1 Brazil ordered an online auction site to take down an ad in which a man offers to sell his wife for about $50. Once again, the government tries to squelch technology.
2 MTV’s “TRL” afternoon pop-music show is changing its name. The leading contender is said to be “YouRL,” meant, of course, to sound like the Internet-address term, “URL.” It still won’t make us forget, MTV, that “TRL” is to blame for Britney Spears, that last wave of boy bands and everybody named Simpson who isn’t related to Bart.
3 Analysts are skeptical that a rumored merger between Net giants Yahoo! and Microsoft will take place. One main sticking point is said to be the exclamation point, because Bill Gates is uncomfortable with displays of emotion.
4 Rupert Murdoch, whose company owns MySpace, has made an unsolicited $5 billion offer for Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. He has great ideas for synergies: Newspaper columnists will be compensated according to the number of “friends” they accumulate. MySpace to replace all photos with ink-dot drawings.
5 There’s another copyright-infringement suit against YouTube, this time from England’s Premier League. The soccer division is concerned because the brief clips on YouTube are more engaging than actual games.
