Microsoft is trying to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion to increase their competitiveness in the Internet consumer market. Read more here.
Amazon.com is purchasing an online audiobook seller for $300 million, in an attempt to increase their presence in the digital download market. Get the full story here.
The following are articles that I enjoyed and/or thought were of particular value. I became extremely backlogged with posting this week so the list will be quite long. I'm only going to post titles with the links so pick and choose as you like:
Want a Good Digital Distribution Deal? Get a Good Lawyer
Norovirus: Q&A
Wikimedia Foundation
Top 25 Web 2.0 Apps for Money, Finance, and Investment
What to do if you're laid off in 2008 recession
Organize Your Money in 2008 with Wesabe
eMusic
Amie Street
How to figure people out - Machiavelli Psychology
How to Find Work That You Love - A Logical Guide
Advice for Setting up a Home Office - Group Interview
United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team
Who gives better search results?
Get Rich Slowly
The Finance Buff
About Cory Doctorow
The following are six articles from ars technica on the current state of digital rights management:
"Oops: MPAA admits college piracy numbers grossly inflated"
Yes, college students need to rein in the file-sharing. We get it. Artists need to eat. But while the MPAA has been busy lecturing universities about the way they run their IT operations, perhaps the universities have something to say to the motion picture business about how it buys and releases its research. Back to school, MPAA.
So, in conclusion:
- Indies gaining market share
- Digital downloads up 45 percent in one year
- Well-known artists going indie
- DRM-free downloads from all major labels
- Major label revenues declining
- CD sales in a death spiral
Those don't suggest that the music business is dying so much as changing, and the center of gravity is shifting to individual artists and to smaller, more focused operations. There will always be a role for what are still called the "major labels"; who would put out all those American Idol and Hannah Montana albums, for instance?
Can music companies compete against "free"? Sure they can; it's an issue I addressed in yesterday's feature on the changing nature of the music business, and confirmation came today from the oldest of old-guard sources, CBS. The company, which owns Last.fm, announced today that Last.fm will now offer on-demand streaming of millions of tracks from all four major labels and a huge host of indies. For free.
When it comes to opening new online music stores, DRM-free is the name of the game. Now that all of the Big Four music labels have either completely dropped or are in the process of dropping copy protection requirements from their music, online retailers are rushing to sell the newly-freed songs faster than a Mac user gravitates to an iPhone. Although Amazon has now made a name for itself as the first (and currently, the only) MP3 store to offer DRM-free tracks from all of the Big Four labels, Yahoo now plans to throw its hat into the ring later this year.
Of course, once it is in possession of an IP address, the RIAA files a John Doe lawsuit and then obtains an ex parte subpoena to discover the name and address of the person who was assigned that IP address. (And sometimes, that person played no role whatsoever in the alleged infringement.) But the complaints used by the RIAA don't reflect that. The RIAA's investigators didn't identify an individual in Atlantic v. Njuguna, as the complaint says, merely the IP address of a piece of Internet-facing hardware like a cable or DSL modem. They may also be able to get the IP address of the device directly connected to the hardware, which could be a PC, laptop, wireless router, or something else. Either way, it's not an individual, and the RIAA's lack of precision in its complaints is troubling.
In fact, the IFPI's own numbers show that in the US, for instance, 17.6 percent of all Internet users regularly share files. If 30 percent of those users buy less music, that means that file-swapping only leads 5.9 percent of all US Internet users to buy less music. The number is even lower if we take the US population as a whole.
Forgive us if we're skeptical here, but implementing a draconian solution like deep packet inspection of all Internet traffic in order to get a few percent of the population to buy more music doesn't sound much like progress, or even rationality.
Snap Shots makes it easier for site owners to empower their readers with enhanced hyperlinks that display previews, text summaries, videos, stock charts, MP3s, product info, and much, much more. Just roll your cursor over this link to see how it works."
Deyey.com aims to help small company and individuals to save their cost to run and promote a business. We provide two FREE online applications now. One is for designing a Name Card, another one is for File Mangament. Besides, our web platforms can share your name cards and files with other people. It lets more people in the world to know more about you and your business. We know that they are not enough to help in your businesses, so it is just our starting point. We have plenty of ideas want to do and we will try our best to get it done!
If anybody has a chance to be the next big sensation in Web 2.0, Tumblr has a chance. What is Tumblr, you may ask? I'll let Tumblr tell you, per Tumblr's website:
To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.This is the response Tumblr has in their FAQ section in response to the question "What is a tumblelog?". For more on Tumblr, check out the page on their site called "Why you'll love Tumblr".
You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogs that make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.
If you still want to know more about Tumblr, you're in luck. Here are four articles about Tumblr, in chronological order, that will fill all your curiosities:The art of having less but enjoying our lives more, involves a few simple changes in perspective. First, we must understand where our true values lie and focus on them. Then, we must take time to enjoy the simple things, and slow down and see what’s right in front of us.
Small Business Media
The New York Times' small business section
BusinessWeek's small business section
Fortune Small Business from CNN Money
Entreprenur.com
Inc.com
Fast Company - Although it isn't small business focused, I still think it could be very helpful and inspiring for the people of small business. As quoted from their site:
Fast Company empowers innovators to challenge convention and create the future of business.Small Business Related Organizations
