But not as many as there were before IAC spun into five pieces, leaving this version a more manageable size with only 35 or so brands. No Expedia. No Lending Tree. No Ticketmaster. No HSN. Barry Diller's grand dream of convergence that once included cable networks and transactions has been pared down to a pure internet company that doesn't rely on synergies. By Jeanne Moos Click HERE to see a CollegeHumor preview in a CNN report on the recent Webby Awards.  By Randy A. Salas With more than 25,000 little programs to make the iPhone and iPod Touch better, getting suggestions from other users comes in handy.  By Amy Zimmer ‘FarmFresh NYC’ tells users where to find seasonal foods  By Tricia Duryee Through a very successful TV ad campaign, and the tagline, "There's An App For That," Apple has cornered the market on mobile applications, or so it seems. If going forward, the smartphone battle is turning into a competition over how many apps one phone has compared to another, the question is, is the limited catalog offering from the Pre on day one a deal-breaker?  By Christopher Hosford Will Microsoft's new search engine brand be able to draw users—and marketing dollars?  By Elizabeth Woyke Digital photo frames have been around for nearly a decade, but Matthew Growney says the devices aren't smart enough yet. Wall Street Journal Speakeasy Blog - June 8, 2009 Tonight, the crème de la crème of the Internet scene will be waltzing down the red carpet at New York’s Cipriani Wall Street to be honored at the 13th Annual Webby Awards ceremony. The digital kudosfest — which notoriously limits winners to five word-long acceptance speeches — honors “excellence online” in a mind-numbing 129 categories within four divisions: Web Sites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video and Mobile. By Roy Furchgott I don’t know if it’s the iPhone news that is causing it, but it seems everyone is cutting loose new software. By Brian Morrissey Up-and-coming sites eschew traditional online ad standards and create their own By Jenna Wortham Developers of programs for the iPhone have already managed to make a decent living selling hundreds of thousands of copies of games from their living rooms or garages. By David Carr At the Century Club in New York last Wednesday, more than a hundred people, many of them journalists, gathered for a farewell to Peter Kaplan, the outgoing editor of The New York Observer, a newspaper that served as a wiring diagram in a city where printed information and power have historically held hands. By Preston Gralla Find, view, and download from many popular video sites, including YouTube.  By David Radin Microsoft has attempted to re-energize the search engine race by introducing Bing, its own new search engine. Like many other Microsoft products before Bing, the company has done a pretty good job of stealing ideas from other innovative companies -- from Clusty to Kayak to even Google. And it put a pretty face on the new product. By Caol Lloyd If any of you remain undecided about whether the economy is bad, this may convince you. Paper wedding invitations - those romantic testimonials on letterpress linen that recall kinder, slower pre-digital days - may be on the wane. MediaBistro.com - June 4, 2009 These days we use sites like dictionary dot com a lot more than we do the actual paper-and-binding books. If you've ever used dictionary.com, you know it's maybe the worst looking Web site of all time. But today it looks kinda pretty, thanks to the Toyota Prius.  By Ann Smarty If you are a non-US Internet user or just have to deal with multi-lingual or international sites, you should find the following add-ons useful: By Edward C. Baig The most-lusted-after pocket computer in months is about to go on sale — and it's not even an iPhone. On Saturday, Palm and Sprint start selling the Palm Pre, a smartphone that stacks up well against Apple's blockbuster device, and in some ways even surpasses it. By Scott Van Voorhis Small, cosmetic changes are in when it comes to home renovations, and big is definitely out. By Justin Silverman There is no doubt that the highlight of Internet Week New York -- now under way -- is tomorrow night's Webutante Ball. To be held on the swish rooftop lounge of the Empire Hotel, it's a sure sign that the geeks truly will inherit the Earth. The Wall Street Journal - June 4, 2009 To advertise its third-generation Prius hybrid, Toyota is playing a bit of word association with potential customers. By Anders Bylund Not even Google can get everything right, every time. By Nathania Johnson If you go to Dictionary.com today or tomorrow, you'll notice a homepage takeover ad by Toyota featuring their hybrid Prius vehicle. It's part of a 2-day ad blitz campaign Toyota is conducting on the popular word lookup site, which sees 35 million visitors per month. By Ann Luisa Cortissoz If you're one of those people who loves good food, thrills at finding a great deal, and enjoys sharing your finds with others, then three is your new lucky number. Citysearch.com launched a new site in March called www.3buckbites.com that lets users post photos and brief descriptions of favorite bites that cost $3.99 or less.  Beet.TV - June 3, 2009 It is fascinating to see how advertisers are seeking creative solutions to integrate brand messages into online line video sponsorships. Actually, it can be a little horrifying as this spoof video by the CollegeHumor guys so cleverly demonstrates. Click HERE to view. By Jessica Mintz Microsoft's 'search overload' ads for new Bing site take indirect shots at Google By Pete Barlas Microsoft on Wednesday is set to officially launch Bing, but the new Web search engine has been available for a while. And it's getting a tepid response from some search marketers, who say Microsoft will have to prove it can pry users away from rivals Google and Yahoo before it can expect to get more ad dollars. By Laurie Sullivan Google Maps Local search has moved to the forefront in reviews and social applications. Google has begun rolling out a free local search dashboard that gives small businesses the ability to enhance listings in Google Maps. The dashboard provides statistics on the most frequently searched keywords to stats on local search traffic and ZIP codes.  By Michael Snider I love The Onion (http://theonion.com). Their satire is smart and on the mark. By Mike Shields IAC’s CollegeHumor has enlisted some of its top original in-house talent , along with the fast-growing video analytics firm Visible Measures, for Coca-Cola’s Nestea to create a unique contest and corresponding series of original videos--which as of late last week had reached a total of four million unique viewers. By Larry Magid Bing, Microsoft's new search engine looks like it could be a good alternative to Google. I'm not saying it will unseat the search giant, but based on my testing, it's a very worthy competitor. By Dan Moren These days, we’re used to managing our media on our Macs: We keep track of our music with iTunes and our photos with iPhoto. But what about our videos? Both iTunes and iPhoto can accommodate videos, but neither of them is adept at movie management. Yet the market for digital-video cameras, digital cameras with video-recording capabilities, and ultra-compact camcorders such as those from Kodak and Flip is rapidly growing—many consumers find themselves inundated with short snippets of video of their kids, their pets, and more.  By Charles Proctor Internet: Citysearch revamps site to fend off upstart rival Yelp. By Josh Lowensohn New reviews site NextStop made its public debut on Monday after a successful private beta. The site lets anyone write a quick 160-character take on local attractions from around the world. In comparison with other mainstream reviews services like CitySearch and Yelp, this size limitation forces users to keep their rants and raves short and to the point. By Verne Kopytoff Hoping to make inroads against Google, Microsoft made its new search engine, Bing, publicly available today.  CBR Online - May 31, 2009 Palm has unveiled new features of the webOS platform - Palm media sync, Twitter in universal search and App Catalog’s beta version.  Fox Business News - May 31, 2009 Click HERE to see Shoebuy CEO Scott Savitz discuss the site’s big sellers during the recession. By Chris Remo After operating without fanfare for several months, development studio PushButton Labs has formally announced its existence and stated its plans to target "emerging consumer markets" with web-driven games and other software. PC World - May 29, 2009 At the All Things D conference on Thursday, Microsoft unveiled the latest re-branding of its search engine. Forget Live Search--that's so three months ago. Now Bing is in! Launching in a couple of weeks, Bing hopes to make searching a little more useful and, judging from this video demo (warning: video contains Steve Ballmer), it looks a bit like the love-child of Google and WolframAlpha. By Jon Fine At the All Things Digital conference, CEO Ballmer shows off the tool he hopes will help Microsoft win back search business from Google Washington Post Weekend - May 29, 2009 you’re on Match.com, but your soul mate is swimming over on PlentyOfFish. By Jessica Mintz Microsoft to replace Live Search with Bing, aims for better shopping, travel, health results By Roy Furchgott With the highly anticipated June 6 introduction of the Palm Pre just a little more than a week off, a list of some of the core apps has been dribbling out. (Is the Pre the worst-kept secret in the history of cellphone unveilings or is it getting some well-managed buzz?) By Camille Ricketts Finally unveiled after years of development under the codename “Walkabout,” Google Wave combines popular features from across the web — feeds, shared documents, photo galleries, etc. — to redefine online communication. At least that’s the goal. Its creators, Lars and Jens Rasmussen (the braintrust behind Google Maps), even say they set out to break down traditional modes of communication — email and instant messaging — to find a system more in sync with how web users prefer to talk today. The result looks promising. By Rick Aristotle Munarriz There's a new Sam Raimi horror movie opening today, about a loan officer who evicts an elderly woman from her home and winds up with more than she bargained for when a damning curse is placed on her. Isn't the Drag Me to Hell plot pretty much what happened to Time Warner's AOL yesterday, only without the "I'm a Mac" guy in a supporting role? By David Wright, Ursula Fahy, and Sadie Bass Tongue-in-Cheek Reviews Correspond With T-Shirt Sales Going Through the Roof By Matthew Wurtzel The latest media personality to set sights on dethroning The Huffington Post as the leading news blog is bow-tie loving conservative Tucker Carlson, according to The Hill. By Josh Lowensohn On Tuesday Vimeo rolled out a new way to discover content on its service. Dubbed categories, the new system lets users explore content that's automatically been sorted by an algorithm that scans across Vimeo's groups and channels and picks some of the best and most interesting clips.  MSNBC - May 27, 2009 Click HERE for the first segment and HERE for the second featuring The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown and fellow panelists discussing President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court as well as past Justice confirmation hearings. By Anders Bylund Microsoft has always done a whiz-bang job of confusing its online search users. And it's about to get even worse.  By Navneet Kaushal It seems Ask.com cannot have enough and be satisfied. The site has been remodeled and redesigned several times within past 4-5 years.  By Mark Henricks Sometimes it pays to follow a good act. Marketing Vox - May 26, 2009 YouTube has struck a deal with a number of UK broadcasters to run pre-roll ads across their premium content, including episodes and clips from popular TV shows. By Nathania Johnson Ask.com is not renewing its contract with LookSmart. This appears to be a major hit for LookSmart as Ask Sponsored Listings revenue generated 89% of LookSmart's Company Publisher Solutions revenue in Q1 2009 alone.  By Mark Hefflinger Microsoft plans to spend an estimated $80 million to $100 million to launch a multi-platform ad campaign for Bing, its new search engine product, AdAge.com reported. By Ryan Singel Search Sucks And Microsoft is (Almost) Here to Help By Scott Kirsner The company that Scott Savitz and Craig Starble formed 10 years ago was, well, a classic 1999-era start-up. The pair ditched their high-paying jobs in financial services to start a website that sold shoes. They snatched the domain Shoebuy.com and rented 200 square feet of office space in Brookline . The crux of the idea was that they would own no inventory: They'd simply build a website, attract customers, take orders, and have the shoemakers ship the product. By Peter Applebome As the kind of guy who doesn’t need any particular item of apparel to get in touch with my inner animal spirit, I was skeptical when my friend Steve and his daughter Dorothy started enthusing about the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt and attendant Internet culture phenomenon. Yeah, right, I thought.  By Mike Musgrove Something strange happened this week in Amazon.com's apparel section. By Brett Widness USAToday has found a couple in the San Francisco suburbs who had a contractor come knocking on their door offering to remove a tree -- at a discount.  By Christopher Ming Ryan Quick quiz. Close your eyes and tell me what you think of when you hear the words YouTube. Here’s my free association: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sometimes really ugly. By Nathania Johnson Last year, Microsoft's Live Search began adding large images to the homepage with various "hotspots" that, when clicked on, directed visitors to various searches. Now, Ask.com seems to be taking that approach, with a twist. By Sara Noel Not everyone is frugal. Often, you might think frugality is nothing more than good old common sense. Sadly, what appears to be obvious for some people isn't even a consideration for others. Maybe you've heard frugal suggestions yet have never applied them. By Claire Cain Miller IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them.  By Alex Farber YouTube has launched a trial of pre-roll ads around content from BBC Worldwide, Channel 4, Discovery, ITN and National Geographic.  Marketing Magazine UK - May 21, 2009 Warner Brothers, Match.com, Activision, Renault and Nissan will be the first advertisers to show pre-roll ads on YouTube. The Wall Street Journal - May 20, 2009 OpenTable Inc.’s initial public offering priced at $20 Wednesday night, an underwriter said. That’s well above original expectations, suggesting strong investor demand.  By Meghan Keane Pepsi may not be rolling out its new retro logo in Europe for another year, but the soft drink giant is making use of its old school theme somewhere - in new media.  By Martha Stoddard And the winner — or maybe the punchline — is the black, white and red license plate with the state name along the left side.  By Kevin Abourezk A Web site devoted to postings about movies that go great with beer — and videos about dogs and cats in love — took aim at Nebraska’s online license plate survey.  By Chris Albrecht CNET announced the winners of its third annual “Webware 100″ awards today, and just like high school homecoming kings and queens, the 10 winners of the Photo & Video category were all popular kids. By Sara Holoubek Following Apple's announcement of 1 billion iPhone app downloads in just nine months, Compete released its quarterly Smartphone Intelligence report, indicating 28% of smartphone users have spent $5 to $50 on a mobile application.  By Luke Duecy Whatever it is you're looking for in a date - tall, dark and handsome, a good sense of humor, long walks on the beach - forget it. The latest criteria for a good match may just be good credit.  Gannett News Service - May 18, 2009 It may not have the romantic appeal of Paris on the eve of war, but the Internet is now the place for soldiers and Marines in combat to fall in love - through online dating services. By JW Elphinstone The estimate: $13,600. The reaction: a hammer. Daniel Bell is doing demolition work himself after a contractor told him how much it would... By Brian Morrissey In a sign of Hulu's growing clout for building brands, Pepsi has crafted retro-themed spots to run with Hulu's selection of shows from the 1970s and '80s.  By Peter Kafka From the funny-and-true! department: A biting clip from the dudes at College Humor satirizing the lousy ad options and mind-numbing ad jargon that dominate the online video business. Fox Business News - May 13, 2009 Click HERE to view Shoebuy CEO discuss April’s retail sales numbers. The Associated Press - May 12, 2009 Ask.com CEO Jim Safka leaving for personal reasons, President Scott Garell to take over duties  MarketingProfs Blog - May 12, 2009 Twitter has swept the world as an Internet phenomenon. At only 140 characters per "Tweet," this bite-sized-message platform has changed the way many people and businesses communicate online—allowing us to converse about the silly ("I'm eating a burrito") to the serious ("fires in Santa Barbara continue to spread"). By Amy Hoak Fewer homeowners may be starting complete kitchen remodels, but they're still replacing countertops and re-facing cabinets.  By Sherri Buri McDonald Consumers aren’t buying as many big-ticket items such as homes and cars. They’re cutting back on things like travel. But they’re still willing to plunk down $30 for the latest video game release. By Gillian Reagan Millenials, those coveted 14-24 year-old consumers of culture, don’t like losers. But they don’t like winners either. They like heroes—perhaps an underdog—who might “win” a small battle...and when he or she does, it’s for the benefit of society By Chris Holt Cross-platform titles are typically only released by big publishing houses with sweeping marketing campaigns and long development cycles. Only recently have we seen an attempt to launch serious browser based games that can be enjoyed both on the Mac and the PC. Instant Action.com is that rare site that offers free high-end browser-based games to gamers of all walks of life. More than 2-D flash titles, these titles offer 3-D graphics and a diverse gaming experience.  By Megan K. Scott So you're skipping the fancy coffees, brown bagging to work and going longer between haircuts.  By Scott Fromherz Plants, trees and shrubs, oh my! By Matt McGee The major search engines are often quick to point out occasions when they’ve done a good job anticipating searchers’ needs and providing instant answers to search queries right in the search results; see Live Search announcement about instant Oscar Award results as an example. (see original posting) By Brennon Slattery The White House this weekend opened a variety of social networking sites, including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts, presumably in an effort to show that just because he sits in the Oval Office, doesn't make our current tech-savvy president less cool. After eight years of relative opacity, this Web 2.0 version of the government comes as a welcome burst of fresh air and transparency.  By Jennifer Van Grove Twitter’s not the only hot social network to get the CollegeHumor treatment. Last week, the video production company took Twittering to the streets, but this week their “25 Random Things” video pokes fun at the Facebook meme that shares the same name.  By Meredith Today's Ypulse Sponsored Interview is with Meagan Kirkpatrick, Director of Marketing at MindSpark, host to a network of popular teen sites including Zwinky and GirlSense. MindSpark is one of the sponsors for this year's Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup Event. This interview is part of that sponsorship.  By Kerry Hall Rodney Seiwert's construction business once focused mostly on spec houses, those built without a buyer. By Mary Ellen Lloyd It's the equivalent of Christmas-time for home-improvement retailers as the spring yard and fix-up season kicks into full gear, but shoppers seem to be more focused on stocking-stuffer-like purchases than one-time splurges. By Jonathan Landrum Jr. At the National Kitchen and Bath Association's four-day trade show in Atlanta this week, industry executives were more optimistic than last year. Remodeling and green products are expected to fuel sales. By Douglas Quenqua IAC has expanded its portfolio of local search sites with the acquisition of Urbanspoon, the online restaurant guide and review aggregator that spawned one of the most popular iPhone apps. IAC already owns Citysearch, Insiderpages and Evite. By Scott Morrison Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp said it is in talks to buy Yahoo Inc.'s online-dating business, after posting a first-quarter loss due to advertising woes. By Staci D. Kramer Online restaurant guide Urbanspoon is now part of the IAC portfolio, adding more local flavor to the mix with Citysearch. The acquisition was announced this morning with the company’s Q1 earnings but actually took place Feb. 13; no financial details were disclosed but IAC has been vocal about staying with tuck-in acquisitions and I believe this one to be in the low double-digit millions. (That would be far below IAC’s $100 million self-imposed limit.) By Anthony Ha Urbanspoon, the startup behind a popular restaurant recommendation application on the iPhone, has been acquired by web giant IAC. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but TechCrunch hears it was in the millions of dollars.  By John Cook and Todd Bishop Internet giant IAC has acquired Seattle’s Urbanspoon, the online restaurant guide known for its slot machine-style iPhone application. The deal closed last month but was kept under wraps until being announced by IAC Wednesday morning in conjunction with its quarterly earnings. By David Lieberman His drive made him a winner – and a lightning rod By M.J. Siegler UrbanSpoon, a restaurant recommendation service, started out with a simple plan. It was three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O’Donnell who set out to see if they could build a company in today’s world without needing any traditional outside investments. Today, they can safely say they succeeded — big time. By Joan E. Solsman and Kevin Kingsbury IAC/InterActiveCorp. swung to a first-quarter loss as the Internet company said results were pressured by advertising woes. By Rachel Metz IAC reports first-quarter loss, though revenue beats analyst estimates  By Andy Beal Aside from bringing butlers out of retirement, Ask.com has been working to improve its search results. This week Ask adds Domain Navigation (what Google calls Site Links) to the first listing in its organic results. By Sarah Perez If your taste in online video-watching goes beyond the viral videos of mass appeal that include things like this drugged-up kid, Where the hell is Matt?, or even the latest internet phenomenon Susan Boyle, then you're going to love the new site called Nizmlab.  By Chris Crum Aims to Keep Users One Click Closer to Destination  New York Daily News - April 27, 2009 In Gary Green’s Long Beach, L.I., neighborhood, everyone’s got an opinion. But Green, who expects to soon spend about $5,000 to replace the roof on his house, won’t rely solely on tips from friends when picking a contractor. By Mary Elizabeth Hurn With last week's announcement that Owen Van Natta, a Facebook alum, would replace Chris DeWolfe as CEO of MySpace, the social networking giant still finds itself quickly losing more friends to Facebook.  By Rocco Stallvord You've probably seen the Wii Warioland Shake it experience on YouTube. Vimeo, known as YouTube's high quality competitor, now takes these kind of site takeovers to a whole new level with the Honda Insight campaign. Click HERE to see the commercial, but for the whole experience, you should visit Vimeo itself.  CBS News Face the Nation - April 26, 2009 Click HERE to see Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer’s conversation with The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and The Daily Beast's Tina Brown about President Obama's progress in his first 100 days in office.  By Carley Thornell Love in an Age of Recession means never having to say you’re cheap, according to dating and dining experts.  PCWorld - April 25, 2009 After a three-year absence, earlier this week saw the return of Ask Jeeves with the Jeeves butler returning as Ask.com's brand icon. The butler is again the face of popular search engine, which will be returning to its original name, Ask Jeeves, in the UK.  By Christy Bertelson With two graduations looming in my family — law school and high school — I am tormented by all the things it is either too late to do or too tech-driven for me to master: photo-shopping a montage of each graduate from birth and having it made into posters, booking the local rec center, ordering engraved invitations with matching reply cards or burning souvenir CDs of their favorite tunes. So I took a panicky breath and Googled: How do you throw a graduation party?  By David Silverberg Like a freshman finding his footing, CollegeHumor.com began as a viral video website but has grown into a TV powerhouse. CH's Sam Reich speaks about the relationship with its parent company, the success of Jake & Amir, and those swirling movie rumours. By Jason Kincaid It may be in the process of hiring a new CEO, but the MySpace machine keeps on rolling. Last month we got our first look at MySpace Local, the joint project between Citysearch and MySpace that combines the popular social network with Citysearch's extensive database of business listings. The new property has quietly launched the public, and you can check it out here.  By John Herrman Joining the distinguished ranks of Opera Mini and Bolt, Skyfire looks like it'll be coming to BlackBerrys fairly soon. That means they'll get Skyfire's desktop-grade rendering, server-side compression, and optimized Flash—including support for the likes of Hulu and Vimeo. BGR's leakster has already breathlessly reported that it's the "best BlackBerry browser ever", which frankly isn't that hard to believe.  Digital Arts Online - April 23, 2009 After a three year absence, earlier this week saw the return of Ask Jeeves with the Jeeves butler returning as Ask.com’s brand icon. The butler is again the face of popular search engine, which will be returning to its original name, Ask Jeeves, in the UK. MediaBistro - April 23, 2009 And thank whoever that they didn't throw any banners on the site. We're speaking of course of Barry Diller and Tina Brown's news aggregation site, The Daily Beast. The site's pretty famously known for its lack of advertising. Anyway, earlier this month the site struck a deal with luxury goods maker Bottega Veneta. By Edward C. Baig Internet predators, cyberbullies, websites and social networks that may be inappropriate for children — it's understandable why parents fret about their kids' activities in cyberspace. Especially because there's a wide perception that the youngsters understand technology better than Mom and Dad. By Azadeh Ensha On Tuesday, Google announced that it has started displaying Google profile results on name queries to help give users more control over their Google identity. By Jenna Wortham The island on ABC’s “Lost” has nothing on New York. For a recent transplant like myself, the city is a cryptic jungle, promising to deliver just about anything you want, but only if you can find it. By Craig Wilson My friend Rebecca asked me the other day what I was going to do when I grew up. I told her I didn't have a clue. By Lex Friedman Dictionary.com's new, free app for the iPhone and iPod touch offers a solid online dictionary. Dictionary.com boasts more than a quarter-million word definitions, and 80,000 synonyms to boot. By Mary Elizabeth Hurn Local online marketing company ReachLocal has launched ReachLocal Xchange, an ad technology platform, whose anchor publishers are the Fox Audience Network and Ask Sponsored Listings—Ask.com's paid search ads.  By Matthew Humphries Search engine Ask.com has decided on a re-branding once again. Back in 2006 it dropped the easily recognizable Jeeves butler character and shortened the Ask Jeeves name to just “Ask”. Now some 3 years later they’ve decided to bring Jeeves back, but with a new look. By Eric Savitz In an economy as bad as this one, sometimes your best job option is your old job. By Steve Evans It’s what the customers want, says search firm By Ed O'Keefe Imagine this: You’re at a new neighborhood boutique restaurant with your better half for Friday date night and are looking forward to epicurean brilliance and great service. Over the next hour, your server who never seems to be available, allows your wine glasses to go dry, gets your order wrong and doesn’t even offer dessert. Not living up to your expectations or the price, you whip out your mobile device and write a scathing user review on your favorite local search web site. Instantly your voice is heard by millions of like-minded consumers as this information is picked up by the other related web sites, blogs and web services offering aggregated consumer reviews.  By Wade GarageGames, has partnered with Firelight Technologies, a world-wide industry leader in game audio systems, to offer FMOD Ex to all Torque developers. By Georgina Prodhan Internet search engine Ask.com is bringing back Jeeves, the quintessentially English butler who serves up answers to search queries, saying its British users missed him after the company dropped him three years ago. By Maija Palmer Jeeves, the cartoon butler, is being brought back as the face of the Ask.com internet search engine in the UK, as the company tries to boost its user numbers and revenues. By Mark Sweney Three years after being rebranded Ask.com, search engine reverts to Ask Jeeves in bid to take on Google By Robert Andrews InterActive Corp’s decision to kill Ask Jeeves’ iconic butler, a year after buying the search site in 2005, must rank as one of the weirdest decisions in brand marketing. So now the site is undoing that strategy and reverting to its original name - in the UK only for now. By Ben Parr If you can remember the Internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before Google (Google reviews) (yes, that’s eons ago, I know), the search engine landscape had a face, and his name was Jeeves. AskJeeves.com, the predecessor to Ask.com, was a popular search engine which used the balding cartoon character as its mascot. In 2006, however, Jeeves was “retired” as the search engine’s representative. By Barry Schwartz It has been well over three years since Ask.com has retired Jeeves. Ever since then, many searchers and internet users have asked for his return. Today, Jeeves has come out of retirement, at least in the UK, where he returns as the brand behind the search engine. Visiting uk.ask.com or any of the URLs should now give you the revitalized Jeeves character, when accessed within the UK.  By Christopher Hosford Internet Yellow Pages site Superpages.com is partnering with online local guide Citysearch to enhance and better monetize online local search traffic. CNBC - April 16, 2009 IAC/InterActive Chairman and CEO Barry Diller says his company is looking for acquisitions right now, but just can't find any for the right price.  By Nicholas Carlson AC chairman Barry Diller has $2 billion in cash burning a hole in his pocket. But despite that -- and the recession -- he says valuations on the types Internet companies he'd like to buy are still too high. By Mary Elizabeth Hurn Citysearch and Idearc Media, which owns Superpages.com, have announced a partnership to help better monetize local search traffic across the Web.  SocalTech.com - April 16, 2009 West Hollywood-based Citysearch, the local online business guide owned by IAC, said Thursday that the firm has expanded its relationship with yellow pages publisher Idearc Media. By Caroline McCarthy Online-invitation service Socializr is hoping to be the FriendFeed for your social life. The site announced on Wednesday that it now aggregates invitations from MySpace, Facebook, Yahoo's Upcoming, Meetup, Google Calendar, and industry leader Evite (owned by InterActiveCorp) in addition to letting members send their own invitations. The new feature is called "Event Connect." By Jefferson Graham It's an old idea: a central sign-in that would let you log into many of your favorite Internet sites, eliminating the hassle of remembering multiple passwords.  By Kim Or How the kings of funny keep people laughing--and coming back By Jessica Kostek In an effort to raise awareness, Ask.com, a search engine and operating business of IAC announced that they will feature autism skins for users to display on their Ask.com homepage.  By Andrew McCormick Click fraud, the manipulation of pay-per-click advertising, reached its highest ever point in Q4 2008, according to the Click Fraud Index run by Click Forensics.  Gamers Hell - April 13, 2009 Black Jacket Studios today announced they signed an agreement with GarageGames to produce their first title, vehicular combat shooter Metal Drift. By Pepper Miller Relevance Is About Content and Culture By Nathania Johnson Ask.com has selected Anchor Intelligence to assist in reducing click fraud. Anchor Intelligence says it uses network security intelligence to identify fraud. Such methods include spam traps, honeypots, and stealth servers.  By Virginia Nussey The Internet marketing community is a generous one. By Jessica Kostek Sometimes when trying to find just the right word to describe an object or a person there may not be enough hours in the day to go through the dictionary and find that perfect match. Besides, who carries a dictionary with them other than English teachers and librarians? By Natalie Zmuda Tina Brown's Web Operation Partners With Bottega Veneta for Customized Ad Units, Sponsored Content. By Anastasia Hendrix I was already a huge fan of the online Dictionary.com site, but this brand-new app makes it even easier to invigorate your vocabulary on the go.  By Jose Castillo While Blu-ray players offer superior quality, odds are against it becoming a dominant force. Instead, expect online video to take off by the end of the year. By Stan Schroeder One of the most popular English dictionaries on the web, Dictionary.com, is now available as a free iPhone application.  By Scott Aronowitz WebWise Kids, a non-profit organization that develops simulation games to teach Internet safety, has partnered with search site Ask.com and pro auto racing organization NASCAR to launch "Ask.com Safe Search Schools," a program to recognize elementary schools that employ exemplary programs to teach Internet safety. By Leena Rao Dictionary.com, part of the Ask.com network, has launched a free iPhone app that delivers lets you look up definitions and synonyms from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, reaching into a database of more than 275,000 definitions and 80,000 synonyms.  By Gene Davis Some area companies thriving during recession Fox Business - April 6, 2009 Click HERE to view Fox Business correspondent Jenna Lee’s report on why Match.com and other online dating sites are seeing increases in traffic and membership against a tough economy.  By Connie Madon GM may be facing bankruptcy, but Match.com, the online dating service, had 20% more members sign up this past December than the year before. Followers of the sector won't be surprised -- rival site eHarmony recently did a study and found that traffic to its site tends to move in the opposite direction of a flagging Dow. By Dianna Dilworth Finding a date on the go has just gotten a little bit easier, thanks to new iPhone applications from Match.com and dating app developer Snap Interactive.  Clarkson Integrator - April 6, 2009 The only thing we have been hearing about lately is the recession and the devastating impact it is having on the economy. Between skyrocketing unemployment rates, crashing house prices and plummeting stock values, many students who have been relatively sheltered from these issues while attending college are just now realizing how bad it is in the "real world." By Amy S. Choi So the beta version of MySpace Local, a directory of local businesses, may be helpful for entrepreneurs who want to tap into the wealth of social networking opportunities online. It utilizes the CitySearch database of businesses, with three categories right now: restaurants, bars, and nightlife.  By Hideaki Tailor During President Obama’s first meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, he presented her with a gift: an iPhone filled with tokens of American culture. By Barbara Ortutay MySpace, seeking to evolve beyond its roots as a social hub for music and celebrity fans, is working with Citysearch to let people review businesses like bars and restaurants.  By Valerie Luu Just like most college students, Amir Blumenfeld spends his days viewing viral videos — except he gets paid to watch and act in them.  By Edward Barrera A new MySpace site, MySpace Local, will combine Citysearch listings, addresses, photos, menus, videos, maps and hours, with the social network community. By Joseph Tartakoff In recent weeks, Microsoft has admitted very publicly that it has bungled the marketing around its Live Search search engine. The company now plans to spend up to $100 million to fix its image in the market, according to a report in AdAge. By Abbey Klaassen and Rupal Parekh Web Giant Expected to Spend Up to $100 Million in Bid to Win Share From Google, Yahoo By Kurt Scherf Social networking sites like Facebook are growing fast, and they mostly rely on ads for revenue. Bringing in more advertisers is an important step because this market is not being monetized effectively, writes Parks Associates' Kurt Scherf. By Mike Shields MySpace has partnered with IAC’s Citysearch to launch MySpace Local, which will feature listings for a wide array of local business along with a collection of “city hubs”--i.e. Guides which allow users to search for businesses in specific U.S. Cities.  By Shyam Jha Tick, tock, tick. The clock is ticking for printed daily newspapers, especially second-place local papers, and most of them are in denial.  By Lianting Tu One wouldn’t easily associate the recession with a boom in the matchmaking industry. But surprisingly, reports from both online and off-line matchmakers show that interest in dating is up.  WWMT.com - March 30, 2009 The struggling economy is spelling record business for at least one industry: Online matchmaking. By Klaus Kneale Secrets from CEOs for whom the little hunk of hardware is the life breath of work efficiency. By Renee McGaw Pat Bartles started a new job in February, even as the national employment rate hit a 25-year high. By Chris Snyder Web 2.0, meet dot-gov. Dot-gov, this is Web 2.0. MarketingVox.com - March 24, 2009 Propelled by Valentine's Day, US tax prep activities, and a seasonal itch to travel, Flowers/Gifts/Greetings and E-cards, tax preparation and travel sites were among the few online categories that made gains in the shorter-than-average month of February, according to comScore's analysis of US data from its MediaMetrix service. By Michael Liedtke Google spices up its search ingredients by taking a page from rivals' recipe book By Verne Kopytoff People who search with Google may notice some changes to the results page following some tweaks announced today by the Internet giant.  By Greg Sterling I spoke to Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti yesterday, now that the new and improved Citysearch has gone into general availability. We talked about many things, among them how much traffic — and reviews — are coming from mobile. He said that the reviews are surprisingly long and substantive as well. The verbatim quote is “I’m blown away with the number of reviews” coming from the mobile app.  By Sana Syed A Dallas-based company says the economy is allowing them to help more people find their match.  By Ashley Daniels Here's another question that came up during the Awful Show podcast a few days ago: By Leena Rao Online dating site Match.com is releasing a native iPhone application for its 15 million members to date on the go.  SoCalTECH.com - March 23, 2009 West Hollywood-based Citysearch said this morning that it has launched a new, online blog site called 3BuckBites, focused on "cheap eats" costing less than $3.99.  By Thomas Warren Local search firm Citysearch will upgrade its service to incorporate social media and mobile offerings in a bid to become a “next-generation local guide”, according to CitySearch CEO Jay Heratti.  By Rodney Gedda Distributed video marketing campaigns now easier to manage  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette - March 21, 2009 An older bathroom can function just fine, but it could do a better job with a few improvements. By Don Reisinger Whether you're moving to a new place or you just want to be more familiar with your surroundings, there are a variety of sites on the Web that fill you in on everything from restaurants to businesses to apartments in your area.  By Chuck Barney Because men really do need their space. By Dean Takahashi There were a lot of happy game developers among the 200 or so people who attended Thursday’s iGames Summit in San Francisco, which was devoted to iPhone games. By Claire Cain Miller Citysearch is unveiling a new Web site on Thursday that will make the site more social and more local — and, the site hopes, staunch its loss of readers.  By Chris Remo Game developer and middleware provider GarageGames has revealed that Torque 3D, the latest version of its popular Torque development environment, will feature the ability to publish games playable directly in web browsers.  By Alex Crowley IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them. By Mike Fahey IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them.  By Brian Morrissey 'Urban Car Legends' examines popular auto myths By Tara Weiss Some people have quit their jobs over this problem, but you shouldn't have to go that far.  By Andy Chalk InstantAction has announced that it will be adding the classic online FPS Starsiege: Tribes to its browser-based gaming catalog.  By Nick Breckon A web-based version of Dynamix's classic team-based multiplayer shooter Starsiege: Tribes is soon coming to browser gaming portal InstantAction.  By Zac Bissonnette The very funny people at CollegeHumor.com put together a YouTube video that presents college in a more accurate way -- very different from the world you'll find in guidebooks.  By Paula Ebben Many businesses are struggling right now, but the business of finding love is going strong. In fact, internet dating is booming.  By Staci D.Kramer Only Hearst executives will ever understand why they unnecessarily put the staff of the 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer through an additional week of uncertainty before finally admitting today the print edition ends Tuesday.  By Mai Hoang IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them. By Ann Schrader Tom Sandoz finishes his last day of training at ServiceMagic Inc. while training manager D.J. Atchison assists Rick Parish. By Wagner James Au To launch his SXSW panel, “Comedy on Television and the Web,” moderator Ricky Van Veen of CollegeHumor.com opened with a provocative but arguable point: Unlike previous technologies, humor and not porn is driving the adoption of online video.  By Julie Kaiser Women have long escaped to their “Calgon, take me away” bathrooms with the soft lighting, big tub and scented candles.  By Tom Feran South by Southwest draws classic, trendy, edgy and everything inbetween, Here's Tom Wats performing in 1999.  By Kevin Purdy IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feelthe same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them.  By Ryan Weaver Last night, this Bostonist tagged along with Christine Liu, Citysearch's Boston editor, as she scarfed down bevy of one- and five-dollar deals at upscale restaurant Great Bay. By Chris Albrecht The CollegeHumor Show (CHS) finishes up its first cycle on MTV this Sunday, and though we weren’t huge fans of the show at the beginning, it has grown on us. The question is, did it grow enough to keep it on air? By Jennifer Van Grove Over the years we’ve shared with you a number of online video resources, from popular shows to how-to videos, and more. Now we’re showing you five great places to find the funniest laugh-out-loud videos all the time. By Gillian Reagan Your Facebook home page is about to get (even more) personal. The Mirror News UK - March 10, 2009 More people know how to set up a Facebook page than change a plug, according to a survey of lost skills.  The Baltimore Sun - March 10, 2009 CollegeHumor.com, a popular comedy Web site devoted to the (cough) collegiate mind, has done it again.  By Mary Elizabeth Hurn Longer search queries are becoming more popular year over year according to a report put out by Hitwise.  By Jessica Duff In today's web report, Jessica Duff shares two website that make planning your next party a piece of cake!  By Tanya Thompson They are the basic skills that guide us through the pitfalls of everyday life. But the ability to wire a plug, darn a sock or change a tyre appears to be lost to the younger generation.  By Dan Newling They were once considered skills essential for everyday life. By Marc Saltzman You may have heard already about id Software's beta of QuakeLive, a free web-based version of its popular action shooter -- but it seems they're not the only game in town.  InternetRetailer.com - March 6, 2009 Online shoe and accessories retailer Shoebuy.com is among the first online retailers to implement a new payment method called Moneta that enables consumers to pay for online purchases directly from their bank accounts.  By David Goetzl In an economic climate where marketers are often forced to make budget decisions almost week to week, programming that can be produced as often may have an added benefit for a network.  By Brad Cook The other team just scored and less than a minute remains in the game. Your side is down by four points. You sprint toward the center of the arena, where a new ball is going to drop. A well-timed leap gives you possession with your magno-beam and you fire the ball in the direction of a teammate, who passes it to another one close to the goal.  By Diana Falzone “Where can I meet someone?” is a constant question among singles. But, fear not, folks. There are several places to meet quality individuals.  By Janet Rorholm Matt Miller is president and founder of MobileDemand in Hiawatha. By Eric Konigsberg It was the plywood shots that would have given the average restaurant diner pause.  My Fox New York - March 3, 2009 Some women logged onto a dating Web site looking for the man of their dreams, but what they found was a total nightmare. Fortune - March 3, 2009 Contender: IAC/InterActiveCorp  By Aarti Shah Ask.com promotes Osako to chief communications officer  By Greg Dawson Here are some useful (if sometime obvious) tips and warnings on vetting companies from ServiceMagic.com  By Dave Goodboy The DJIA dropped below 7000 this morning. By Ashley Daniels I just read that Match.com launched a new, totally free, Online dating site called Down to Earth earlier this year. I thought I'd take a few seconds and review it, since we just went over nearly a dozen other sites available to you. By Frederic Lardinois The president's weekly video address was often called the 'YouTube address,' but after complaints from privacy activists, the White House has now decided to leave YouTube behind and use Akamai's content delivery network to embed the president's weekly address on the White House web site. By Garance Franke-Ruta The first Saturday presidential address on Jan. 24 was made available at the White House as a YouTube file.  By Amelia McDonell-Parry With unemployment numbers at a record high and businesses shutting their doors on nearly a daily basis, the average American is cutting back on expenses BIG time, especially when it comes to their social lives. By Christina Cheddar Berk Online retailers may find some golden opportunities hidden in the current retail malaise. By Joel Garreau OK, so: kissing. Here's what we know.  By Peter Cohan With all the gloom in the global economy, I got to wondering whether there is anything else going on in the world of business. I'm looking for growth because I think that's what will ultimately bring the economy out of the doldrums. Not surprisingly, that growth is coming from technology companies.  By Eric Griffith These days, the Internet is all about sharing media, from video to pictures to music. Here's how you can get started, and some incredibly advanced techniques to do more.discuss By Megan K. Scott Net services range from general to niche By Cliff Edwards One of the biggest downsides to playing most games is their lack of portability. Generally, you have to sit in front of the same screen on which you launched the game until you’ve finished or gotten too tired to play. By Chris Nuttall Browser-based gaming has been confined largely to simple casual games to date, but a new service launching today promises to bring next-generation console quality to the experience.  By Dean Takahashi InstantAction is announcing today the formal launch of its site that lets gamers play 3-D games in a web browser.  By Wagner James Au InstantAction today officially unveiled its technology platform, which purportedly makes it possible to play any video game in a web browser. Not just 2D casual games, but hardcore 3D games with high-end graphics that would otherwise require a next-gen game console, or a huge client install on the PC. Virtual Worlds News - February 24, 2009 InstantAction has unveiled InstantAction Technology, a new platform for bringing 3D games to the browser.  By Michael Smith Contrary to some of the sponsors and marketing agencies that scaled back their activities at the Daytona 500, Ask.com showed up with its CEO, president and a team of close to 25 for its first race as NASCAR's official search engine. Associated Press - February 23, 2009 Microsoft invites Web companies to consult on new advertising platform  By Kristen Dwyer Free dating website caters to college student crowd  The Houston Chronicle - February 20, 2009 Know a good plumber? The top referral services do Associated Press - February 20, 2009 IAC/InterActiveCorp shares rise nearly 4 percent after selling Europe's Match.com to Meetic.  By Ken Schachter Shares of Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp rallied Friday after the company announced plans to sell Match.com’s European unit to a French online dating company.  By Emily Brandon How to meet new people and ace your first date  By David Evans Mandy Ginsberg at Match just called to fill me in on the Match deal with Meetic. I’m busy talking with people about the deal, In the meantime I wanted to let you know that Match has a new CEO  By Mike Fahey Business magazine Fast Company has released a list of the 10 most innovative companies in the gaming industry. Where do Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony rank? By Jay Romano For many people, there is something magical about icicles hanging from the eaves of a snow-covered house. But to those who know houses well, icicles are a sign that something bad might be going on under the roof. By Eric J. Savitz Cashing in with IAC.  By Jay W Pennell In a day when sponsors are retracting their NASCAR campaigns and pinching every penny, one company that has committed themselves to the sport in a big way is Ask.com. By Lilla Zuill nvestors in Barry Diller's Internet media company IAC/InterActiveCorp could be holding a bargain, according to weekly financial newspaper Barron's.  By Emily Brandon The stock market slump may be contributing to a surge in online dating.  The Telegraph UK - February 12, 2009 Restaurant, embarrass, February and receipt also stump millions of us, according to a new study.  By Kenneth Hein Nascar viewers are going to get to know the Ray family intimately. Beginning with the kick off of the season at Daytona this Sunday, Ask.com will launch 36 new ads featuring this "colorful Nascar family." p>  By Ben Bourgeois Students may be less likely to date online By Don Reisinger Nielsen Online released its January 2009 U.S. search engine rankings Wednesday and not surprisingly, Google has a commanding lead. By Mari Kurisato Can you click your way to love?  By Kelsey Kudak Avoid the awkward conversations in bars or parties. Online dating sites are a sensible and economical alternative. By Rafe Needleman There's a full Web version of Goodrec, but the service really shines on the iPhone.  By Samantha Maziarz Christmann What’s the best value in matchmaking services?  By Allison Ross Florists are trucking in mass quantities of red roses, jewelers are pulling out their heart collections and chocolatiers are working overtime taking orders for chocolate-covered strawberries as they get ready for Valentine's Day on Saturday. By Christine Kearney In the latest example of how a small online video-sharing site has turned into a pop culture hit, a web site featuring American college humor took its fraternity pranks to television this week. By Verne Kopytoff Ask.com has finally found a way to beat its bigger rivals Google, Yahoo and Microsoft - Nascar racing. CBR Security - February 9, 2009 Symantec and search engine Ask.com have announced a multi-year, strategic partnership to deliver safer web search results.  By Jenn Lowther We’re living in an age of a perfect storm of technology and societal change. Increasingly, people are turning to social expression and interaction on-line versus more traditional venues for idea sharing and chatter. Cue the emergence of the social-media space as it exists today. By Chris Richards Popular Comedy Web Site Crosses Over to MTV By Simon Dumenco CollegeHumor's Ricky Van Veen on Building an 'SNL'-style Brand -- and Who Could Play the IAC Boss on His New MTV Show.  By C.G. Lynch As more third-party websites sign onto Facebook's Connect program, early data shows those sites are reaping traffic and registration spikes. While Facebook has proceeded carefully with the handling of Connect users' personal data, analysts say the social network would have greater business opportunities if it could gain access to more data at partner sites.  By Adam Frucci Last week, I got to play Xbox 360 on the world's largest, highest resolution screen. At 11 feet tall and 120 feet long, it was ridiculous. It made Panasonic's 150-inch plasma look like a toy. By Michael Calore Facebook has joined the board of the OpenID Foundation, the company has announced. The move is a ringing endorsement of OpenID, which already has the corporate backing of Google, Microsoft, IBM, PayPal and other web heavyweights.  Ecommerce News - February 5, 2009 In light of the error occurred at Google searching engine last week Ask.com, which is the Internet’s fourth leading search engine after Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search, announced that the company is partnering with Symantec to provide online users with the safety alerts on the potentially malicious websites. By Mary Elizabeth Hurn Ask.com has entered a multiyear partnership with Symantec Corp, which owns the Norton security software brand, to power the Safe Search function in the toolbar within Norton Safe Web. . By Gary Strauss Ricky Van Veen and Josh Abramson never expected they'd create a comedy brand when they began posting humorous photos and stories on the Internet as college freshmen. By Brian Stelter When a visitor enters Ricky Van Veen’s office on Park Avenue, it’s hard not to notice the blown-up photo of his face hanging on the wall. Mr. Van Veen, a founder and editor in chief of CollegeHumor.com, the successful Web site, is quick to explain, “It’s a prop!”  By Hemant Patel Search portal Ask.com , a division of the New York based Inter Active Corp., Tuesday announced a multi-year, strategic alliance with anti-virus software solution provider Symantec to deliver malware-vetted search results with color-coded ratings in an attempt to gain more traffic from security conscious surfers.  By Akansha Prasad Shows Users Site Safety Ratings Marketing Vpx - February 4, 2009 InterActive Corp., the parent company of Ask.com, has inked a "multi-year, strategic partnership" with Symantec, parent company of the Norton security suite. By Rory Maher IAC's earnings call today was particularly meaty, as Barry Diller shed new light on state of online advertising and talked about specific initiatives to improve the company's search business and overall profitability.  By Cade Metz Ask.com is prepping Google-like malware warnings - though it hopes to leave out the bit where the Oopma Loopma accidentally blocks access to the entire internet.  By Margot C. Lester You can recover from giving somebody a less-than-ideal birthday or Christmas present. But when it comes to Valentine’s Day, love’s not only not blind, but it ain’t unconditional either. During my seven years as a love advice columnist for Match.com, I’ve heard horror stories from men and women about inappropriate, unoriginal and down-right tacky gifts that have caused everything from giggles to get-out-of-my-lifes. Here is some of what I’ve learned:  By Megan Scott Here are things you can do to slash your energy bill this winter: By Michael Liedtke Ask.com joins forces with Symantec to provide answers about Internet security risks By Elinor Mills With Safe Search, color-coded icons accompany all Web results indicating their safety rating. Moving the cursor over the icon displays more information about that rating.  By Caroline Leavitt When it comes to finding and keeping true love, a lot of lonely hearts I know would willingly cast spells or light candles if they thought it would work. So what better time than a Valentine's Day month to look at a collection of books that promises clear directions on finding, keeping, and improving love? By Belinda Luscombe Ah, the eternal question: why is HE with HER? Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher thinks she has found the answer after studying the academic literature on personality and after poring over 40,000 responses to a questionnaire on an online dating site. A Rutgers professor and paid advisor for Chemistry.com, Fisher not only believes in romantic chemistry, but is zeroing in on specific chemicals. She spoke with TIME about her latest book, Why Him, Why Her: Finding Real Love by Understanding Your Personality Type.  By Heather Warlick Is your ring finger longer than your index finger? You might be a Builder. Are you a Democrat? So are many Explorers. Negotiators are skilled at emotional expression and dealing with people, and Directors are competitive and want to be the top dog. By Josh Lowensohn Around this time last year we put together a comparison of various video sites to determine which ones had the best overall quality and user experience. Since then, high-definition-capable digital cameras and camcorders have taken off, and several major video hosts have rolled out official support for wide-screen, super high-quality Flash video in response. So we think the time has come to take another look at what these sites are offering now and crown a new leader in the realm of HD video.  By Robert MacMillan The financial crisis might have sapped more than its share of 401(k)s, but it’s providing the news business with all sorts of programming ideas. By Ian Schafer Marketers Should Make Things That Work With the Social Graph. By Laura Landro HealthCentral Network is buying Wellsphere in another sign of the consolidation in the online health world, where too many sites are fighting for scarce ad dollars.  By Rea White Yates Racing has been a team in transition the past few months, but it is set to run with three NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers in 2009.  By Craig Stoltz IAbout six months into the adventure, Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast news-and-comment website is already far superior to Arianna Huffington’s fantastically popular supra-blog Huffington Post. Why, you ask? By Dianna Dilworth As Valentine's Day approaches, single consumers are shopping for love on the Web, and online dating sites are looking to attract them, making online dating a growth area for e-commerce.  By Sandra Gittlen A how-to on getting the most out of this advanced storage technology By Amanda Fung Media mogul Barry Diller continues to unload pieces of IAC/InterActiveCorp. and build the Internet company’s search business.  San Francisco Business Times - January 22, 2009 Ask Sponsored Listings bought Sendori Inc., a startup that offers an Internet advertising exchange. By Robin Wauters Ask Sponsored Listings, a division of Ask.com (itself a subsidiary to IAC) has acquired Sendori, a startup that introduced interesting advertising exchange technology about two years ago that enabled advertisers to purchase direct navigation traffic generated by top tier domain names, bypassing PPC advertising providers like Google and Yahoo when it comes to monetizing parked domains.  Domain Name Journal - January 22, 2009 In the first major domain company acquisition of 2009 Sendori .com has been acquired by Ask Sponsored Listings (operators of Ask.com), a division of Barry Diller's IAC.  DotSauce.com - January 22, 2009 The word is out, direct navigation from domain names is hot! It’s why Google recently launched AdSense for Domains and its why many people are pumping out mini-sites and landing pages for their high-traffic generic .COM names.  Domain Name Wire - January 22, 2009 Ask Sponsored Listings, a division of IAC, acquires direct navigation company Sendori.  By Kim Ode Stationery might be an endangered species, with engraved invitations on the wane and even postcards with who, what, when and where being replaced by electronic invites.  KRIS-TV - January 21, 2009 Bobby Labonte had a stressful 2008, as his petty racing team struggled with just two top ten finishes in 36 starts.  AppScout.com - January 21, 2009 New data from Juniper Research suggests that the value of the mobile dating and chatroom market will grow to nearly $1.4 billion by 2013, according to TechCrunch.  Wichita Eagle Blogs - January 21, 2009 Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon was among the large crowd that flew to Texas Tuesday with George and Laura Bush on Air Force One, renamed Special Air Mission 28000.  By Melanie Lindner Forget the Yellow Pages. Try these nifty online services instead.  Ventura County Star - January 18, 2009 Smaller CES crowd pleases exhibitors By Kristen Davos So excited for the College Humor kid's new show on MTV. By Megan K. Scott Here are some things you can do to slash your energy bill this winter; some take only a minute and don't require any upfront investment:  By Maura Grunlund A man cave, a room especially decorated for or by the master of his domain, is becoming a popular trend.  By Steve Leibson USA Today reported in November that video game sales were on track in 2008 to hit $22 billion. That’s billion with a “b.”  By Charles Scutt Jack Frost doesn’t only make your furnace work overtime during the chilly winter months, resulting in higher heating bills. The icy cold elements also can compromise other areas of your home, particularly your roof and exterior. Preparing your structure properly for winter and knowing what to do right before and after a snow or ice storm can save you thousands of dollars, say the experts.  By Andy Schatz I’d like to congratulate GarageGames for winning a FrontLine Award for its flagship game engine, Torque Game Engine Advanced.  The Nashua Telegraph - January 9, 2009 Here are some things you can do to slash your energy bill this winter; some take only a minute and don't require any upfront investment:  Bluhalo.com - January 9, 2009 Search engine Ask.com has explained how it takes advantage of semantic web technology as part of its online strategy in a post on its official blog.  By John Berman and Sarah Rosenberg The Savory Staple Rebounds with Diners during Tough Economic Times  By Jorge Estevez A growing trend got even bigger in the year 2008: Online dating services saw an increase in traffic according to several of the most popular companies. The Wall Street Journal - January 7, 2009 A new crop of online tools is making it easier to be healthier in 2009.  The Canadian Press - January 7, 2009 Here are some things you can do to slash your energy bill this winter; some take only a minute and don't require any upfront investment: By Yinka Adegoke IAC/InterActiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller said on Tuesday his company is biding its time and waiting for prices to drop before making any commitments in the merger and acquisition market. By Keith Stuart Once upon a time, not long ago, it looked like bedroom coding was dead – at least as a commercial pursuit. The nineties brought in a growing obsession with detailed 3D visuals, requiring ever-larger teams of ever more specialised coders, artists and designers. And while an indie gaming scene continued to flourish online, the fruits of those labours were largely unseen and unappreciated by mainstream gamers. By Javier Espinzoa The recession may be biting into profits for most, but singles looking to save money are boosting the online dating industry. GameSutra.com - January 5, 2009 Game Developer Reveals Front Line Award Winners, Unreal Engine To Hall Of Fame The editors of Think Services' Game Developer magazine, a sister publication to Gamasutra, have named the winners for the 2008 Front Line Awards, honoring the best tools used to make video games.  Reality TV Magazine - December 28, 2008 Reality TV Magazine recently updated fans on the bevy of reality TV shows announced by the major networks for 2009. However, it isn’t just the major networks that have filled their schedules with reality TV programming. MTV has eight new reality TV series in the works for 2009.  Game Industry News - December 26, 2008 GarageGames, the leading technology provider for independent game developers, has released an update to their 2D game engine for the iPhone. By Barrett Sheridan and Kurt Soller Five who are changing the face of the Internet. By Elise Finch Tis the season for wining and dining, and this year, people in the know are planning holiday gatherings that are not only fun for friends, but also healthy for the environment.  AllBusiness.com - December 22, 2008 Tis the season to show your employees how much they are appreciated and to celebrate the successes of the past year. The office holiday party can be a memorable, exciting event that can help boost morale, forge stronger relationships between employees, and help workers feel valued and appreciated. Without the proper planning beforehand, however, the event can be a big dud.  By Laura Schreffer and Sean Evans Tis the season to be charitable! By Rick Broida Need a list-minute gift for an office party, your trusty mail carrier, a beloved blogger, or anyone else on your list? As long as you have a printer, you can churn out something special in a matter of minutes. Here's a list of four stores that let you print your own gift certificates for in-person giving: By Peter Cohen GarageGames has announced the release of iTGB 1.1, an update to their 2D game development library for the iPhone. A free update for registered users, iTGB costs $500 for indie developers or $1,000 for commercial developers.  By Daniella Brodksy DIY has a sidekick. DYO — Design Your Own.  By Kirsten Williams As if I couldn’t be more jealous of the lucky people who work for CollegeHumor.com, now they're getting their own show on MTV. Computer Business Review - December 16, 2008 The online guide provides information on local businesses. By Howard Kurtz Tina Brown has just been briefed on a series of potential stories when she asks her staff about another element of her new Web site.  OCRegister - December 15, 2008 Don’t look now but today, a bunch of online stores are having blowout sales that some are even calling ‘Cyber Monday.’ This seems to dilute the recently invented holiday — the Monday after Thanksgiving when consumers supposedly turn to the web for deals after suffering at malls and other shops over the holiday weekend.  By Dale Hrabi 19. Because We Celebrate Fifth Acts  MyReviews.biz - December 14, 2008 Citysearch, a leading online local guide and an operating business of IAC, announced its new application for iPhone and iPod touch is available on the Apple App Store. The app means users can more easily access rich, local editorial content, browse nearby listings, sort by preferences and write reviews on-the-go. Search Engine Watch - December 12, 2008 Local search site Citysearch has launched an application for the iPhone and iPod touch. By Anil Sharma Citysearch, an online local guide and an operating business of IAC, reportedly has launched a new application for iPhone and iPod touch on Apple App Store. By Greta Guest Web sites use big discounts to lure shoppers: The brightest star in the retail universe this holiday season is online. By Yinka Adegoke IAC/InterActive Corp said on Monday it has sold its 30 percent stake in Jupiter Shop Channel, a Japanese TV shopping company, back to Japanese trading house Sumitomo Corp for $493 million. RTT News - December 9, 2008 By Mark Hefflinger By Douglas Quenqua Monty Python's meaning of extended life  By Dennis Schaal There is a large gap between the Grand Canyon and Disney World when it comes to Ask.com's "Most Searched People, Places & Things for 2008." By Robert Andrews Bring on the downturn! By Yinka Adegoke IAC/InteractiveCorp Chief Executive Barry Diller is sitting on a pile of cash but he isn't going to give in to investor demands that he buy back stock to rescue the company's ailing share price. By Scott Malone Fear of a deepening recession is spreading throughout corner offices across corporate America, prompting chief executives in all sectors to slash thousands of jobs as they scramble to find ways for their companies to survive the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. By Ben Klayman IAC Chief Executive Barry Diller took several groups to task at the Reuters Media Summit, but he reserved special disgust for CEOs at profitable companies who add to the country’s rising unemployment rate. By Nicholas Carlson Connected Ventures video-sharing site Vimeo has new adult supervision from parent-company IAC: former About.com SVP of product management Dae Mellencamp. Current Vimeo GM Tim Allen will return to the IAC mothership. By Nat Worden Web companies tapping local advertising markets by offering cheaper, more accountable ways to reach consumers are thriving at a time when the longtime dominators of that market - newspapers, radio stations and television outlets - are reeling from the stagnating economy. By John Koblin On the day the perennially troubled Radar magazine folded, its editor Maer Roshan got an email from an old friend, Tina Brown, with whom he’d worked at her own sunken ship, Talk. By Christopher Lawton Cyber Monday, the E-Commerce Equivalent to Retail's Black Friday, Sees More Modest Gains This Year as Business Matures By Stephen Shankland No escaping Britney Spears: 2008's top searches  By Lynn Bronikowski ServiceMagic CEO sees growth for referral network amid the downturn Metro/Metro.US - December 1, 2008 Facebook is for old people. The new trends cater to tots. By Chris Dannen The restaurant-review site is already a go-to guide for anyone looking to try a new place. Now the company is trying a new place itself: your neighborhood. That's right -- yours. By Andrew Keen It’s taken some time, but finally Tina Brown, the grande dame of the Anglo-American media, has gone digital. On 6 October, Brown – the former editor of the New Yorker, Tatler and Vanity Fair magazines and the author of last year’s best-selling The Diana Chronicles – launched a new web-only publication called the Daily Beast (www.dailybeast.com), after the Fleet Street newspaper in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop.  By Stephanie Rasch Part of Spirit of the Holidays 2008: I had only one thought when I stumbled upon Gifts.com: "Sweet Jesus, I'm saved!" By Saul Hansell Citysearch is one of the oldest names on the Web, founded by Bill Gross of Idealab on the clear-headed idea that the Internet should supplant Yellow Pages and newspaper listings as the best way for people to look up local businesses and for those businesses to advertise. By Jefferson Graham In the Internet search world, neighborhoods are the new local. That's the mantra for both longtime urban directory Citysearch and AOL's MapQuest routing service. Each has been forced to change strategies because of increased competition from Google and other locally focused sites such as Yelp and Local.com. By Pete Barlas Citysearch is betting social networking and video are keys to its future. By Kurt Soller Citysearch was an early online success. Can it survive Web 2.0? By Tim Mullaney IAC/InterActiveCorp redesigned its CitySearch local-entertainment Web site, adding social-networking features to increase advertising sales and encourage users to share advice about neighborhood businesses. By Amanda Fung Internet conglomerate IAC has given Citysearch.com a facelift. By Caroline McCarthy Citysearch is still ahead, but upstart rival Yelp is catching up. Good thing Citysearch has brought in some much-needed new social features. By Laurie Sullivan CitySearchCitysearch has ripped out its backend system and overhauled the local online guides to offer social and mobile application. The redesign is intended to let consumers uncover hidden gems in local businesses, and share opinions in views and reviews. By Rafat Ali Citysearch, the online local online guide which is part of IAC, is undergoing its first major relaunch in about a decade; for now it is in beta, here. Cognizant of tough competition from the likes of Yelp and other strong local sites, it has redone the entire site—adding all kinds of social features and granular local neighborhood level for search (from 140 local city guides to over 75,000 cities and neighborhoods), among other new functionalities. It is also launching a new mobile version, optimized for new handsets like iPhone and others, at m.citysearch.com. By Erick Schonfeld Citysearch is finally coming around to replacing its creaking site design with something a little more contemporary. Today, it is launching in a major rethink of its entire site in beta that drills deeper into neighborhoods, uses Facebook Connect as an optional identity system, and lets users vote reviews up and down. The beta will quickly become the default Citysearch experience. During a demo at IAC headquarters yesterday, Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti told me: By Kamelia Angelova How did IAC/Tina Brown's new Daily Beast do in its first month? FOXNews.com - November 10, 2008 Chinese doctors have offered the country's first diagnostic definition of Internet addiction, China Daily reported Monday.  Inman News - November 10, 2008 Trulia, MSN Real Estate move into top 10 By Ellen Gibson With pundit after pundit predicting the worst downturn “since the 1930s,” perhaps it was inevitable: The Great Depression is making a cultural comeback, resurrected at social gatherings, on fashion runways, and, perhaps, in the future marketing plans of some companies.  Standard & Poor's Equity Research - November 7, 2008 S&P REITERATES BUY OPINION ON SHARES OF IAC/INTERACTIVECORP (IACI; 17.81):  By Sean Topham WHAT nagging questions keep you awake at night? By Emily Schulman IAC/InteractiveCorp swung to a third-quarter loss amid costs related the company's August breakup into five publicly traded companies. Bloomberg - November 6, 2008 IAC/InteractiveCorp, operator of the Ask.com search engine, reported a third-quarter loss on costs associated with Chairman Barry Diller's decision to spin off four divisions in August. By Paul Thomasch IAC/Interactive Corp, the Internet media company, posted a third-quarter loss on Wednesday after spinning off four of its key businesses, but better-than-expected revenue helped push its stock higher. By Rachel Metz IAC/InterActiveCorp said Wednesday it swung to a third-quarter loss because of expenses from the former Internet conglomerate's August split into five publicly traded companies. By Rick Aristotle Munarriz You look different, IAC. Have you lost some weight? By Staci D. Kramer You can almost hear the relief from the Gehry-designed HQ as IAC reports what chairman and CEO Barry Diller calls “the last quarter when the costs of our spin-offs will distort the operating performance.” Post-spin IAC posted a 10 percent increase in revenue for Q3, to $369.3 million from $335.4 million. But charges, spin-off expenses and taxes related to discontinued operations helped push IAC to a loss of $14.8 million loss, or $.11 per share, compared with a profit of $70.5 million, or $.47 per share, for Q307. By Paul Thomasch Q3 loss $0.11 per share Incurred spinoff expenses of $20.8 million Revenue up 10 percent By Matt Haber 23/6's Election Night viewing party was schedule to begin at the comedy news Web site's Soho offices at 7:30. By 7:15, the office was packed. The keeper of the list estimated 400 people would be showing up by the end of the night. Carolyn Glass, V.P. of Marketing, said she'd been receiving RSVP's up until 6 p.m. and everyone asked if they could bring five friends. Associated Press - November 4, 2008 IAC/InterActiveCorp to report 3rd-qtr results in wake of conglomerate split in August By Michael Learmonth Heavy, Break Lay Off Staff As Competitors Targeting Young Men Proliferate  By James If you’re an indie games developer you might be familiar with Torque by GarageGames. It’s an affordable games engine and development studio meant especially for indie games developers while offering most of the features that more expensive games development kits do.  By Aly Walansky To celebrate, a fun survey from Match.com: By Shira Ovide Attention investment bankers: Barry Diller is back in the M&A market. By Baz Hiralai Is a global housing slump the right time for a company in the home improvement business to expand internationally? ServiceMagic--owned by Barry Diller's IAC/InteractiveCorp--says yes. Denver Business Journal - October 29, 2008 ServiceMagic Inc. of Golden has launched European and international divisions through recent acquisitions, the company said Wednesday. By Patrick Smith Cathie Black and Tina Brown famously clashed over the ill-fated Talk magazine, which Brown edited and Black was involved in killing earlier this decade. It’s clear from Brown’s interview of Black today at our EconWomen conference that the pair continue to have divergent views about the magazine world. Associated Press - October 29, 2008 IAC's ServiceMagic expands internationally by buying majority stake in European company  By Arun Sudhaman US media mogul Barry Diller expects digital media to profit from the current economic slowdown, and is actively seeking deals in China to support this view.  By Dave Caldwell Ray Esquibel wins cash prize from iWon By Tim Arango After Tina Brown’s signature Talk Magazine closed in 2001, she reached out to an old friend for support: Arianna Huffington. By Henry Blodget Most analysts continue to mouth the consensus dream projection that online display ad spending will grow next year despite a collapsing global economy. The sooner the market realizes that this is a hallucination, the better. By Mary Pilon The Dow keeps going crazy. And we, feeling helpless, are going crazy with it. By Hadassah Nymark Ask.com has launched a new UK TV campaign, created by US agency Hanft Raboy and Partners, rather than its local agency Fallon.  By Lloyd Grove Portfolio - October 23 , 2008 The former magazine editor and chronicler of Diana talks about her new website, Barry Diller, and the elusive nature of buzz. By John Gilliam Interactive's (IACI) Barry Diller has uncanny timing. Little more than a month before October's bloodletting in the stock market began in earnest, he completed a spin off of the multiple divisions that formerly comprised the IACI conglomerate. Many of those divisions were seen as low growth and / or a drag on earnings that kept IACI from achieving the kind of valuation it deserved. This has proven to be quite fortuitous timing, as it is hard to imagine that the financing necessary to complete these spin offs could have occured if attempted this month instead. By Frank Washkuch The Daily Beast, the new Web site of former Vanity Fair and The New Yorker editor Tina Brown, is targeting an audience of “busy, globally curious professionals and news junkies,” its executive editor, former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor Edward Felsenthal, told PRWeek via e-mail. MediaBistro.com - October 22, 2008 Does Dan Abrams have a future in comedy?  Which? News - October 21, 2008 Match.com sets up online dating consumer panel; Online dating website Match is celebrating the billionth email sent through its site by launching a new consumer panel. The match100 panel aims to provide a unique view of dating in 21st century Britain and will also be consulted on potential new services from Match. Find love online  By Katie Scott People looking for someone to keep them warm as winter closes in By Jefferson Graham Video sharing site Vimeo, which specializes in higher-resolution presentations than many competitors, introduced a premium service Friday for even better quality and usage rules. By Don Resinger Vimeo, the popular site that lets users upload videos and share them with friends, announced today that it has officially launched Vimeo Plus, a paid service that will offer users more features for $59.95 per year.  MarketingWeek UK - October 17, 2008 Match.com is launching a new consumer panel that aims to provide an "on-the-ground" view of dating in 21st century Britain. The "match100" panel will also be consulted on potential new services from the dating site.  By David Kender Vimeo, a leading online video host, rolled out a new subscription plan today that would allow users to embed HD video content to their sites, as well as white-label Vimeo's video players. Previously, only standard definition video could be embedded, while HD content was limited to direct viewing on Vimeo.com. The subscription for premium service costs $59.95. By Chris Albrecht As promised, the increasingly popular video sharing site Vimeo launched its premium paid service today, introducing a host of new features for those willing to pony up — and placing more restrictions on those who don’t. By Rick Turoczy As more and more Web users gain access to broadband connections, the ability to consume high-definition video becomes an option for more people. But where are they going to access that content? Los Angeles Times - October 15, 2008 Christopher Buckley, the son of famed editor, columnist and conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., is a fine writer and thinker in his own right, but seems to have achieved maximal fame only after slapping many of his father's biggest fans in the face. By Leigh Alexander GarageGames To Fund InstantAction Developers Torque engine developer GarageGames is planning to fund startup studios developing original IP titles for its InstantAction service and other platforms, the company announced today.  TechRadar - October 10, 2008 Sites that revolutionised the way we lead our lives. By Frank Washkuch Ask.com is conducting an outreach effort aimed at consumer publications and trade media to raise brand awareness of its relaunched search engine. Its new site was unveiled October 6.  Adrants - October 8, 2008 Giving the New and Improved! Ask.com a promotional kick, Hanft Raboy & Partners personified the nagging questions that sit fussing in the back of our heads -- or, in this case, on our shoulders.  Variety - October 8, 2008 NYT columnist David Carr looks over Tina Brown's Daily Beast and finds much to admire: The New York Post - October 8, 2008 Elle magazine killed a touchy profile on Jennifer Lopez, but reporter Kevin Sessums got his piece posted on Tina Brown's new Web site, The Daily Beast. By David Carr A new Web site had its debut this week, thedailybeast.com. But with more than 180 million of the things now online by some estimates, a new one would seem like just another digital drop in an ocean of zeroes and ones. Yawn. By Shira Ovide Barry Diller's restless, 47-year business career is yet again taking a new turn. After a dizzying run from mailroom to studio mogul, he quit his high-flying Hollywood career 15 years ago to plunge into home-shopping television and the Internet. By Racehl Metz In move for more queries, Ask.com makes changes to improve speed, relevance of results. By Miguel Helft Ask.com has a record of coming up with interesting innovations that are often copied by others in the Internet search business. Yet those innovations have done little to help the company expand its share of the search audience. Ask.com remains a distant fourth in a market that is overwhelmingly dominated by Google. By Yinka Adegoke IAC Corp's Ask.com is overhauling its Web search engine to deliver faster results and improved relevance as it bids to win share from market leader Google Inc. By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson The struggling US magazine industry is losing one of its biggest cheerleaders to the web as Tina Brown trades the glossy pages and lengthy essays of her past career for the hyperlinks and blog entries of a new site called The Daily Beast. By Jonah Bloom This Website Is Not Like Your RSS Feeds -- and Why That's Good for You By Shira Ovide Latest Redesign Aims for More-Efficient Web Searches in Bid to Raise User Numbers. By Staci D. Kramer By Marco R. della Cava That editing she-beast is out of the cage. Again. By Staci D. Kramer By Yinka Adegoke IAC Corp's Ask.com is overhauling its Web search engine to deliver faster results and improved relevance as it bids to win share from market leader Google Inc  By Mike Shields InstantAction.com employs a technology platform, which reproduces an elaborate graphics and multiplayer functionality  By Peter Cohen InstantAction, the 3D gaming site that runs in a Web browser, now works on the Mac. You can sign up and play now. By Rachel Metz Diller says IAC spinoff timing `extremely lucky' given debt financing it entailed  Virtual Worlds News - October 1, 2008 Green.com, the new virtual world from IAC rumored from this past spring, recently soft-launched to open beta (one tipster said it came last night). By Liz Gannes While comedy video sites like AOL and HBO’s This Just In, NBC’s DotComedy and Turner’s SuperDeluxe have died off after suffering through corporate bureaucracy, bad budgeting and lackluster traffic, CollegeHumor keeps out putting out savvy and hilarious original videos. By Jeff Bercovici When Michael Wolff heard that his old pal Tina Brown would be competing against him in the online news business, he memorably quipped that "last time I looked Tina was still having trouble getting her email." By Jay Alabaster Like a lot of 20-year-olds, Kae Takahashi has a page on U.S.-based MySpace, and there is no mistaking it for anyone else's.  By Laura Lane Watch out, Miley Cyrus — Jordan Pruitt is on her way to becoming the next teen pop superstar and media mogul. The Associated Press - September 17, 2008 An RBC Capital Markets analyst upgraded shares of IAC/InterActiveCorp to "Outperform" on Wednesday, saying that the Internet company's stock is now "too cheap to ignore." By Georg Szalai InterActiveCorp. chairman and CEO Barry Diller believes the social networking craze has gone too far, but the Web is only in the early stages of fulfilling its true potential as an advertising medium.  The Urban Network - September 17, 2008 RushmoreDrive.com, the Search Engine for the Black community, in partnership with the National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE) and the Pearson Foundation is offering a high school senior the chance to win a $2,500.00 scholarship by entering the RushmoreDrive.com High School Essay Contest which began at 12:01 a.m. EDT, Monday, September 15, 2008. By David Kaplan Fashion-focused Glam Media claims its latest venture is the largest vertical ad net aimed at African-Americans, Glam Black Life. Comprised of 50 sites—Glam Media's overall network is made up of 640 publishers—Glam Black Life says its collective sites give it four million monthly uniques at launch. By Ronald Grover Don't be fooled by the downsizing. Media companies in growing numbers of late are spinning off businesses or splitting themselves into two. By David Migoya Men and women know what they like, but it’s women who aren’t so clear on what men want. ReadWriteWeb - September 6, 2008 What we thought might have been an AIR app in the making, may be something entirely different. By Jon Fine Most of us lazed away the final moments of August and Labor Day weekend in a blissful, if temporary, reprieve from the working week. By Dave Mock Every day, the sun rises on Wall Street, and a plethora of professional analysts wake to issue new opinions on stocks. By Michael Learmonth After this month's split-up into five units, IAC becomes a more Web-focused company, and new startups are a big part of the strategy. By Brian Garrity IAC boss Barry Diller plans to go head-to-head with Disney's Club Penguin in the kids virtual world business. By Alana Semuels Is Google too white? No, we're not talking about the white home page that's so bright it motivates some people to change its appearance to save energy.  By Paul Bond It took him almost a year to accomplish and required winning a legal battle against Liberty Media's John Malone, but Barry Diller has finally split his Internet hodgepodge IAC/InterActiveCorp. into five separate companies. By Peter Lauria Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp empire is officially no more. By David Benoit and Kathy Shwiff Internet conglomerate IAC/InteractiveCorp officially broke apart Thursday, as Ticketmaster Inc., HSN Inc., Interval Leisure Group Inc. and Tree.com Inc. all began trading as separate companies. By Lisa LaMotta The Diller empire took on a whole new look Thursday with IAC/InterActiveCorp splitting into five companies, which hopeful analysts believe will offer something promising to investors. By Joseph Weisenthal A wrenching legal battle, a sharp downturn in the economy and nearly a year of planning later, Barry Diller's experiment in building an internet conglomerate comes to an end. By Rachel Metz Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp is completing its split into five publicly traded companies Thursday -- a move intended to give each business more focus and value than the previously cluttered whole. By Shira Ovide It took more than a decade for media mogul Barry Diller to piece together Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp. Now the challenge for Mr. Diller will be to show a smaller, more focused IAC can be a better business. By Nat Worden The new version of Barry Diller's Internet empire looks cheap to Wall Street, but Thursday's break-up of IAC/Interactive Corp. (IACI) could disappoint shareholders looking for a quick fix to its beleaguered stock price. By Ethan Smith On Thursday, Ticketmaster, a division of Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, begins trading as a standalone company -- just as the ticketing giant faces one of its biggest challenges. By Amanda Fung IAC/InterActiveCorp is about to get leaner and more desirable. By Eric Savitz Trading began yesterday on a when-issued basis on the four IAC/Interactive (IACI) spin-off companies, as well as the new post reverse-split, post-spin shares of IAC. By Lisa LaMotta IAC/InterActiveCorp is getting a bit less complicated and a bit more interactive. On Tuesday, it took the penultimate step before splitting its variegated holdings into more homogenous pieces.  Charlotte Observer - August 12, 2008
LendingTree, Charlotte's most successful tech company from the dot-com era, is set to return as a Charlotte-based standalone company – with founder Doug Lebda at the helm – next week. By Lisa LaMotta Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp said Monday its plan to split itself into five parts is set to be completed on Aug. 21, and regular trading of all the companies will start that day.  New York Magazine - August 7, 2008 Tina Brown has finally revealed something about her upcoming media Website, which she'll be launching this fall with the backing of her old pal Barry Diller. By Lisa LaMotta IAC/InterActiveCorp has the spins. Analysts couldn't be happier and Chairman Barry Diller is hoping investors will feel the same way. His plan to spin out IAC into five companies could prove lucrative for them.  By Cate Smithson Ah, slapstick comedy. It’s the kind of thing you can address one of two ways: you can roll your eyes in irritation, claiming that you’re far too mature to get a rise out of anything so juvenile as a person catching on fire, or you can lighten up and agree that watching a person catch on fire is and will always be really, really funny. By Michele Gershberg Tree.com, the online lending broker to be spun out of IAC/InterActiveCorp, aims to weather a sweeping credit crisis by expanding its services for student loans, insurance and other categories. By Rick Aristotle Munarriz No good deed goes uncopied. Just days after Google rolled out its community-driven Knol -- and several years after New York Times' About.com pioneered the guru-driven how-to site -- IAC is tiptoeing in with Life123. By Joseph Weisenthal If you must think of every new thing as the "something-killer" then you'd probably call Life123 an About.com-killer, or a Mahalo killer, or a Google Knol killer.  By Harry Terris IAC/InterActiveCorp's LendingTree LLC has installed a sales team to increase contact with buyers of its mortgage leads and win new ones, in part to replace lenders that have left the business.  Scoop World - July 25, 2008 23/6 (www.236.com), a leading comedic news site, is launching a 10-part animated series based on David Rees’ “Get Your War On” comic strip, which Rees created after 9/11 to offer a wry take on the emerging war on terror.  Hot Trends Analysis - July 23, 2008 Rushmore Drive is a new search engine from Barry Diller's stable. By Peter Kafka Took a while, but it's a done deal: IAC's CollegeHumor/Connected Ventures dudes finally have an MTV show. By Catherine Holahan Ali and Hadi Partovi, the sibling duo behind iLike, know something about creating a successful Web company.  By Scott Duke Harris Internet tycoon Barry Diller recently likened Facebook to a "Princess phone"- a communications fad. But now one of Diller's biggest brands, Evite, is reinventing itself as a competitor in the social network arena with help from Silicon Valley companies. By Kathy Shwiff IAC/InterActiveCorp has entered into agreements to finance the spinoffs of three companies -- Interval Leisure Group Inc., Ticketmaster and HSN Inc. By Tim Mullaney IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet company controlled by Barry Diller, may buy back stock after its planned spinoff of four divisions next month, Chief Financial Officer Thomas McInerney said. By Amy Hoak In order to sell a home in many places throughout the country, sellers need their homes to outshine the competition, must be very negotiable on price and be prepared for a months-long stretch on the market.  By Amy Hoak In order to sell houses in today's market, real estate experts say sellers need their homes to outshine the competition, must be very negotiable on price and be prepared for a months-long stretch on the market. By David Migoya Men and women know what they like, but it's women who aren't so clear on what men want. Associated Press - July 10, 2008 IAC/InterActiveCorp's search engine, Ask.com, and photo and video sharing site Photobucket said Thursday that they formed an agreement under which an Ask.com search box is displayed on Photobucket's site. By Rick Aristotle Munarriz Is that Google, flashing a little colorful personality?  By Sean X Cummings Think the Google/Microsoft/Yahoo triad has the game locked up? Think again. Find out why a major alternative could be just around the corner. By Chris Albrecht If it takes three of anything to make a trend, then video-sharing site Vimeo is definitely trendy (though they would pelt me with rocks for calling them that) with three months of almost hockey stick-like growth. By Michael Aneiro The junk bond market was flat Monday, with minimal trade activity on the first day after the long holiday weekend, while a trio of new issuers came to market to finance their spinoff from parent company IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI). By Eric Auchard Ask.com, the Web search unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp, has closed an all-cash deal to acquire Lexico Publishing Group LLC, the owner of popular reference sites Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com. By Corilyn Shropshire When she has money, Keliesha Gardener heads to Forever 21 or Kohl's to try to snag the latest gear.  By Leigh Grogan Actress Kate Hudson has great hair and great connections to stylists who keep it that way.  Mobile Press Register - July 1, 2008 She is 50 years young and amazing. Iman Abdulmajid, known around the world by her first name only, still looks very much like the young Somalian model who began her career in the '70s and became the muse for legendary designers like Yves St. Laurent, Versace and Cal vin Klein.  Next Generation - July 1, 2008 First, indie stalwart GarageGames took on the publishing elite. Now, it’s transforming 3D web gaming.  By Andy Hirsch Some industry experts have dubbed it "e-haggling." Others refer to it as comparison shopping online. By Michele Gershberg Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp stands to reap more than $1.5 billion in dividends from three out of four business units it will spin off, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday. By Michele Gershberg As it prepares to become a public company on Nasdaq, Ticketmaster is betting big on providing an exchange where consumers can trade their own tickets to concerts and sports events.  By Martin Robinson The public beta for Fallen Empire: Legions, the spiritual successor to Tribes, has just gone live on Instant Action's site. By Donna Kardos Executives of Interval Leisure Group, which is expected to be spun off from IAC/InterActiveCorp by August, introduced the timeshare-exchange business to investors Tuesday as one that stands to grow even in the recent economic downturn. By Jay Romano Warmer weather and longer days mean more time to spend out in the yard. But how do you want to spend that time: relaxing in a lawn chair, or walking behind a lawn mower? By Douglas Quenqua IAC Advertising Solutions is hoping to stimulate ad sales across its stable of Web sites by offering marketers the chance to buy media by "audience cube."  By Jessica Agi At 27, Dan Levy is one of the country’s fastest-rising stand-up comedians. With two movies about to pop and a daily one-minute talk show on College Humor, summer ‘08 is looking damn sunny for the bespectacled lad from Connecticut.  The Advocate - June 16, 2008 Starting Monday, June 16, the day before same-sex marriages can officially begin throughout the entire state of California, the online dating community Chemistry.com will offer a free seven-day membership to anyone living in California, according to a press release from the company. By Phil Gallo Aiming to bulk up its music-related properties, Madison Square Garden has acquired a minority equity interest in Irving Azoff and Howard Kaufman's Front Line Management, the world's largest personal music management firm. By Michele Gershberg FiLife, a personal finance venture from IAC/InterActiveCorp and Dow Jones & Co, will open its site to a public test on Wednesday after a year in development and much media speculation over its future. By Bob Tedeschi When economists say that consumers used their homes as A.T.M.’s during the recent credit boom, they are often talking about home equity lines of credit — a form of second mortgage popular among homeowners looking for a cushion against future cash shortfalls or a way to finance a new kitchen or a vacation.  By Steve Morgenstern InstantAction delivers an action-packed gaming experience in your friendly neighborhood browser.  By Elizabeth Penney Garnet Hill’s new 7,800-square-foot photo studio on Main Street in Bethlehem is expected to open at the beginning of July. By Rick Aristotle Munarriz Barry Diller's new media empire will continue to be entertaining but no longer Entertainment. By Faye Brookman HSN, owned by IAC Retailing, hasn't been the same since Mindy Grossman joined as chief executive officer in 2006. By Caroline McCarthy The rest of the world might not know about it, but MenuPages, an online compendium of restaurant and take-out menus for eight major U.S. cities, is a pretty big deal in New York. But is it ripe for the picking? A source close to MenuPages told us that the Gotham-based start-up has been acquired, or is close to it, but didn't know who the buyer was, which means this one remains a rumor. CBS4.com - May 28, 2008 Remodeling your home can be noisy, messy and overwhelming. For Coral Gables homeowner Luis Bared, hiring the right contractors meant trusting them with remodeling his front and back yard.  By Eric Torbenson Never has the world of online dating seen so many would-be matchmakers. Along with the high-profile pay sites such as Dallas' Match.com and True.com, a flood of free sites, such as PlentyofFish.com, niche sites and even social networking sites such as Myspace.com vie for amorous clicks.  By Barbara Quint After months of turmoil within Ask.com (www.ask.com) and its parent, IAC/InterActiveCorp. (www.iac.com), the acquisition of Lexico Publishing Group, LLC (www.lexico.com) and its reference properties, including Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com, could help distinguish Ask.com as a reference site. By Linda Stern Amy and Adam Geurden of Hollandtown, Wis., had planned a long summer of short, fun getaways with their kids, Eric, 6, Holly, 3, and Jake, 2. In the works were water-park visits, roller-coaster rides, hiking adventures and a whirlwind weekend in Chicago. The Associated Press - May 25, 2008 Olympics athletes in Beijing this August will compete in packed stadiums, with tickets selling out for all events -- even those that are not traditionally as popular, Ticketmaster's president for China predicted Friday. Reuters - May 19, 2008 Online dating site Match.com will announce on Monday an expansion of its partnerships in Latin America and Australia in two multimillion dollar deals. By Shira Ovide As part of its efforts to bolster its Ask.com search engine, IAC/InterActiveCorp plans to buy Lexico Publishing Group LLC, the owner of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. By Shira Ovide and Merissa Marr The two media veterans have agreed to end a months-old dispute over a proposed breakup of Mr. Diller's e-commerce empire IAC/InterActiveCorp. Mr. Malone's Liberty Media Corp., IAC's majority voting shareholder, is dropping its opposition to the restructuring, under which IAC plans to spin off four of its businesses into separate companies. Liberty had opposed the restructuring because it would have diluted its voting stake. By N’Gai Croal Most search sites use the behavior of the majority as a proxy to determine what you're looking for. But what if you're in the minority?  By Duff McDonald It's a few weeks before Barry Diller almost lost everything, and he is in his element, at the Four Seasons restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Movie producer Harvey Weinstein is here, as is activist investor Carl Icahn. Diller, uncharacteristically, is sharing the spotlight with CBS chief Les Moonves in a panel discussion about the future of media. By Michele Gershberg That eye for detail is credited with helping the network, part of Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp, climb out of a multi-year funk. Now she may well be the executive to take HSN to the public market, under a plan by IAC to spin off four of its businesses, including HSN. By Lisa Miller The site 'has never been limited to a Christian audience or to any subset,' says a company lawyer. Let's say you want to get married and you're thinking of joining an Internet dating site. Wouldn't you want that site to be just a little bit picky? By Peter Lauria Fresh off his legal victory over Liberty Media, IAC/InterActiveCorp boss Barry Diller is expected to meet with his board this week to restart the process of breaking up his company into five separate pieces, The Post has learned. By Michele Gershberg CollegeHumor.com's founders want to help their audience members fulfill "their stupidest wish ever" -- maybe a machine to dress them in the morning or a chute from their bedroom to the front door. By Zachary A. Goldfarb Arlington-based HealthCentral Network, a collection of health Web sites, and Barry Diller's IAC announced today that they are partnering to launch an online advertising network targeting manufacturers of prescription and over-the-counter drugs and other health-related products. By Michael Learmonth Barry Diller's IAC (IACI) is readying its own entry in the already super-crowded How-To market, PaidContent reports. The site will be called Life333.com and will launch in the next few months as part of IAC's growing slate of startup Web sites. Their angle: advice you can consume in three seconds, three minutes, or three hours. PC says tutorials will include video but not exclusively. By Jessica E. Vascellaro Revamping Firm Aims At African-Americans, Kids and News Junkies IAC/InterActiveCorp is planning a series of start-up Web sites, including sites aimed at African-Americans, kids and news junkies, as it prepares for a restructuring that will carve off most of its older media businesses. By Michele Gershberg RushmoreDrive, a Web search site geared to black audiences in the United States, will open its doors to the public on Thursday in a major foray for parent IAC/InterActiveCorp into Web content aimed at specific communities.  Radar Online - April 2, 2008 Former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown has more than her much-ballyhooed bio of Bill and Hillary Clinton coming down the pipeline: Radar has learned that the erstwhile "Queen of Buzz" is partnering with InterActiveCorp honcho Barry Diller to launch her own news aggregator website. By Ryan Kim Former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor Tina Brown has more than her much-ballyhooed bio of Bill and Hillary Clinton coming down the pipeline: Radar has learned that the erstwhile "Queen of Buzz" is partnering with InterActiveCorp honcho Barry Diller to launch her own news aggregator website. By Julie Naughton BeautyBank hopes to bring a whole new meaning to the phrase "only available through this special TV offer." The subsidiary of the Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. has signed a deal with Home Shopping Network [HSN], an operating business of IAC Retailing, to create a beauty brand that will be exclusive to the shopping channel. It is expected to launch in July. By Tim Arango In the battle of the billionaire media moguls, the protege won. A Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled Friday that Barry Diller could go forward with a plan to split his e-commerce conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp into five companies, thwarting an attempt by John C. Malone to block the deal and oust Mr. Diller. By Michele Gershberg Seeking new subscribers, Match.com is testing a Facebook app, considering a hookup with MySpace. Online dating site Match.com has made its own resolution for 2008: to get out and meet more people, or in this case, potential subscribers. Match is in the midst of a foray into Internet social networks, testing an application for online hangout Facebook, and seeks growth in new vehicles for its subscription service, according to Chief Executive Thomas Enraght-Moony. By Ethan Smith Adding momentum to its move into the business of reselling concert tickets, IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ticketmaster is expected to announce Tuesday that it has acquired U.K.-based Get Me In Ltd., according to people familiar with the matter. By Claudia H. Deutsch Not so fast. Corporate America appears to have had second thoughts in 2007. Frank S. Blake, who replaced Robert L. Nardelli as chief executive of Home Depot, sold off the $12 billion division that Mr. Nardelli set up to serve professional builders. By Doree Shafrir Media Power Punk of the Year, Barry Amassed Web Sites Into IAC, Built Frank Gehry Castle—Then Found Him-self Back at 2.0; What Will He Do Now? ‘We’re Not Valley Girls,’ He Says By Miguel Helft Will privacy sell? Ask.com is betting it will. The fourth-largest search engine company will begin a service today called AskEraser, which allows users to make their searches more private. Ask.com and other major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft typically keep track of search terms typed by users and link them to a computer’s Internet address, and sometimes to the user. By Chuck Salter Shana Fisher emails this challenge from her eighth-floor perch at IAC headquarters, a sleek, white Frank Gehry jewel on Manhattan's west side. Her office is immaculate, with four white leather chairs, a pink door, and a magnificent view of the Hudson River. Not that she notices on this Friday afternoon. By Andrew Ross Sorkin Barry Diller, the chief executive of the Internet conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp, said Friday that the company would invest $100 million to expand in China by creating services for local users. IAC will introduce its Ask.com search engine in China within two years, said Mr. Diller, who also said that his interest in buying AOL from Time Warner was “waning.” By Jessica Vascellaro Barry Diller's announcement yesterday that he will break up his IAC/InterActiveCorp empire solves his two biggest problems overnight. Not only will he be able to jettison the underperforming parts of his empire, such as his online lending business, but he will resolve the tension between him and his longtime backer, John Malone. By Geraldine Fabrikant Barry Diller finally decided yesterday to see if the parts of IAC/InterActiveCorp, his grab bag of Internet companies and services, are greater than the whole. In a move that is aimed at bolstering IAC’s lagging share price, simplifying its convoluted corporate structure and maybe even placating his old partner John C. Malone  By Christopher Kieran Frank Gehry’s first New York building, the highly anticipated InterActiveCorp (IAC) Headquarters, has been likened to the flowing pleats of a skirt, or the billowing sails of a ship floating along the Hudson River. The 10-story building near the Chelsea Piers Sports Center has fans and critics wondering what it says about the direction of the architect’s work. By Vinnee Tong IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet company controlled by media mogul Barry Diller, plans to relaunch its iWon.com Web site Monday with new games, more prizes and plans to add social networking functions. The site also now incorporates a search toolbar that links iWon users to the company's Ask.com search engine. By Lloyd Grove Barry Diller has been famous since the 1970s as a television pioneer (Cheers, The Simpsons, the Fox Television Network), as a Hollywood executive (at Paramount, he green-lighted Saturday Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Beverly Hills Cop) and, more recently, as an internet mogul-as chairman of both the online conglomerate IAC and travel-services company Expedia.com. By Olga Kharif Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) is entering yet another arena. The Web conglomerate, owner of businesses such as Ticketmaster.com and the dating site Match.com, announced Sept. 18 that it has acquired a majority interest in GarageGames.com, a game publisher and provider of programming tools for indie game developers.
By Stuart Elliott In recent years, LendingTree, the mortgage Web site operator, prospered with upbeat advertising that confidently told potential homeowners, “When banks compete, you win.” But last week, that campaign vanished, replaced with sober, straightforward ads that seek to educate consumers about “smart borrowing.” LendingTree is not the only financial marketer abruptly shifting gears. Weeks after problems with subprime mortgages began roiling the industry, advertisers are offering reassurances about their stability and ability to ride out the storm, whether a short-term dislocation or a serious threat.
By Ed Pilkington It would take a Herculean effort to remove the highways and restore life to the city's waterfronts. But, gradually, a sense of purpose is being injected back into the fringes of Manhattan - through new buildings. Nowhere is that more visible than on the lower west side of the city, along the Hudson river, where a whole succession of designs by some of the world's top architects are now in planning or construction. Top of the pile is Frank Gehry, who has just put the finishing touches to the headquarters of the internet conglomerate, InterActiveCorp.
By Abbey Klaassen Holding companies may be par for the course in the ad industry, but that is not the ambition of internet conglomerate IAC, which in the past four years has cobbled together a business from more than 15 acquisitions and transactions. Doing so falls on the shoulders of President & Chief Operating Officer Doug Lebda, whom CEO Barry Diller has tapped to glue together Match.com, CitySearch, Ask.com, Evite, LendingTree.com and Ticketmaster, among others.
By John Hockenberry There is an understated power and an overstated attention to detail in this mysterious work space rising out of the postindustrial rust and brick of Chelsea. The question of whether it’s a fashionably decked-out yacht trying to hitchhike up the West Side Highway, a majestic schooner of misted glass hoisting the flag of Diller’s Internet empire, or some eerie urban ship lost in the fog is quickly forgotten once inside. Unlike most of Gehry’s work, this building actually looks better on the inside. That’s not to say that the interior looks better than the exterior, but everywhere you go in this glass house of offices the exterior is on display. The workers inside get the best view of IAC’s lines and surfaces.
Click Link to Watch Video Barry Diller started out running home-shopping giants QVC and HSN. But his current online business, IAC, is becoming even more successful. Lesley Stahl reports…
By Paul Goldberger The swooping, white glass wonder that has risen alongside the Hudson River is the meeting of two notoriously strong-willed minds. Barry Diller wanted his company's new headquarters to make a statement - without costing a fortune - and Frank Gehry wanted to design a commercial building as exciting as his Bilbao and L.A. landmarks.
By Jon Fine Ricky Van Veen is editor-in-chief of CollegeHumor.com, a media play single-mindedly devoted to the (sophomoric) collegiate mind, and he's also co-founder of its parent company, Connected Ventures. He and his pal, company President Josh Abramson, launched CollegeHumor when Van Veen was 18. Today, at 26, he is the oldest of the partners. CollegeHumor is so focused that, aside from the snapshots of bikini-clad coeds, it may be wholly uncomprehensible to the over-40 set. But it's also a bona fide business.
By Jessica E. Vascellaro Home shopping network HSN is set to announce a deal today with satellite-TV operator EchoStar Communications Corp. to allow its subscribers to use their remote controls to purchase merchandise rather than picking up the phone. HSN, which is owned by New York-based IAC/InterActiveCorp, hopes to offer the service called "Shop by Remote" through numerous other cable and satellite operators as well.
By Ethan Smith and Jessica E. Vascellaro In a bid to expand its already considerable influence in the live-music industry, Ticketmaster parent IAC/InterActiveCorp is acquiring a significant stake in one of the biggest artist-representation outfits, Front Line Management, according to people familiar with the matter. The Front Line investment appears to signal IAC Chief Executive Barry Diller's desire to double down on live music, which was a bright spot last quarter, thanks to strong results at Ticketmaster.
By Michele Gershberg IAC/InterActiveCorp said it launched on Friday a new mobile application for its Ask.com Web search service to help consumers find friends, shops and services based on their location at a given moment. "Ask Mobile GPS," or Global Positioning System, was launched on Ask.com's Web site on Friday and will be available next week on Sprint Nextel Corp. through a deal between the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier and WaveMarket, which provides location-based services for mobile phones.
By Rachel Rosmarin Barry Diller wants his employees to hit the streets. Diller's employees at IAC/InterActiveCorp (nasdaq: IACI), his confusingly named grab bag of Internet outfits, are making a concerted push into local markets using a variety of strategies. That includes a new version of local reviews site Citysearch.com, which relaunched Wednesday with a new design and features like slick videos of shops and restaurants and personalized site navigation.
By Anita Hamilton IAC/InterActiveCorp, which owns popular sites like match.com, ask.com and citysearch.com, has launched a youth-oriented virtual world of its own called Zwinktopia, which lets members customize avatars, play games and explore cartoon-like chat rooms. Unveiled April 30 and aimed at netheads aged 13 to 34, the site is entirely free.
By Cheryl Hall Thomas Enraght-Moony has just been named chief matchmaker of the world's largest online dating service. This is no small order. The new chief executive of Match.com takes over a Dallas-based business that wants to be a billion-dollar enterprise in five years. That's in the realm of reality if Mr. Enraght-Moony maintains the trajectory that he and his just-promoted boss, Jim Safka, launched the company into.
By Jessica E. Vascellaro IAC/InterActiveCorp today will announce plans to launch a new community Web site for blacks, the latest move by a media company to better target African-Americans and other ethnic minorities online. The still unnamed site, scheduled to launch in January, will feature news, entertainment, advice and local business information tailored to the black community. The service will leverage IAC's stable of some 65 Internet brands, which include Ticketmaster, dating site Match.com and search engine Ask.com.
By Ray Waddell Ticketmaster's purchase of a majority stake in echomusic, the Nashville-based Web entertainment marketing company, gives the ticketing giant an important new presence in the critical direct-to-fan space. The move is the latest tremor in what could be a seismic shift in the concert industry as Ticketmaster's contract with Live Nation expires at the end of this year. Live Nation last year purchased MusicToday, far and away the industry leader in the direct-to-fan realm. Now Ticketmaster has upped the ante in what is clearly becoming a more fan-centric concert and ticketing business.
By Michele Gershberg Wayne Scot Lukas, who has been a "Stylist to the Stars" for about 20 years, is now designing clothes for a broader U.S. market. Lukas, who has in the past dispensed style tips on TLC cable program "What Not To Wear," introduces his LukaStyle label this Wednesday on shopping network HSN.
By Doug Tsurouka China is giving Ticketmaster a ticket to ride its vast consumer market. The global ticket seller, owned by e-commerce conglomerate IAC, (IACI) won a bid nine months ago to serve as the exclusive supplier of ticketing services to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Ticketmaster hopes to use the project to leverage more business in China.
By Shira Ovide Dow Jones & Co. and IAC/InterActiveCorp are launching an online venture focused on personal finance. Dow Jones said the venture will combine content of the company's products, including The Wall Street Journal, with IAC's marketing and technology prowess. IAC, run by veteran media executive Barry Diller, owns multiple Internet businesses including the Ask.com search engine and LendingTree, a Web site for loans. The venture is in its early stages and likely will launch during the second half of the year.
By Sara Silver After years of losing subscribers to racier rivals and new social-networking sites geared to young singles, Match has become the largest online dating site in the U.S. by subscriptions, with 1.3 million members. One big reason: older daters.
By Doug Tsurouka What a lot of folks consider entertainment wouldn't be the same today without Barry Diller. Now that Diller heads his own e-commerce empire, history seems to be turning full circle. The Hollywood Diller left 14 years ago increasingly relies on the digital and online technology in which he's become well-versed. In a recent interview with IBD, Diller shared his views on entertainment and media convergence...
By Kevin Kelleher For a long time, Barry Diller was sounding like the Rodney Dangerfield of the Internet sector. His labor of love, IAC/Interactive, got no respect from Wall Street. Diller has consistently shown that Wall Street is taking too dim a view of its earnings performance. According to Thomson First Call, IAC has beaten the Street for five straight quarters, with positive surprises ranging from 6% to 24% above analysts' consensus. Good thing, then, that IAC is finally getting some of the respect it deserves...
By Brad Stone Over the past decade Barry Diller has spent more than $20 billion to assemble a broad portfolio of Web companies. But he's treated them more as a disparate set of assets rather than a unified Internet company. That's about to change. With the $1.7 billion purchase last year of fourth-place search firm Ask.com, Diller now has an opportunity to begin mixing his various Web properties together...
By Peter Grant and Sara Silver Barry Diller, who became a Hollywood and television legend in the 1970s and 1980s through his skill at gauging America's taste in entertainment, is finding success more elusive in the Internet world. Over the past decade, Mr. Diller has done some 100 deals valued at $20 billion to create IAC/InterActiveCorp. But as shares of other Internet companies have soared, Wall Street has had a weak stomach for IAC. Now some investors feel that IAC is finally getting it right as it refocuses on Internet searches and other businesses that depend on Web-ad sales...
By Eric J. Savitz You certainly don't see the words "cheap" and "Internet stock" in the same sentence all that often. But that's just what you've got with IAC/InterActiveCorp, the New York-based retailing and Internet conglomerate run by legendary Hollywood deal maker Barry Diller. In no small measure, Wall Street's disinterest in the shares reflects the company's convoluted history and complex structure. Crunch the numbers, however, and IAC looks like a bargain...
By Sara Silver In the past decade, Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp has amassed a sprawling Internet and retail empire that includes Ticketmaster, television shopping network HSN, online dating service Match.com and search engine Ask Jeeves Inc. Now Mr. Diller is working on another project that will bring together the half-dozen Manhattan offices of his companies in a $100 million, 10-story glass tower in an unconventional part of Manhattan made up of warehouses and light industrial buildings...
Red Herring - December 5, 2005 Barry Diller is the CEO of a company most consumers have never heard of. IAC/Interactive isn’t a household name like eBay, Yahoo, and Google. But its web sites, which attract about 60 million customers a month, definitely are...
By Saul Hansell For years, Barry Diller of IAC/InterActiveCorp has been searching for the right blend of companies that will realize his lofty predictions about the future of Internet commerce. Now the latest object of his search is ... search. Mr. Diller announced yesterday that his company would buy Ask Jeeves, a distant fifth in the search market dominated by Yahoo and Google, for stock valued at $1.95 billion...
By Dwight Oestricher IAC/InterActiveCorp, the owner of TV shopping network HSN and Ticketmaster, is acquiring Cornerstone Brands Inc., a portfolio of print catalogs and Web sites that sell home products and apparel. IAC said it is paying $720 million, after expected tax benefits...
By Ken Brown and Dennis K. Berman Barry Diller is planning to break up his electronic-commerce empire, IAC/InterActiveCorp, splitting off its travel business into a new, publicly traded company called Expedia. Under the plan, approved by IAC's board yesterday, the company will split itself into a pure online travel company and an electronic retail-and-services company known as IAC...
By Eric Hellweg Barry Diller has long been an enigma to Hollywood and, frankly, Wall Street. And on Wednesday, when he announced InterActiveCorp's third-quarter earnings and made official his long-rumbled threat to stop providing earnings guidance to the Street, his mystery quotient shot up...
By Laura Rich In an interview last Tuesday, Barry Diller, the chairman and chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp, spoke about projecting financial performance, the confusion that his company's amalgamation provokes and whether, as a former longtime Hollywood executive, he would consider becoming the chief executive at Disney, where the current C.E.O., Michael D. Eisner, has said he will resign in 2006...
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