Media

An estimated 25 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls say they have engaged in online sex, according to the Drudge Report that cited Dutch researchers. Online sex is defined by pretending to have sex while sending explicit email, instant messages or images to a partner.

Apart from faux sex, the majority of boys and girls said they had at least flirted online, according to the report.

Yet there's a big caveat: the study isn't scientific and it's yet to be confirmed. Drudge said the survey was commissioned by Royal KPN NV, the Netherlands' largest Internet … Read more

Loved ones who turned to a blog to get updates on the condition of a young car crash victim got some chilling news Wednesday.

Not only had Laura Van Ryn, 22, of Caledonia, Mich., died, but it turned out she had been buried for month.

In a shocking case of mistaken identity, the Van Ryn family was led to believe that Laura Van Ryn, a student at Taylor University in Indiana, was the blond-haired woman who had been hospitalized and, until recently, in a coma, following a fatal car crash in Indiana last month, according to The Associated Press. The blog, … Read more

Lest we forget, David Fincher's 1999 punching fantasy "Fight Club" was a movie. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But according to the Associated Press, a group of Silicon Valley geeks has been playing out the brutal, beat-each-other-up-for-fun mentality of the film in real life and for real fun. Or whatever people who beat each other to bits for recreation call it. Never mind the bruises, blood and hurt feelings.

"When you get beat down enough, it becomes a very un-macho thing," the AP quoted 34-year-old Santa Clara software engineer Shiyin Siou as saying. "But I … Read more

More money will soon be spent on Internet advertising than national newspapers in the United Kingdom, according to an article in Monday's Financial Times.

"By the end of 2007, Internet advertising will close the gap on regional newspapers, the No. 2 medium, but will still be well short of television, the biggest outlet in the 12 billion-pound--a-year ($22.6 billion) media advertising market," the article said, citing a report from GroupM, a WPP holding company.

The report estimates that the Internet will take 13.3 percent of the total media advertising spending, just above national newspapers but … Read more

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday chose not to intervene in a long-simmering dispute about whether a French censorship order can apply to Yahoo's U.S.-based Web site.

The justices, without comment, denied a request by French activist organizations to address the topic. (PDF)

In January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Yahoo's case involving the online display of Nazi-related books, posts and memorabilia on grounds that it was premature to offer a definitive ruling.

Yahoo filed the suit in December 2000 in an effort to clear up whether a U.S. company … Read more

We at Blogma often associate cliches with writing, but they can obviously take any number of non-verbal forms. Forty Media, for example, has posted the "top 10 stock photography cliches," starting with the "handshake of synergy."

Video devices that attach to eyeglasses have been developed for years, but they generally have been either too clunky or too expensive--or both--for mass consumption. Mirage Innovations claims to have changed all that, touting an "affordable" lightweight pair of glasses embedded with tiny screens that it says provides an experience equivalent to watching a high-quality 42-inch screen from 7 feet.

Patent authorities have rejected some of the patent claims on JPEG technology asserted by Forgent Networks.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark office rejected 19 of 46 claims held by Forgent, a licensor of intellectual property. Forgent is in litigation with 30 companies regarding the patent, including Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer and Panasonic, according to a press release found on the company's Web site.

Phone calls to Forgent were not returned. It's still unclear whether the patent office's decision will harm the company's ability to enforce its patent. Forgent has collected around $105 million in royalties from … Read more

One of the more obvious and tangible forms of video-on-demand has always been a site where consumers could order a movie, have it delivered over broadband, and have it burned straight onto a disc. Consumers love it because they own something physical and tangible at the end of the day and content owners like the outlet that it gives them to sell those old episodes of the Don Knotts Show. Some small companies such as EZ Takes have promoted this concept.

Unfortunately, squabbles over rights and piracy have kept it from going mainstream.

That could change by the second half. … Read more