For companies that had their heads in the clouds when it came time to upgrade their computers, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and JDA Software Group thought it was time for some skywriting. The technology firms sent out personalized direct mail pieces that featured a man with his arms spread upward, experiencing an epiphany due to these fluffy words forming above his head: “Bruce Schwartz, The Moment Has Arrived.”

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In a move that could shift the balance of power in the newspaper industry, McClatchy Co. has abandoned a nascent national online advertising partnership with Tribune Co. and Gannett Co. to join a rival group of publishers that is in the final stages of negotiating a broad deal with Yahoo Inc., according to people familiar with the discussions.

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The Web’s emergence is forcing ad executives to succumb to marketers’ demands that agencies reinvent how ads are created, and forgo their TV-centric approach. Clients are even calling for changes in the way ad firms are structured. But until now, few advertisers have spent more than 5% to 10% of their marketing budgets online. With the growth of online video and social networking, ad experts expect that percentage to jump significantly this year.

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With the decline in the numbers of television viewers in recent years, networks are in search of a sure-fire way to guarantee an audience for advertisers. They should look no further than Scripps Networks, which on june 19 debuted a TV show created in a most unconventional way. HGTV (Home & Garden TV), owned by Scripps, unveiled “Rate My Space,” a show spawned from the community website of the same name. Launched in February 2007, the site, also powered by HGTV, invites…

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The most influential mashup this year wasn’t a Beatles tune remixed with hip-hop lyrics. It was an online street map of Chicago overlaid with crime statistics. Chicagocrime.org, which was created by the journalist Adrian Holovaty, was one of the first Web sites to combine publicly available data from one site (in this case, the Chicago Police Department’s online database) with a digital map supplied by another site (in this case, Google).

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Your mobile phone is about to get a lot cooler. How cool? In the coming months, you’ll be able to dictate text messages and surf the Web just by speaking commands- no tapping or clicking required. If you’re trying to figure out where to go to lunch…

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Creative people want to express that creativity. Meanwhile, they need to make a living – possibly by finding an audience for some buyable form of that creativity. This is an old predicament, but the Internet enables new experiments in resolving it – like the Swap Meat, a project of a Web site called Coudal.com.

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Americans threw out just shy of three million tons of household electronics in 2006. This so-called e-waste is the fastest-growing part of the municipal waste stream and, depending on your outlook, either an enormous problem or a bonanza. E-waste generally contains substances that, though safely sequestered during each product’s use, can become hazardous if not handled properly when disposed. Those products also hold bits of precious metals like silver, copper, platinum and gold.

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When Andrew Newman and David Sullivan left corporate jobs and set out to launch their own Portland-based marketing fum, one of their founding principles was that they would cater solely to small business owners. Other firms could compete for the big national accounts, but the partners who set up ADMedia Communications in 2004 decided they wanted to offer affordable marketing services to entrepreneurs and family-run businesses that might otherwise not do any marketing at all.

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As CHIEF EXECUTIVE of one of the world’s biggest ad companies WPP Group’s Sir Martin Sorrell typically talks about the importance of creativity in successful advertising. So why is he calling econometrics, a complex statistical measuring technique, “the Holy Grail” of advertising?

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