Scrapbooking has become the latest and most popular hobby in America.

Relationships during adolescence are usually bounded by a mutual understanding that they involve limited commitment. Virtual space is well suited to such relationships; its natural limitations keep things within bounds. As in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, which takes place in the isolation of a sanatorium, relationships become intense very quickly because the participants feel isolated in a remote and unfamiliar world with its own rules. MUDs, like other electronic meeting places, can breed a kind of easy intimacy. In a first phase, MUD players feel the excitement of a rapidly deepening relationship and the sense that time itself is speeding up. "The MUD quickens things. It quickens things so much," says one player. "You know, you don't think about it when you're doing it, but you meet somebody on the MUD, and within a week you feel like you've been friends forever."

Lots of people can now watch themselves on sort-of TV, which is pretty fun in itself. The bonus is that others want to watch them, too.

NBC used Yahoo to premiere Heroes and AOL to offer sneak previews of its Twenty Good Years and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And the brand-new CW Network celebrated its debut by posting for free Runaway and Everybody Hates Chris on MSN. Counting cable, dozens of networks are now making programs available online.

The good ones are watched again and again, sending a clear message about what works and what doesn't. When "My Parents Suck …" broke 500,000 views, Beckett and Flinders realized this wasn't just an experiment or a setup for a film.

It was exactly what her acting coaches at Universal Studios' film program had warned her against: unkempt producer-types hawking shady deals.

THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT JESSICA ROSE that the webcam loves. Her distractingly large eyebrows and small round face are bent and stretched by the fish-eye lens into a morsel of beauty that fits perfectly in a pop-up window. That's not to say she isn't pretty off camera – she is – but every step she takes closer to the cam multiplies and enhances her looks. It's a face made for the browser screen.

As for Sacerdoti's so-called postroll ads, even the most self-satisfied marketer > wants to know who in the world would stick around to watch – or, more to the > point, who can prove that anyone did. >

A lot of those upload monkeys have a nasty habit of posting clips from TV shows or enhancing their clips by adding music tracks – which, of course, are somebody else's property.