Internet use

Almost every worker has done it: gotten in a little Facebook updating, personal e-mailing, YouTube watching and friend calling while on the clock.

Such indiscretions often went undetected by company management everywhere but the most secure and highly proprietary companies or governmental agencies. Not anymore.

Firms have become sharp-eyed, keenly eared watchdogs as they try to squeeze every penny's worth of their employees' salaries and to ensure they have the most professional and lawsuit-proof workplaces.

Europeans downloaded (EURO)10 billion worth of pirated music, film, television shows and software from the Web in 2008, an entertainment industry study said Wednesday.

The International Chamber of Commerce said its report showed that digital piracy could escalate and cost media and entertainment industries (EURO)240 billion in retail revenue and 1.2 million jobs by 2015.

The 2015 estimate is a worst-case scenario, the study said, based on consumer Web traffic growing 24 percent annually.

China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or "pay the consequences," giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking.

"If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences," Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature.

More than half of the people in the developing world are now cell phone subscribers, a U.N. report said Tuesday, highlighting strong global growth in telecommunications.

There were an estimated 4.6 billion mobile phone subscriptions at the end of last year, compared with about 1 billion in 2002, the International Telecommunication Union said in a report. In developing nations, 57 percent of people were signed up.

"The rate of progress remains remarkable," the U.N. agency said.

The wobbly economy is contributing to a rush by millions of online shoppers to a decidedly low-tech business: coupons.

The number of people scouring the Internet in search of coupons that they can print and present to retailers, or codes that provide them with discounts on retail sites such as Amazon.com, is up sharply.

Social networking has been the face of Web 2.0 for many years now. But until now the phrase has been synonymous with Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. Despite the efforts of companies like LinkedIn to bring social networking into the business world, in many ways organizations have been slow to adapt to the new technology.

Salesforce.com wants to change that. Speaking to 19,000 attendees at the company's Dreamforce conference, CEO Marc Benioff announced Salesforce Chatter, a social-networking product for Salesforce customers.

Americans are increasingly accessing the Internet with mobile devices like smartphones and laptops, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported Wednesday. The trend is especially prevalent among minorities.

In an April survey, the project found 56 percent of Americans had accessed the Internet from a mobile device, with 36 percent using laptops. Access through game consoles and MP3 players was also counted.

China accused Google Inc. on Thursday of spreading pornography after Chinese users were unable to connect to the search giant's Web site, while Washington called on Beijing to scrap its order for personal computers to be equipped with Internet-filtering software.

Whether it's around the dinner table or just in front of the TV, U.S. families say they are spending less time together.

The decline in family time coincides with a rise in Internet use and the popularity of social networks, though a new study stopped just short of assigning blame.

The Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California is reporting this week that 28 percent of Americans it interviewed last year said they have been spending less time with members of their households. That's nearly triple the 11 percent who said that in 2006.

It's just a couple of minutes to check that stock I bought. Five minutes to check if my bid on eBay won. It won't hurt, right? And if I periodically check my Facebook or Yahoo! Sports page, there's no harm in that.

But all those minutes can add up throughout the day or week. In fact, 30 to 40 percent of Internet use in the workplace is not related to business, according to IDC, a Massachusetts-based provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets.