When it comes to growth in online traffic, American sports like baseball and online gambling related to these games played a big factor for the month of March.

Based on the data from research company comScore, baseball spring training and fantasy team drafts prompted a flood of earnest fans to MLB.com, which jumped 50 percent to 9.8 million visitors.

“American sports factored in prominently for the top gaining categories and properties in March,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix. “The NCAA tournament drove substantial traffic to online gambling sites during the month, while the start of spring training made MLB.com one of the top gaining properties. Both events also contributed to ESPN.com’s surge in the top properties rankings.”

Moreover, the NCAA basketball tournament has lured many gamblers thus gaining 14% increase in the online gambling category. Sportingbet PLC increased 35 percent to 975,000 visitors, UPICKEM.net jumped 174 percent to 396,000 visitors and SportsBetting.com rose 114 percent to 145,000 visitors.

Read the complete study here

Since a large percentage of Internet traffic in Australia is coming from the U.S., a telco company is now working on a 9,000 kilometer undersea Internet cable connecting Australia and Hawaii.

Telco company Telstra aims to improve the Internet broadband connection with this project. This new cable is claimed to have the power to carry 160,000 high definition TV simultaneously and capacity of 1.28 Terabits per second.

“It’s really crucial for the future – we’re seeing the rate of data transported from the US to Australia and back again doubling every year. Sixty-five per cent of of our internet traffic comes from the US,” said Telstra spokeswoman Kate McKenzie.

Via The Tech Herald

Even though Wal-Mart Music Downloads is not a top destination for millions of music addicts, it can stir the music industry through its Amazon-like campaign for DRM-free MP3s.

The Washington Post reports that the retail giant has dropped MP3s protected by Window DRM, limiting its catalogue to Universal Music Group and EMI artists only. On the other hand, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG have remained adamant on their position about DRM.

When asked about this issue, a Wal-Mart representative replied, “We’ll continue to work with our music partners to further grow our MP3 selection, however, we don’t publicly share details of our ongoing discussions with these partners.”

imeem, the 3rd largest social network in the U.S. with 24 million unique monthly visitors, has joined the “openness” bandwagon with the launch of its imeem Media Platform, enabling third-party developers to create new applications related to videos, photos, and music.

Here are some of the things developers can create in this open platform:

1. Access imeem’s social graph, including users, friends, and associated profile data
2. Create, edit, and manage new playlists, or access millions of music, video and photo playlists created by imeem users
3. Search imeem’s media content by keyword, artist, song title, or album name
4. Ability to favorite media and playlists back to the user’s profile
5. Access imeem’s recommendation engine and discovery tools

More importantly, imeem will provide OpenSocial support so developers can easily integrate the applications they created for other social networking sites such as MySpace and Hi5.

New media like blogs, social networking sites and mobile phones are becoming potent tools in politics. It’s very evident in the campaign of U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Another case in point is the recent election in Malaysia.

The Herald Tribune reports that Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has admitted its big mistake of underestimating the power of the Internet. Though his coalition retained power, it failed to snatch the parliamentary majority because they relied heavily on government-controlled traditional media such as TV and newspapers.

On the other hand, the opposition has make the most of the Internet and text messaging to reach out to young voters and discuss the pressing problems in Malaysia like corruption, religious issues, and racial tensions. Through these initiatives, the group has increased its seat in the Parliament.

In case you miss the point, here it is again: Do not underestimate the power of the Internet. Or else…

Here’s another reason why you must be careful when it comes to social networking. Recently, a Canadian computer technician has found a way to circumvent Facebook’s privacy control to access images and personal information even if the privacy setting is limited to a few people.

According to a news report, Byron Ng’s super cool trick has given him access to private photos of Paris Hilton at the Emmy Awards, office gatherings, spring break parties and even the personal photo album of its co-founder Mark Zucerkberg.

Unfortunately, the tales of stalking came to an abrupt end after Facebook quickly rectified this loophole. Then again, Ng is just one of the many gifted computer experts out there who can find ways to breach security and gain access to confidential information.

What I’m trying to say is never put too much trust on any site even if there’s assurance that your information tightly secured. Be responsible enough to know what images to share and contents to write. Otherwise, you might end up with so much regrets.

Admit it. Some people are born to annoy to the world. No, it’s not the white hip hop Eminem. I’m talking about Dutch extremist Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom and his anti-Koran 15-minute film, Fitna.

Fitna or the Arabic word for “discord” has the power to provoke riots and violence particularly for Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia. Even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have warned about the divisive nature of this film.

Now, it’s time for the online community to get back to this controversial Islam-hating persona. CNN reports that Wilders’ official website for Fitna has been suspended by its host company for violation of terms of service.

Though every individual has the right to share his or her thoughts about the issues of our society, Wilders’ call to ban the Qur’an and condemn this religion is way out of line.

Traditional media companies such Forbes, CBS, Conde Nast, and Viacom are aggressively selling their own ads in an effort to remain relevant to advertisers in this digital era, according to a news report.

This spells additional trouble to Internet giants including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL. But will this initiative survive against these top competitors?

These Internet companies have the leverage in terms of sheer force, acquisition power, and know-how. In addition, a small or limited network cannot increase its business unlike well-established Internet portals.

On the other hand, small ad networks have the inherent ability to provide individualized attention to advertisers. This is a potent gain for companies who want to cut through the clutter and protect their brands.

Admittedly, the online world is cluttered with contents not suitable for kids. Now, there is a Web browser entirely dedicated for kids between the ages 3 to 12 years old, KidZui.com.

This downloadable browser contains more than 500,000 Websites, images, games, and videos independently reviewed by teachers and parents so kids can surf the net free from pornography and other malicious contents.

KidZui also has a patent-pending technology called KidRank which identifies what kids consider cool in general, a potent tool which might help bridge the gap between parents and children.

There are other many features included in this browser such as ability to create personal avatar, search by categories, watch videos in full screen, tagging, and share contents with friends.

Unfortunately, it’s not free. Though you can download the KidZui browser free for 30 days, parents have to pay subscription fee of $9.95 per month or $99 annually.

The U.S. online ad spending is going against the grain for it is expected to grow this year despite the present economic crisis. eMarketer.com predicts it will by 23% in 2008 while total US ad spending will just grow by 3.3%. The table shows the projected ad spending until 2012.

In terms of online ad format, search will still lead the pack with 40% of total spending going to its direction. Rich media/video ads is consistently gaining share while e-mail, display ads, and classified ads will slow down.

A senior analyst at eMarketer pointed out the need to measure online ads accurately is extremely important to attract marketers with reduced budgets.