The Register writes that “

[a] new domain to be launched in December will be the first to reject advertising, making it unattractive to most cybersquatters. The .tel domain will not host websites, only contact information that will be sent to computers and phones.  The domain will begin to accept applications for names from 3 December, at which point only companies holding trademarks in names will be able to apply to register them.  Much cybersquatting is done by companies which earn money from adverts displayed on the pages belonging to domain names which users assume will belong to a famous organisation. That kind of cybersquatting will not work on .tel domain names, said Justin Hayward, communications director of Telnic, the registry behind .tel.  ‘[.Tel] does not allow for pay per click advertising, as it is the first top level domain that customers cannot host a website on,’ he said.”

A Yahoo!Tech article points out that “[w]ithout Google's muscle behind it, Yahoo's chances for digging out of a long slump are looking even poorer, making it appear more likely that the company will turn to Microsoft or AOL to help weather the economic downturn.  Yahoo Inc., which runs the No. 2 search engine, agreed in June to let No. 1 Google Inc. sell some of the ads shown next to Yahoo's search results. The deal was intended as a lifeline for the struggling Internet pioneer after it spurned Microsoft's rich $47.5 billion takeover bid less than a month before.  Now that Google has scrapped the Yahoo partnership rather than challenge the Justice Department over its antitrust objections to the deal, Yahoo is back where it began the year, scrambling to engineer a turnaround under a management team on shaky ground with shareholders.”

The O’Reilly blog has a very insightful analysis of the role the Internet played in the 2008 Presidential campaign, and how the Obama campaigns sophisticated use of social networking tools and the Internet in general helped it to be hugely successful at raising small- and medium-sized donations from citizens and getting out the vote. 

In more tech-related Obama news, Internetnews.com speculates on “who will be Obama’s CTO” and where this person will fit in the hierarchy of the administration.

According to a different Internetnews article, “MySpace and MTV Networks announced plans yesterday to use a video identification technology developed by Auditude to identify and insert ads over any video clips produced by MTV Networks that are found on MySpace. While no one has invited Internet users to ignore copyright restrictions, enforcement actions seem to be shifting toward getting the good out of unauthorized activity rather than stopping it.  Adam Cahan, Auditude's CEO, said it was challenging to get content owners to understand the value of the technology. First he had to prove that it actually worked — that it was accurate, speedy and scalable. Then he had to prove that serving up ads with that unsanctioned content really is a viable business opportunity.”