Online pornographers and religious groups are in a rare alliance as a key Internet oversight agency nears a decision on creating a virtual red-light district through a “.xxx” Internet address. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which has already rejected similar proposals twice since 2000, planned to vote as early as next week on whether to approve the domain name for voluntary use by porn sites.

The decision ultimately could hinge on whether “.xxx” has the support of the adult-entertainment industry - and many porn sites have been strongly opposed.

“One of the criteria is that it (must) have general support among the industry it’s supposed to serve, and it does not,” said Mark Kernes, a board member with the industry trade group Free Speech Coalition. “I have not met one single webmaster or adult video producer that is in favor of `.xxx,’ and I’ve met a lot of them.”

TV Guide, which has helped viewers navigate through thousands of TV shows for 53 years, now wants to do the same for Internet video. Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. will launch a test version next month of an online video search tool that allows viewers to find clips and full episodes of TV shows now being posted on the Web. A formal launch is planned for September.

The tool will not try to aggregate the thousands of user-generated videos featuring pet tricks, skits and other antics being posted on sites such as YouTube and Revver.

Instead, it will scour about 60 Web sites from major networks such as ABC and Fox and other video portals such as AOL and Google to find network and original programming produced by major media companies.

Scientists at IBM Corp.’s Zurich Research Laboratory have developed a glue-application technique used to assemble chips that will keep them running cooler, the company said.

Glues are used to bind the semiconductor packages, such as microprocessors and chipsets, with cooling elements that disperse the heat generated by today’s powerful chips. However, current glues, which are embedded with microscopic particles of metal or ceramics to help transfer heat, continue to be an obstacle to efficient heat dissipation, IBM said.

Scientists at IBM’s Zurich lab discovered that the problem lies in how the glue is applied. They observed that when a chip is attached to the cooling element of a semiconductor package, a cross formed in the glue as the microscopic particles it contains piled up. This prevents the glue from spreading evenly. They overcame this problem by creating tiny channels in the base of the heatsink that help the glue to flow properly.

The result: a thinner layer of glue that helps to disperse heat three times more efficiently, IBM said.

Another Trojan horse is spreading through the Internet telephone network of Skype Ltd.

The malicious code, known as both Warezov and Stration, is similar to an earlier version detected in February, but with a new URL (uniform resource locator) and a new version of the malicious code, according to an alert posted Thursday by Websense Inc.

Websense warns Skype users to watch for the message “Check up this,” with a URL containing a hyperlink.

The code itself isn’t self-propogating but when it runs, the URL is sent to everyone on the user’s contact list.

Microsoft is closing its video-sharing site, Soapbox, to new users for up to two months so it can create better safeguards against pirated content.

The software giant, which agreed earlier Thursday to distribute movies and TV shows for big media companies, has seen Soapbox fill up with unauthorized clips since a test version of the site launched last month.

No new subscribers will be accepted, but anyone who has already signed up for Soapbox can continue to access the site, said Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft’s online-services group.

Microsoft stood to be embarrassed by the existence of pirated work on Soapbox. There was a real possibility that the company could have found itself distributing video from News Corp. and NBC Universal, at the same time another one of its units was hosting material stolen from those same companies.