Google Maps has formed a five-year partnership with Tele Atlas, the Belgium-based mapping company that was already providing it with geographic information systems (GIS) data.

Under the new agreement–financial terms were not disclosed–Tele Atlas will provide maps and “dynamic content” for Google Maps in over 200 countries. Tele Atlas will also provide such data for other Google geographic divisions, such as Google Earth and Google Maps for Mobile, and to future Google projects that may require mapping data. Tele Atlas, in turn, will have access to annotations that Google Maps users have added to the system.

Digital music seller Rhapsody is launching a $50 million marketing assault on Apple’s iTunes, offering songs online and via partners including Yahoo Inc and Verizon Wireless, Rhapsody said on Monday.

The songs will be sold in MP3 format, which means users of the Rhapsody service will be able to play them on iPods.

Before now Rhapsody, jointly owned by Real Networks Inc and Viacom Inc’s MTV Networks, had focused on a subscription service, allowing unlimited song streaming for $13 to $15 a month, rather than selling downloads.

But Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith said the fact the service has not been compatible with Apple Inc’s top-selling iPod digital player has limited Rhapsody’s reach.

“We’re no longer competing with the iPod,” Smith said. “We’re embracing it.”

Rhapsody also will be the music store back-end to MTV’s music Web sites and iLike, one of the most widely used music applications on social networking site Facebook.

Russia will be able to create its first Internet addresses using the Cyrillic alphabet next year, communications ministry official Vladimir Vassiliev told Interfax news agency on Sunday.

The move follows a decision by the organisation that regulates the Internet to deliver a radical shake-up to the domain-name system.

Russia, which currently uses two top-level domain names .ru and .su, will be able to create a third in Cyrillic by the second quarter of next year, Vassiliev said.

Some Russians have trouble using the Latin alphabet and being able to surf the web entirely in Russian would lead to an increase in the number of users, he said.

Web search giant Google has enlisted Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to create an original animated series that it will distribute on the Web via its AdSense advertising system, according to a report in the New York Times .

Google plans to use AdSense to syndicate the program–called Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy–to thousands of Web sites that are popular with MacFarlane’s target audience, according to the newspaper. Advertising will be incorporated via “preroll” ads, banner ads, or “brought to you by” ads, according to the report.

MacFarlane is also reportedly working with advertisers to create original advertising to run with the Cavalcade content, although neither Google nor MacFarlane would reveal any of the advertisers, saying only that the deals were among AdSense’s largest ever.

A man who put his life up for auction on eBay found it wasn’t worth quite as much as he thought when he settled for around A$100,000 ($96,000) less than his target price.

Ian Usher, 44, held the seven-day auction of all his belongings, including his three-bedroom home in the west Australian city of Perth and a trial for his job at a rug store, after the break-up of his five-year marriage.

Bids had reached as high as A$2.2 million, only for Usher to discover there had been a glitch on eBay’s system which allowed the participation of non-registered bidders who had put in bogus offers.

In the end, the winning bidder agreed to pay A$399,300 ($380,286) for all of Usher’s worldly goods, which also include his friends, a motorcycle and a jetski. According to the eBay website, the mystery buyer, whose user name is “mslmcc”, is in Australia and has a 100 percent feedback score.

Usher, who gave regular updates on the auction on his Web site www.alife4sale.com, now plans to travel in search of a new life.