Papers feature outside blogs

NEW YORK -- The Web sites of dozens of newspapers are starting to feature outside blog postings on travel, health and other topics in a further blurring of the line separating traditional and new media.

The travel section of the San Francisco Chronicle's site, for instance, had a box in the middle Wednesday with such posts as "The Intricate Architecture of Barcelona" from the RealTravel blog.

The posts supplement the Web journals, or blogs, maintained by the newspapers' staffs and come from Pluck Corp.'s new BlogBurst service, which collects postings from about 1,000 blogs and distributes them to newspapers, mostly for online use.

Bloggers who participate get greater exposure for their writings -- but no money, for now. And newspapers get more coverage in areas for which they may not have enough reporters.

Pluck charges papers largely based on traffic -- and thus ad sales -- the posts generate, and the company may one day share those revenues with the bloggers.

Company sues Yahoo over ad

A Yahoo Inc. advertiser has accused the Internet search engine of fraud, saying its ads have been appearing in spyware and "typosquatter" Web sites that take advantage of misspelled trademarks.

Crafts By Veronica, which makes fabric-covered photo albums, filed a lawsuit accusing Yahoo of breaching a contract by charging for pay-per-click ads shown improperly in "pernicious spyware programs" and on low-quality Web sites.

It names Yahoo; Overture Services Inc., the search-ad company Yahoo acquired in 2003; and the John Doe Co., an unnamed company the suit identified as Yahoo's syndication partner.

Spammer identifies 'secure' e-mails

One spammer has managed to identify e-mail addresses on a "do-not-spam" list touted as secure, taking advantage of an obvious flaw with such lists and prompting critics to wonder: What took so long?

Those who submitted their addresses to Blue Security Inc.'s Blue Frog registry have been getting messages that threaten, among other things, "nonsensical spams 20-40 times more than you would normally" get, according to a copy provided by the company.

Blue Security described the spammer's tactics as "bullying" and "extortion" as well as a sign the company's controversial anti-spam tactics are working, annoying spammers enough to prompt such a response.

"Do-not-spam" registries work by encouraging users to submit e-mail addresses -- Blue Security says it has 450,000. Before sending out messages, spammers are supposed to remove addresses appearing on such lists.

The lists often are encrypted so spammers can't mine them for new addresses.