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By Times Wires
Published October 12, 2007

Online videos may direct cash creators' way

Blinkx, an Internet video search company based in London, will allow consumers to make money from the videos they show on their own blogs, social-networking sites or home pages if they agree to embed advertising in the videos. By combining two Internet trends - social networking and online video - with a moneymaking opportunity, Blinkx hopes to better compete with YouTube, the market-leading video-sharing service owned by Google, said the company's founder and chief executive, Suranga Chandratillake. Under Blinkx's new program, introduced in London on Wednesday, Internet video fans can post film clips to their sites and then submit them to Blinkx to be indexed and categorized.

Lawyers split on forced retirement

Nearly half of lawyers polled in a new survey oppose mandatory retirement policies at law firms, according to research by legal consultants Altman Weil Inc. The survey, conducted in September, includes responses from 521 lawyers in management positions at U.S. law firms. Fifty percent of respondents said their firms have mandatory retirement policies, with the cut-off age ranging from 65 to 70. Forty-seven percent said they oppose those policies while 38 percent support them. Sixty-one percent of respondents said they plan to continue working after retirement, according to the statement. Of those, 48 percent said they will continue to practice law, according to Altman Weil.

Condom renegade sizes up new idea

As the world's top condom experts convene this week to update international standards, one American entrepreneur has a simple message: Size matters. It's shaking up an industry that has generally taken a one-size-fits-all approach. Frank Sadlo, founder of TheyFit, which makes what he claims are the world's first custom-fit condoms, is pushing for updated standards to allow greater variation in condom size. Sadlo said his inspiration for custom condoms arose from his days playing baseball at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, where locker room tales of exploits with the opposite sex often failed to include use of condoms because of complaints they did not fit. Sadlo offers a "fit kit," a sheet of paper printed from a computer for sizing - and advising the user to watch out for paper cuts.

Rating agency calls Google Web champ

Google Inc., owner of the world's most popular search engine, passed Microsoft Corp. to become the most-visited U.S. Internet site, according to research firm Nielsen//NetRatings. Google's visitors rose 17 percent to 118-million in September from a year earlier, ahead of Microsoft and Yahoo Inc., New York-based Nielsen said Thursday in a statement. In August, Microsoft was first and Google was second. Attracting more users gives the companies new opportunities to show ads on their Web pages and sell links next to Internet search results. Microsoft's visitors rose less than 1 percent to 117.7-million in September from a year earlier, while Yahoo's rose 2.7 percent to 109.1-million, Nielsen said. ComScore Inc., which competes with Nielsen in the Internet research market, ranked Yahoo as the most popular U.S. Web site in August. Yahoo had 135.3-million visitors, ComScore said last month.

[Last modified October 12, 2007, 01:13:57]