Workers favor personal surfing

NEW YORK -- It should come as no surprise that most Americans with Internet access at work do some personal surfing on the job. A new survey finds that half of them would rather give up their morning coffee than forgo that ability.

Maps, news and weather are the chief nonwork sites visited.

A quarter of employees watch or listen to streaming media at least once a week from work, and 18 percent have downloaded and stored music, photos and video clips, according to a telephone-based survey sponsored by Websense Inc., which makes software that helps companies filter and monitor Internet use.

Many companies have Internet policies that allow reasonable personal Internet use, such as e-mailing a doctor to schedule an appointment or buying a gift during a lunch break.

The survey of 500 employees was conducted March 16 to April 4 by Harris Interactive.

Product-placement market

LOS ANGELES -- As advertisers and networks begin their annual dance over TV spots, a company has launched a service to organize the buying and selling of alternative advertising such as product placements.

NextMedium's Embed online marketplace lets advertisers learn about opportunities to feature their products in TV shows, films, video games and even music. It also offers research conducted with Nielsen Media Research to help advertisers evaluate how effective the product placements are.

Advertisers have been seeking new ways to reach consumers who skip TV ads with the help of digital video recorders or shun TV and film altogether for video games.

One way has been to place "Coke" cans in front of the judges on "American Idol" or to make brands part of the plot, as has been done on "The Apprentice." Advertisers are even placing their brands into video games, song lyrics and music videos.

But those deals usually are done one at a time or as part of a broader relationship between one advertiser and one network or film studio. NextMedium hopes to aggregate available ad inventory from various networks, studios and other content providers so that advertisers can make deals online.

Anti-spam service closes

NEW YORK -- Score one for the spammers.

The company behind a controversial anti-spam initiative is shutting down the service after spammers began threatening users and rendering the company's site inaccessible.

In a statement, Blue Security Inc. said it wanted to avoid "an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations."

Blue Security has been criticized by some anti-spam advocates because its Blue Frog service revolves around getting thousands of users to collectively disable the Web sites that spammers use to sell their wares.

Users add e-mail addresses to Blue Frog's "do-not-spam" list. Before sending out a batch of messages, spammers are supposed to remove any addresses appearing on such lists.

If they don't, Blue Security activates software on users' computers to send complaints to spammers automatically. Hundreds of thousands complaining at once can knock out a Web site and, the company says, encourage spammers to stop.

But critics say the tactic resembles a denial-of-service attack, the type spammers used against Blue Security in retaliation.