MLB aims for sales boost with Tickets.com buy
Major League Baseball is stepping up to bat for better ticket sales. The league’s online arm, Major League Baseball Advanced Media L.P. of New York, has struck a deal to acquire 82 percent of Tickets.com's shares. The purchase could help the league up attendance at games and other events via a more convenient way to purchase tickets. MLB plans to use the site to create rare but easy forms of electronic ticket purchasing, such as ticket-buying using cell phones. The majority of the stock will come from investors who have agreed to sell to the MLB Advanced Media. The total deal is worth about $66 million. Tickets.com currently sells two-fifths of MLB's tickets. About a fourth of Tickets.com's $70 million annual revenue is from the online sale of baseball tickets, with the remaining 75 percent coming from other sports, concerts and other events. But Ticketmaster still dominates the overall ticketing business.

New on the web, it's Reuters interactive TV
In an era when most products are made-to-order, consumers can also tailor the nightly news to their liking. Reuters, the London-based news agency, has launched an interactive news channel featuring video news stories from its bureaus around the world. With the system's remote control, viewers can scroll through menus to find a news story they want to watch and also hear unedited and natural sound footage of breaking news. The service is available over the internet through the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. The channel is found in the Online Spotlight section of the Media Center, where users can watch, pause and record live TV.

Sony & Nokia tune into cell phone music options 
Portable music players are rising in popularity and fattening the pockets of their manufacturers along the way. Hoping to see a similar rise in their revenue, mobile phone companies are giving users options to hear their favorite tunes on cell phones. Yesterday at the 3GSM trade show in Cannes , France , Sony Ericsson and Nokia announced plans to offer full music stores on their phones. Sony Ericsson will introduce a line of Walkman-branded music phones next month that will enable users to transfer their existing CDs to their phones using a computer. Nokia will team with Microsoft to allow users to load music from a computer to a cell phone or directly to their phones through the wireless phone network and transfer them to a computer for storage or CD burning. Nokia has also partnered with Seattle-based Loudeye Corp. to provide a download service. Motorola may be unveiling the first iTunes phone at the CTIA Wireless trade show in March.

Big online names join in fight against phishing
When three giant companies come together to fight online scammers, will phishers take the bait? Yesterday Microsoft, eBay and Visa said they will be working along with Austin, Texas-based WholeSecurity to identify and track phishing attacks, the scams that deceive people into giving up personal and financial information. The three companies and PayPal plan to capture information on phishing emails and web sites and send it to WholeSecurity’s network. Phishing schemes have risen more than 8,000 percent in the past year, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.