Advertisers have been able to direct online messages based on demographics, income and even location, but one element has been largely missing until recently: immediacy.

Advertisers booked slots in advance, and could not make on-the-fly decisions about what ads to show based on what people were doing on the Web...

Carol is the proud new mommy of a baby boy. She isn't ready to return to her customer service job, but she needs the income.

Dave is a project manager for an outsourcing company. His company is planning layoffs. He suspects he will soon be unemployed. I hear stories like these every day. Many people are ready to take control of their careers and work independently...

The Dispatch and 20 other newspapers and magazines are now being offered for wireless download on the Sony Reader Daily Edition.

The digital content, also available on computers via Sony's Reader Library software, includes significant portions of The Dispatch's content, as well as that of The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, PC Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The Denver Post and San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News...

Michigan's forthcoming Web-based platform that will help students and their families make college and career connections might initially sound like another Facebook knockoff.

But the state, which purchased the portal for $1.15 million, insists that the Michigan College Access Portal (MiCAP) is not a clone of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or any other popular social media sites. In fact, ConnectEDU, the Boston-based company building the portal, refuses to even call it a social network..

Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. is experimenting with a system that allows workers to use their personal laptop computers for work, according to a report in Computerworld.com, a tech news site.

P&G made the decision, according to the report, because many of its younger workers prefer using their own machines...

The Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan, scheduled to be publically presented to Congress next week, may have something for everyone, but a new intriguing bauble is the suggestion by the FCC that Congress will be asked to "consider use of spectrum for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service."

The comment touched off a wave of speculation. Where will the spectrum come from? Who would be eligible for free broadband? Given that Congress shot down an earlier proposal for free spectrum, what will Congress do with the new proposal?

Google Inc. will sell the online services of other business software makers in an effort to fill its own product gaps and persuade more companies to rely on applications piped over the Internet.

The online store that was announced late Tuesday marks another step in Google's crusade to convert the world to "cloud computing," the idea of running applications in Web browsers instead of installing them on individual hard drives. The information entered in the programs also is stored in data centers run by third parties such as Google.
More than 50 software makers have agreed to sell their Internet programs through Google, which will keep 20 percent of the sales. The prices are expected to range from $50 annually to several hundred dollars annually per user...