2005-2014

LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the size, scope and influence of weblogs continue to proliferate, business managers are faced with an increasingly important question: how to make your voice heard above the crowd? According to a research project conducted by Pew, there will be 34 million weblogs -- or blogs, as they known for short -- by the end of 2005. These blogs range from the completely ignorable...

An Internet standards body is hammering out new rules for tallying traffic numbers on Web sites and their content partners, in an initiative called the Nomenclature Project. Under changes proposed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and its members, publishers will have to work under more stringent rules about what can and can't be counted as part of their site. One prominent issue comes...

An explosion shook the offices of Albania's largest daily newspaper causing damage but no injuries, Associated Press reported. A bomb detonated Sunday at 2020GMT outside the offices of Shekulli "Century" in Albanian), the newspaper's editor�in�chief Robert Rakipllari said. Fifteen staff members were working at the time, he said. "We have had no conflict. We have had no threats. I'm sure this was...

The people of the Arab Middle East experienced a modest but potentially significant increase in political rights and civil liberties in 2005, Freedom House announced in a major survey of global freedom released Monday. The global survey, "Freedom in the World," shows that although the Middle East continues to lag behind other regions, a measurable improvement could be seen in freedom in several...

NEW YORK In 1985, for the first time, more U.S. TV sets were sold with remote controls than without. It was an amazing taste of empowerment for media consumers: The ability to control one's viewing habits with a click of a button would have implications for everyone from TV programmers and advertisers to consumer-electronics companies and even makers of Barcaloungers and snack foods. Americans...

NEW YORK Reuters' AlertNet, the humanitarian news portal, has won financial backing from Great Britain's Department for International Development to create services to help journalists reporting on humanitarian crises. The amount of financial backing was not revealed. AlertNet's "MediaBridge" services are being developed in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the South Asian...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dissident shareholder Carl Icahn on Monday labeled as "disastrous" a new deal set to be unveiled this week between Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit and Web search leader Google Inc., as the billionaire investor argued that AOL could do better. Icahn said in a letter to Time Warner's board of directors that the company appeared to be on the verge of a "disastrous...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Internet's free encyclopedia has begun an international fundraising effort. "In the coming year, the Wikipedia Foundation anticipates spending millions keeping up with increases in demand, improving our software, and continuing work toward our goal of providing free knowledge to everyone," said a message on Wikipedia.org. "We can do it with your help." In a message...

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger is to launch an alternative to the utopian, all-comers, anything-goes web site, and has raised $10m to hire experts to help edit it. A year ago Sanger, who worked on Wikipedia's predecessor Nupedia and left the project in 2002, criticized its bias against expertise, and his new venture reflects these concerns. Digital Universe aims to garner the best of both...

A new online information service launching in early 2006 aims to build on the model of free online encyclopedia Wikipedia by inviting acknowledged experts in a range of subjects to review material contributed by the general public. Called Digital Universe, the project is the brainchild of, among others, USWeb founder Joe Firmage and Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia's earliest creators. By providing...