• Gavin O'Malley, Oct 21, 2009, 1:45 PM
  • Google's New Tune Tech Crunch et al. Oh, that Google. Its sweeping ambition never ceases to amaze us. This time, according to various reports, it's building a music service, which the search giant has spent the last month or so bolstering with content from major music labels.

    What else is known and not known about the service? It might be named Google Audio, according to TechCrunch (which broke the news). Also, it's nothing like the music download service that Google China launched in 2008, but it's not clear whether it will based on downloads, streams, or both.

    According to MediaMemo, the service will actually be named, "One Box," will only be offering limited bits of music, and will rely on other companies to actually provide the tunes.

    How will it work? Punch in, say, "Jay Z", and you'll be presented with one or more songs, which may be partial clips or full-length versions, then guided to other sites where you can purchase the music.

    But, insists MediaMemo, "If you're looking for Google to launch a rival to Apple's iTunes (AAPL), or music streaming services like iMeem and MySpace Music, this isn't it." (In fact, iLike -- the music startup that MySpace purchased earlier this year -- and Lala.com will actually be providing music to Google, industry sources tell MediaMemo.)

    But that isn't stopping publications like eWeek from running headlines like, "Google May Launch Music Service to Challenge Apple iTunes," and then leading off their stories with leads like, "Google is set to challenge Apple, Spotify and several players in the digital music space by launching Google Audio." Read the whole story...
  • Microsoft Partners With Facebook, Twitter All Things D Take that Google! Microsoft on Wednesday is expected to announce separate nonexclusive partnerships with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate the two services' real-time feed of status updates into the Bing search engine. Google, meanwhile, has been in talks with Twitter and Facebook about similar deals.

    Boomtown reports that Microsoft digital head Qi Lu will announce the deal onstage Wednesday afternnon at the Web 2.0 Summit. Despite all the hype around Twitter, Facebook has the largest pool of status updates around. The top social network previously stated that it has 40 million updates a day on average. The new feeds are not expected to be up and running for weeks, if not months. Read the whole story...
  • Windows 7 Tops Amazon UK's Pre-Order Charts Mashable Either consumers really love Windows or they just really hated its last version, Vista. According to Amazon UK, the latest iteration of Microsoft's operating system, Windows 7, is the biggest grossing pre-order product of all time. Yes, ever bigger than Harry Potter.

    "The launch of Windows 7 has superseded everyone's expectations, storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the biggest grossing pre-order product of all-time at Amazon.co.uk, and demand is still going strong," said Amazon UK's managing director Brian McBride. Mashable says consumers won't be disappointed, and describes Windows 7 as feeling faster and leaner, as well as looking nicer than Vista. Read the whole story...
  • New Chips Promise Bright Mobile Future VentureBeat Heralding the advent of smarter, cheaper, and less energy-demanding smartphones, ARM has announced its newest microprocessor that will be the brains of smartphones and various other other gadgets. ARM designs microprocessors that are licensed by chip makers, who customize them and put them into their gadgets where low power consumption is important. The company's designs are used in most cell phones and have been used in 15 billion devices in the past few decades. ARM hopes to ship another 15 billion in four years, and the new chip will be important in that quest. The new Cortex-A5 microprocessor will have better performance than ARM's fastest ARM11 microprocessors, but it will consume less battery power than its high-volume ARM9 chips. Read the whole story...
  • Rant: It's Apple Against The World Beta News Under the inflammatory headline, "Apple declares war on the entire PC industry," Beta News insists that Apple's latest product launch -- along with its strong earnings report -- are in fact preemptive marketing strikes against "Microsoft, Windows 7 and the entire PC industry." Furthermore, Apple isn't playing fair by exploiting a position of strength "against an industry weakened by low-margin, low-priced netbooks."

    Sound a bit wacky? Perhaps, but BusinessWeek senior writer Peter Burrows did report recently that Apple was trying to capitalize on the launch Microsoft's forthcoming operating system by hitting millions of PC shoppers with a barrage of Apple-endorsing advertising. Read the whole story...
  • Is Yahoo Hatching a HuffPo Clone? Read Write Web Yahoo is launching a new project that sounds very similar to HuffingtonPost.com, which is to be run by respected online journalist Andrew Golis. "The site will be a combination of curation and original reporting," Golis, who comes from Talking Points Memo, wrote on his personal blog. "With gregarious linking and sharp, smart writing," he said, "I'm going to be building a team to bring the most popular news site in the United States into the news link economy." Golis is currently the Deputy Publisher of political news site Talking Points Memo. Read the whole story...