Norway Presses Apple To Open Up iTunes
A Norway consumer body says it wants to take Apple to court over its iTunes music store for not changing its DRM technology to make its music available on all music players.Two years ago, Consumer Ombudsman Bjørn Erik Thon criticized iTunes for the use of unfair contract terms in breach of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act.
SocialText Brings Facebook & Twitter Into Wikis
Socialtext is making big news all over the Web this morning. Here’s a rundown, later in the post I’ll talk about why.
Customers Cry Foul On Wal-Mart’s DRM Decision
In yet another shutdown of DRM servers, following on the heels of Yahoo and MSN Music,Wal-Mart is also shutting down their DRM servers casting millions of dollars in media locked into one computer, unless you can copy it over to disk.
Companies Come Together To Promote Mobile Broadband
A group of 16 major IT and mobile companies have united behind a GSMA-led initiative to promote mobile broadband.The companies include Dell, Ericsson, Lenovo, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Toshiba and Vodafone. The group’s goal is to help people easily identify laptops that have built in access to the Internet via high-speed networks. The marketing initiative is worth more than $1 billion over the next year.The group will label laptop computers that meet their standards for mobile broadband access with a badge that identifies the laptops as ready for mobile broadband connections.
NBC Olympics Coverage Proves Online Video’s Importance
NBC Sports had a good run with online video during the Olympics to say the least. They reported that they streamed over 12 million hours of Olympics content across its digital platforms, with 7 million visitors watching over 30 millions streams of live and Video On Demand content at NBCOlympics.com.
Advocacy Group Forms To Combat Piracy
An advocacy group created by a number of major media and technology companies plans to promote the Internet as a place for people to get songs, television shows and movies without turning to piracy.
Could Google Be Looking to Dominate the Wireless Industry Next?
Google’s been giving a lot of thought to the future lately with all of its posts from experts in their respective fields on the Official Google Blog.
Interest In Bailout Bill Shuts Down House Web Site
The U.S. House of Representatives Web site was shut down yesterday along with a number of related sites including the Web sites of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts as millions of people went online searching for news about the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry.
Pandora Never Says Die
Pandora’s obituary was all but written last month as SoundExchange called for higher royalty payments from the Internet Radio site, and others like it. But there is a little life in the site and in the industry yet.
Open Source Guru Rails Against Cloud Computing
Criticism of the rising cloud computing meme has come from a seemingly unlikely place: GNU creator and Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman. Traditionally, any option to Microsoft’s dominance would be a welcomed change in the open source community, but Stallman foresees corporate bullies being replaced with different corporate bullies who would put your privacy at risk.