Going to the dentist? Get ready for the ads

Going to the dentist? Get ready for the ads

NEW YORK — Talk about your captive audience.

Advertising is coming to the dentist’s chair in the form of personal video goggles that patients wear while getting their cleaning or root canal.

The company behind InChairTV figures advertisers for toothpaste, toothbrushes, mouthwash and other dental products will be willing to pay higher rates to reach people seeking a diversion from dental procedures. Companies selling travel packages and other stress-relief services might also find the dentist’s chair prime time to make their pitches.

Willing patients put on a special headset to watch movies or television shows licensed from The Walt Disney Co. and its ABC network. The programs and infomercials are sent to dentists on DVDs, but soon they will be downloadable over the Internet.

For the past year, InChairTV has been filling commercial breaks with short infomercials about teeth whitening and other premium procedures. Now the company says it is opening the commercial breaks to outside advertisers, though it has yet to close any deals.

MySpace, HP in deal to encourage photo printing

NEW YORK — Among all the profiles on MySpace, the social networking site’s users have uploaded almost 4 billion photos. Now through an agreement with Hewlett-Packard Co., MySpace hopes people will increasingly print these images and, eventually, buy photo-embellished merchandise, too.

MySpace and HP said this week that they are starting a business relationship that will put Web-based printing software from HP into the photo sections of MySpace.

This means MySpace pages will display HP-branded click-to-print buttons. The buttons are meant to make it easier for users to print content stored on their MySpace profiles — like photos and blog postings — than it would be to do so through their Web browsers.

The buttons are expected to appear in November on MySpace in the U.S., Australia, Western Europe and Canada. And in the following months, people will be able to buy things emblazoned with photos from the site, MySpace Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe said.

For example, bands with MySpace profiles might eventually set up their own online merchandise stores where people could choose photos they like and have them printed onto shirts through HP, he said.

Google gets into video games — with ads

NEW YORK — Google Inc., the leader in online search and advertising, is muscling in on video game territory.

Google announced Wednesday it is launching the beta version of “AdSense for Games,” a technology designed to put relevant advertising in Web-based games.

It is an expansion of Google’s AdSense program, which matches ads to the content of Web sites.

The ads would be videos that players watch before or after a game, or after completing a level.

Fake YouTube pages used to spread viruses

SAN FRANCISCO — Savvy Internet users know that downloading unsolicited programs is one of the most dangerous things you can do online. It puts you at great risk for a virus or a time bomb from a hacker.

But even sophisticated surfers could get fooled by a sneaky new attack in which criminals create fake YouTube pages to push their malicious software and make it look like it’s safe, coming from a trusted source.

A program circulating online helps hackers build those fake pages. Users who follow an e-mail pointing them to one of the pages would see an error message that claims the video they want won’t play without installing new software first. That error message includes a link the hacker has provided to a malicious program, which delivers a virus.

Even worse: Once the computer is infected, it’s simple for the hacker to redirect the victims to a real YouTube page to see videos they want to see — and hide the crime.

Associated Press