The first uniform audited data on digital “circulation” for newspapers and magazines in Australia will be out by the end of the year, in an effort to catch up with other areas of the world, The Australian reported.

“We need to be relevant to what is happening in the industry,” said Gordon Towell, chief of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, according to The Australian. “There are massive changes going on and delivery of content through web and digital media is becoming increasingly important. From a media buyer's and an advertiser's point of view it is critical that some sanity be brought to web measurement.”

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Over one-third of U.S. adult online users read online newspapers, according to the "Audience Segments in a Changing News Environment" report by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, eMarketer reported.

The report said that 39 percent of respondents watch cable news regularly, while 29 percent regularly watch the nightly network news.

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The U.S. dollar is turning around and strengthening against foreign currencies, which could bring down earnings at top Internet firms, paidContent reported.

The most bleak outlook has the dollar firming up by another 10 percent by the end of 2009, which would cut earnings by about 13 percent at Yahoo!. Although Yahoo! pulls only 30 percent of its revenues from outside the United States, it's “actually the most vulnerable to the trend, given its big asset holdings in Asia (a key component of the company's current value),” paidContent reported Monday.

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A prototype portal site of a worldwide digital library, first announced two years ago by UNESCO, will be launched in April next year, announced Vladimir Zaicev, general director of the National Library of Russia (NLR).

The digital library is expected to have content focusing on the history and culture of different nations, as well as books, maps, musical notes, holiday cards and photographs, Lenta.ru reported. The U.S. Library of Congress devised the concept around three years ago.

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The Los Angeles Times Media Group announced Monday that it has established a company, Zetabid, to auction real estate around Southern California, which helps banks and homebuilders unload foreclosed and unsold residential and commercial properties, MediaPost reported.

The first auctions are scheduled for Sept. 27 and 28. Zetabid will be advertised in the paper, and also by Tribune's broadcast properties in Southern California.

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A Web site that aggregates “the highest quality and most credible news online” has launched in beta, Journalism.co.uk reported.

The first paragraph of articles posted on NewsCred, and users can read the rest of the story by clicking on a link that takes them directly to the news source's Web site. Each article is voted on by users to determine credibility.

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Publishing house Condé Nast will launch Vogue.ru, a Russian version of the popular fashion magazine, in September, Gipp.ru reported.

For the first time, the publisher is presenting an online publication that is built on the same platform for a variety of markets. This means Internet users in different countries where Vogue has a site will be able to access the same information and Web features.

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Fairfax Media Ltd., the second-biggest newspaper publisher in Australia, reported its full-year profit up 47 percent, mostly driven by revenue generated from online business, Bloomberg reported.

Net income reached AU$386.9 million (US$338 million), or 24.6 cents a share, in the fiscal year ending June 30, up from $263.5 million, or 22.7 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose to $2.91 billion from $2.17 billion, the company said in a statement Thursday.

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As part of its PressClick initiative, the UK Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA) has launched a tool that measures data about national newspapers' online readership, the Market Research Industry Online reported.

The Newspapers Online Analytics (Noa) system collects traffic data, and sorts by overall monthly traffic, as well as by day and time of day. It also takes out users visiting multiple sites, so monthly data is not duplicated.

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Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has launched a new Web TV site to pull in a younger audience, as newspaper circulation growth falls flat, AFP MediaWatch reported.

The Straits Times Razor TV focuses on local topics, such as crime and transportation, as well as entertainment and lifestyle news, and does so in an informal, “chatty style.”

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iToday.ru, an online newspaper focusing on the Web and IT industry, was launched in Russia last Tuesday, gipp.ru reported Wednesday.

The Russian IT market is expected to boom until 2011, according to the Russia IT and Outsourcing Industry Forecast.

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While Google dominates the online search market, the traditional Yellow Pages business has been shifted to online as well. Its online revenue, especially among those who remember when it was the main tool for phone searches, is growing, eMarketer reported.

More than six out of 10 U.S. Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) users were female, according to the latest 2007 full-year comScore data produced for the Yellow Pages Association (YPA).

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As online giant Google Inc. buys up an increasing amount of content properties – YouTube, newly acquired encyclopedia site Knol and Blogger, to name a few – as well as holding the “keys to directing users around the Web,” critics say doubts over Google's claims that it is not a media company are getting bigger and harder to ignore, The New York Times reported Sunday.

“Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case,” Jason Calacanis, chief executive of search engine Mahalo, told The New York Times. “They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users.”

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Google is launching a music search engine in China, which will provide users with access to free downloads of licensed songs, Media Guardian reported Wednesday.

After several months of negotiations, Google announced Tuesday night that the new service would be monetized by advertising revenue, which would be split between the music companies and the Chinese music download site Top100.cn.

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Yahoo! is looking for new local partners to help expand its market in Indonesia, according to The Jakarta Post.

Pontus Sonnerstedt, senior director of business development at Yahoo! Southeast Asia, said on Friday that the company needed new partners to lure more online users to boost advertising revenue.

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