Internet search leader Google Inc. on Thursday began offering marketers more features for local advertising, allowing them to add logos and business information to their listings on a Google map.

Local advertising on the Internet is expected to be a prime driver of growth in the sector.

The new features allow an advertiser to insert a business logo or picture in a balloon that pops up next to its location on the Google map, as well as provide additional information in several lines of text, such as a phone number of business description.

It can be used by any advertiser targeting a local market, from a neighborhood plumber to the closest restaurant of a national fast-food chain.

Since we launched maps last year, advertisers have come to us asking for more control on (Google) local, Dominic Preuss, product manager of local advertising at Google, told Reuters. There has been really strong demand for this.

In the U.S., Americans are terrified of Big Brother. Yet we have no problem allowing lots of Little Brothers, such as the credit card companies, to have our information indefinitely. So now we have thousands of Little Brothers and the Internet giving us hundreds of new ways to track people, said Andrew Jaquith of the Yankee Group.

Forget shredding your mail or worrying about who might have a copy of a recent credit card transaction. You have much bigger problems if you want to keep your personal information private.
In fact, personal information is now so readily available that a total stranger with nothing more than an online connection and a credit card could discover everything there is to know about you. He or she could compile a complete dossier on you, your family members, friends, work associates, or business rivals without any special investigative training.

Fears about identity theft are not limited to spyware or to records stolen from corporate databases. As it turns out, the neighbor next door can be just as big a concern.

Definitely, using the Internet to spy on average citizens is our next big social problem.

Online ad spending in the U.K. leapt 66 percent to £1.4 billion (about $2.4 billion) in 2005, according to new figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK).

The numbers, based on a biannual survey of 78 companies performed in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the World Advertising Research Centre, show big growth in all areas of interactive advertising. Search led the pack with 79 percent growth to £768 million ($1.3 billion) during the year, display advertising grew 44 percent to £335 million ($584 million), and classifieds exhibited 62 percent growth to £262 million ($457 million).

The vertical array of spending hasnt changed a great deal. The recruiting and finance sectors were out in front for the second year running, with 22 and 17 percent of the market respectively during the second half of the year. Two big movers were the automotive and entertainment/media verticals, each of which grew its share of the total pie to about 10 percent.

This Clickz report clearly shows that some opportunities exist in this market.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in a patent case involving online auctioneer eBay Inc. that is part of a wider struggle between the software and pharmaceutical industries over the future of the U.S. patent system.

Lawyers for eBay and small e-commerce company MercExchange will square off over whether eBay should be barred from using its popular Buy it Now feature, which infringes on two MercExchange patents.

The case is being closely watched to see if the high court will scale back the right of patent holders to get an injunction barring infringers from using their technologies.

Software companies complain they can be held to ransom by owners of questionable patents while drugmakers oppose any weakening of patent rights, which they say would chill their investment in new medicines.

This could get interesting continue following the story courtesy of Yahoo and pass your comment.

A dangerous new exploit in Internet Explorer could put PCs and data at risk, Microsoft has admitted.

The flaw, for which code has already been published on the internet, could be exploited to set an email-borne virus free on the unsuspecting public.

Potential viruses could come as an attachment that conceals the code, or could possibly redirect users to a site that will unleash the code on the users machine, leaving the computer open to remote attack. Once the PC is being controlled by a malicious user, it can then be used to launch attacks on other PCs.

Even supposedly fully patched versions of Internet Explorer 6 are vulnerable to the flaw, it seems, as are users with XP Service Pack 2.

Just a warning folks…Be ever alert.

Read the full story here