From the San Jose Mercury News: "Google has struck a partnership with media company Hearst and investment bank Goldman Sachs to invest in a Maryland start-up that's pushing high-speed Internet service through the electrical power lines found in almost every home across the nation. "The investment would allow the startup, Current Communications Group of Germantown, Md., to further develop and deploy a technology called broadband over power lines, which has generated widespread interest among utility companies but has been slow to take off. The Maryland company declined to disclose the amount invested, but the Wall Street Journal reported it as $100 million... "Broadband over power lines becomes an attractive offering to all of the players involved -- from the consumer to the utility company to a tech powerhouse such as Google. It's easy to use and is transmitted over the wiring system that's already in place in almost every home across the country -- even those not reached by other Internet connections like cable or digital subscriber lines, known as DSL... "Basic DSL from phone company SBC, for example, offers maximum download speeds of 1.5 megabits per second and maximum upload speeds of 384 kilobits per second. Broadband over power lines initially offers speeds of 3 megabits per second in both directions."

From ZDNet News: "The number of people who download free serial audio programs, or podcasts, is set to explode over the next few years, according to a new report. "Researchers at The Diffusion Group predicted this week that the U.S. podcast audience will climb from 840,000 last year to 56 million by 2010. By that time, three-quarters of all people who own portable digital music players will listen to podcasts... "Apple Computer, whose iPod music player spawned the term 'podcast,' recently added 3,000 podcast programs to its iTunes online music store. And what started out as a system for distributing homespun radio programming over the Web has now caught on with big media companies. ABC News, NBC News, ESPN Disney and National Public Radio have all introduced podcast programming in recent months... "The Diffusion Group's figures are much higher than those found in podcast forecasts from other research firms. For instance, Forrester Research predicted in April that just 12.3 million U.S. households will use MP3 players to listen to audio podcasts by the end of the decade."