A cynic might say that Apple, Inc. is overdue for a flop. The computer maker turned consumer electronics giant has two big products in the offing: an ITV set-top box that should be released later this month, and of course, the iPhone, slated for a June release. The former is certainly the more understated of the two; it's certainly entering a complex market with a wide and varied competitor base. The iPhone, meanwhile, aims to fuse the phone with the portable music player--a market that Apple clearly dominates. Phones that play music files are nothing new, but for many analysts …

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Fry comments on the probable death of Internet radio as a result of the Internet radio business after the Copyright Royalty Board passed a new ruling to raise royalty rates incrementally from $.08 per song per user in 2006 to $.19 by 2010. Doesn't sound like much? Well, consider that Webcasters used to pay artists and record labels a flat fee of 12 percent of revenue under a deal brokered in 2002. The new rules kill that exemption, making Webcasters pay performance fees in addition to composer fees. Clear Channel, for example, doesn't pay …

BusinessWeek serves up a massive special report on wikis, the online tools for building and editing information collectively. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is obviously the biggest sensation to grow out of the wiki phenomenon, but big corporations are also embracing the tactic to build reports and share company information more easily. Intelpedia is one such corporate wiki. Built by Intel engineer Josh Bancroft in 2005, Intelpedia draws on the input of the corporation's employees worldwide. While some employees obviously resent their work being edited, Intelpedia has really caught on--amassing more than 5,000 pages of content and 13.5 million page …

Sony Corp. had a terrible 2006, punctuated by fire-prone batteries and the expensive and difficult process of manufacturing its PlayStation 3. Buoyant-sounding PS3 execs say the worst of it is now over. "This is the year of software," Phil Harrison, president of Sony's worldwide game studios declared, "about developing new services and, crucially, the migration from pure packaged goods ... to something that blends the network and online services into the game experience." What does that mean, exactly? Harrison is referring to Sony's hitherto mysterious plans for the PS3's online service, called PlayStation Home, set for this …

Vonage, the perennially beleaguered Internet phone company, now has new woes. Yesterday, an eight-person jury found it guilty of infringing on three patents owned by Verizon, covering a range of features from call-waiting to how Web calls are connected to traditional phone lines. The jury found that Vonage must pay Verizon $58 million in damages and 5.5% in licensing fees per subscriber each month. The awarded damages weren't as much as Verizon requested, as Vonage was absolved of two of the five patent charges. The jury also found that Vonage hadn't willfully infringed upon Verizon's patents, which also helped …

Hossein Eslambolchi, the man who literally overhauled AT&T's voice and data networks three years ago into a single Web-based entity, is developing a new technology that scours the Web for media and automatically brings it back to the user. The startup, called Divvio, will search for audio, video and text on your favorite subjects, then bring them together, creating a personalized multimedia channel that's updated each time you sign on. Think RSS 2.0: It's like a page requesting New York Yankees content, which might start with spring training highlights, then pull in videotaped interviews and blog postings. …

Hoping to finally lay to rest the specter of its disastrous merger with AOL in 2001, Time Warner is setting aside an additional $145 million to settle the last of the securities-fraud claims related to the deal. This brings the total amount spent on shareholder lawsuits to about $3.75 billion. This is the third reserve created by the media giant stemming from the merger, the company said, after exhausting a $3 billion reserve created in 2005 and another $615 million set aside late last year. In addition, the company had to pay the federal government $510 million and settle …

A new Reuters report divulges more information on Jimmy Wales' collaborative search engine Wikia. The former futures trader, who founded the popular nonprofit encyclopedia Wikipedia, has repeatedly said he plans to go after Google with his latest wiki-based project. At a news conference in Tokyo, Wales said his short-term goal was to steal as much as 5% of the Internet search market, but he declined to give any earnings goals. The company has received $4 million in funding from "angel investors," as well as a "very large investment" from Amazon Inc, according to the report. A huge …

For anyone studying business, Google's copyright conundrum is a fascinating issue: It faces lawsuits and threats from disgruntled media companies, while using its massive audience and unparalleled technology for finding information as leverage against the looming threat of copyright disaster. What will the courts do? Will big media companies relent? At the heart of the matter is a clash of interests, says Wharton professor Patricia Williams. Traditional media companies "have models that have evolved to be inefficient," she says. Compensation for a video clip on YouTube in the offline world involves several parties in the big media food chain. …

The sell-off continues on Wall Street, but Silicon Valley is taking a collective yawn. Why the cool attitude? Seven years on, Silicon Valley is now a different place, in part because bright 20somethings see more opportunity these days in developing the next MySpace or YouTube than in betting heavily on rising tech stocks. Startups have also taken a different approach to investment, one that no longer requires Wall Street. Google, Yahoo and Amazon are flush with cash, constantly looking to scoop up the next bight idea to stay ahead of their competitors. So startups raise capital in the hopes …