The Dow Jones publishing company is reorganizing its publishing units to provide more content online.

The company said it has also appointed L. Gordon Crovitz to head the reorganization. Crovitz will become executive vice president of Dow Jones, president of Dow Jones Consumer Media Group, and publisher of The Wall Street Journal Franchise.

The restructuring involves a three-tiered operation separated into consumer media, enterprise media and community media.

Internet ventures looking to make money by providing amateur online content - such as podcasts, user reviews and blogs - face a number of challenges.

That was the consensus among a panel of Internet experts at the Wharton Technology Conference in Philadelphia on Friday.

While the Internet has revolutionized information and communications, it has yet to live up to its potential in making money for niche content. Consumers will resist any additional charges for obtaining content on the Internet unless companies target and maximize their niche groups.

"I'm not entirely sure you can monetise amateur content. Commercial ventures often ruin the heart and soul of content [by monetizing it]." that is amateur when they try to monetise it.".. and keep it the same thing it is," said Chris Rhoads, chief executive of consulting firm Enterprise Technology Management Associates and university professor.

But a few panel members were optimistic about the notion of making money from amateur content. which allows users to broadcast television shows via the Internet, said that, at least in his area, there is an opportunity to make some money.

"We all have niche interests that are completely unserved by traditional television," said Dmitry Shapiro, the chief executive of Veoh Technologies.

"There is a tremendous amount of opportunity for amateur programs. Pick a niche, whatever you love, get a camcorder and produce amateur content. You can then put that up [on the Web] and generate revenue with micropayments.

A new payment service from Google could compete for online payments with eBay and PayPal.

Merchants and individual sellers can post items, services and merchandise for sale using the beta Google Base.

The news comes after months of speculation about whether the Mt. View Internet giant will offer a payment service to directly compete with PayPal, an eBay company.

However, there officials at Google and eBay appear to be playing down what is likely to become a long and hard battle to see which company will dominant the lucrative onine payments business.



`These are different products,'' Oliveri said, noting that eBay is purely commercial, while Google Base, which is still in a ``beta'' testing phase, is more of a free exchange of information

One of the founders of Excite, a blockbuster search engine start-up during the Internet boom of the late 90s, is placing his bets on the power of the Wiki web.

The web is very much an open frontier, where there are no consistent rules for word usage, grammar, punctuation, formatting or writing style.

However, honorable efforts have been underway for some time to apply such guidelines, with the major media conglomerates, academia and government entities creating their own style guides for web content.

However, these various efforts are non-collaborative, and therefore, there is no one style for web content. There probably never will be.

If your company needs to set style guidelines, you may want to use some of the following resources:

http://www.copydesk.org/2002conference/style.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style
http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/
http://www.bartleby.com/64/index.html
http://www.bartleby.com/141/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/index.html
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/
http://www.webstyleguide.com/
http://www.ibiblio.org/copyed/hughespro.html
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2004/WHO_IMD_PUB_04.1.pdf

Telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are pressuring Congress to pass legislation that allows these companies to charge a tariff for handling and optimizing Internet traffic for popular websites like Google, eBay and Amazon.

This month Congress will hold hearings to review whether telecom companies are entitled to tariffs. Telecom excecutives argue that they should be compensated for providing the backbone of the Internet, because it is costly to build and maintain the networks that make world wide web work.

As Internet speed slows down due to increased traffic and data file sizes, telecom providers want to charge tariffs by offering "express lanes" for highly trafficked sites, like eBay and Google.

In November Ed Whitacre, chairman and CEO of AT&T, explained that concept to Business Week: “Why should they be allowed to use my pipes? The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment, and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes (for) free is nuts!”

The idea has sparked outrage, particularily among the blogging community. If telecom companies were allowed to charge tariffs for web traffic performance and delivery, many bloggers would be unable to continue publishing.

Stayed tuned; we're going to stay on top of this one. Please add your comments on this important issue.

The blog community has lit up in recent months over the Chinese government's step up actions to censor web content and punish those suspected of publishing material deemed offensive by the government.

The Washington Post has obtained a list of keywords banned by a major blog provider in China.

The keywords include the Chinese names of many political figures, activists and writers, in addition to Chinese cabinet titles and other forbidden information.

You can't create one of the largest online encyclopedias, relying on the contributions of others, without stirring up controversy. Lately, the online reference tool caused quite a spat with the Chinese government and other critics in the U.S. complain that there are insufficient resources to properly fact-check information that is published in the encyclopedia.

But whatever the critics say, and however true their criticisms are, the experiment that is Wikipedia has so much to teach us about the possibilities of networked societies and the interaction and fluidity that will continue to define how we share and shape information in a global community. The "village" gets smaller every day.

Read more: Reference Tool On Web Finds Fans, Censors.

One the sure-fire ways to send the wrong impression to your web visitors is not updating your web content and straying from using common new technologies.

Read the full article, Keeping It Fresh.

The emergence of blogs has changed the way people obtain news and information. Now, there are new efforts underway to expand the concept of blogs to bring communities closer together via , but more significantly, it has allowed anyone with an opinion a platform to publish instant posts about a variety of topics.

Read more in BusinessWeek's News You Can Use -- and Write

The controversy over data brokers selling personal phone call records online has boiled over in the Congress, prompting lawmakers to demand that the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) announce when it plans to complete its investigation of the practice.

For past six months, the FCC has received a flood of complaints accusing telephone carriers of not protecting consumers personal information and leaving them more susceptible to scams, fraud, identity theft and potential stalkers.

Read more about tariffs on the Internet from The Daily Record.

Major internet companies, such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft are lobbying congressional leaders to pass legislation that would prevent cable suppliers and phone companies from giving preferential treatment to paid content delivery.

Currently, no broadband companies charge for content delivery over their networks. However, they strongly oppose any limits being placed on their ability to charge for content.

Internet pundits worry that if broadband providers are not regulated, it will ultimately lead to less choices and higher costs for consumers.

"It seems to me that if broadband operators are charging Google and Amazon for the use of their network, then those costs will automatically get passed on to consumers," said Gigi Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Beltway advocacy group. "And ultimately that will lead to higher prices for consumers."

Broadband providers have the ability to priortize packets of data sent over their networks. For example, a content delivery company like eBay might have to pay providers more money to guarantee a better customer experience.

But broadband providers argue that by priortizing traffic, they can in fact improve the overall customer experience for everyone.

WebPrint is a new blog dedicated to the news, issues and trends in the realms of web publishing, search optimization, content development and customer experience.

WebPrint encourages a community discussion to share and analyze information related to the world of web publishing.