It's a question that analysts are increasingly asking after the Web portal's hiring recently of Lloyd Braun, a former chairman of ABC television. He is charged with overseeing Yahoo's entertainment and media properties, including movies, music, gaming, sports, news and finance.
The thinking is that by recruiting Braun, Yahoo is signaling bigger media aspirations. Namely, the company is setting itself up for a day of digital convergence in which consumers watch films and listen to the latest rock bands online as much as on television sets and stereos.
"I give Yahoo a tremendous amount of credit for recognizing the shift in distribution of films and music from the physical to digital," said Phil Leigh, senior analyst for Inside Digital Media in Tampa, a company that follows the Internet entertainment industry. "What we are seeing is a beginning, just like cable programming in the early 1980s."
Driving digital entertainment's higher profile now is the proliferation of high-speed Internet connections. Nearly half of all users now log on to the Internet via broadband, downloading large video and audio files much faster than they could through traditional dialup connections.
But Yahoo has had a mixed record as a Hollywood wannabe. During the dot-com boom, and even more recently, the company has been forced to retreat from several major entertainment initiatives.
EBay data site keeps track of what's hot
Worried about flooding the market and devaluing your stash of Shrek 2 DVDs? Curious about the street value of your rusting '82 C3 Corvette?
A new feature from online auctioneer eBay Inc. delivers a trove of data for buyers and sellers and could become one of the holiday season's hottest reference guides.
The free "Pulse" data aggregation site (www.ebay.com/pulse) will be updated daily to reflect popular offerings in dozens of categories, including the day's most expensive listings and the most frequently used search terms.
On the "most watched" listing recently was a 5-foot-wide parade float with a giant bust of John Kerry, built by Bush supporters in Ohio and dubbed "Project Longface Wafflehead." The top-selling CD was Songs About Jane by alternative rock band Maroon 5, with 78 separate listings ranging from $4 to $10 each.
Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com and other portals and e-commerce sites publish data about their listings, but eBay's aggregated data could dwarf those. At the end of September, eBay had a record 125-million users and 348-million items for sale.
EBay sellers fined for phony bidding
Eight eBay sellers were ordered to pay nearly $90,000 in restitution and fines after admitting they bid up products online to inflate the prices.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said more than 120 people will receive restitution in the settlement of the three cases, which wrapped up recently in state courts.
Spokesman Darren Dopp said the cases stemmed from specific complaints, but the office has not conducted a broad investigation of the online auction industry and doesn't know how widespread the practice of phony bidding is.
One buyer, Brad Clarke, 48, of Peachtree City, Ga., already has received a check for $3,089 after overpaying for a 1999 Jeep Cherokee sport utility vehicle he bought on eBay from a New York seller in 2002.
"I'd always been suspicious because it seems like an easy thing to do, to just keep bidding up," Clarke said. "But I was still just completely shocked and very surprised."
Three sellers were accused of making 610 bids on 106 of their car auctions under the user name "Mother's Custom Automotive NY Dealer." They are paying more than $28,000 in penalties and restitution, Spitzer said. Their lawyers declined to comment.
In another case, the operator of an art auction house and two former employees were accused of bidding on more than 1,100 of each others' eBay items for more than five years to drive up the prices. Some paintings sold for thousands more than they were worth.
Spitzer said one of the sellers pleaded guilty to a felony charge, the other two to misdemeanors. They were ordered to pay more than $50,000 in restitution and fines.
The other two defendants were accused of making 170 phony bids on their sports memorabilia items. They agreed to pay $10,000 in penalties and restitution.
Service gives cell users free directory assistance
Cell phone users who need directory assistance have become wearily accustomed to paying at least $1 every time they get help with a phone number. Now, at least one sizable subset of the mobile crowd can avoid that pain.
UpSnap, a text-messaging company, last month introduced free directory assistance for users of short message service, or SMS. To activate the service, owners of SMS-enabled mobile phones must first visit www.upsnap.com and send a message to their own cell phone. After that, they may use SMS to UpSnap the name and location of the business or personal listing they need, and a reply containing the number will be sent to the phone.
If too many numbers fit the query, UpSnap displays a screen of options to help users narrow the choices. The service allows users to store the number in their contact list and also to send a number from the UpSnap Web site to the cell phone for later use.
Postal Service offers online gift cards
Rain, snow, sleet or hail may not stop the postal worker, but it sure is a hassle for the rest of us.
So the U.S. Postal Service is letting customers go online this holiday season to design custom greeting cards with a gift card from a major retailer tucked inside.
Gift cards valued from $25 to $200 can be purchased from Bed, Bath & Beyond, Circuit City, Lowe's home improvement stores and restaurants owned by Brinker International Inc., including Chili's Grill & Bar and Romano's Macaroni Grill.
Other choices should be available by the holidays.
The cost is $4.99, plus postage and the price of the gift card. Cards sent without gift cards inside are less expensive, with discounts available for purchases of 10 or more.
Users of the NetPost CardStore, which can be accessed through USPS.com, can choose from a variety of images, fonts and types of cards, or upload their own pictures and graphics. They also can upload an entire mailing list to send out holiday cards in bulk.
The Postal Service says it will not, however, tolerate unsavory images. It recently canceled a short-lived service from Stamps.com that allowed people to design their own postage stamps.
