The Financial Times breaks the news that Apple is in talks with the Hollywood majors about launching an online film rental service to challenge the likes of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Netflix, Microsoft's Xbox Live and just about anybody else in the movie rental/video-on-demand business. However, Apple would certainly have the edge in distribution through both its iTunes media store--which reaches millions worldwide--and its suite of consumer electronics offerings, like the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, and its line of Mac PCs. Apple already sells movies from Walt Disney and Paramount on iTunes, but it doesn't yet rent them out. In …

As Facebook continues to roll out new features and innovations, its top dogs are mulling what to do next from an investment standpoint. For example, should the social network invest in new properties to help spur growth, or should it seek an IPO? There's always the option of selling, but sources tell Kara Swisher of D: All Things Digital the answer is none of the above. Instead, Mark Zuckerberg and co. are looking to raise more money. Which makes sense: Facebook is getting a lot of interest these days from investment funds as well as the Web's big dogs, like …

Remember SpiralFrog? It would be entirely understandable if you didn't (in part because of the terrible name), but the New York-based company burst onto the scene last year with the promise of offering consumers free ad-supported music. SpiralFrog may have signed a few deals with big record labels, but the company has failed to get off the ground; the ad-supported music service was supposed to launch many moons ago, but has been weighed down by a management shift and some hefty commitments to its investors. It also needs to raise money. CNET says the company's top dogs are now turning …

The argument has been made that a recession would be bad for Web advertising, and it certainly could be if advertisers decide to cut spending across the board, but the Silicon Valley Insider's Peter Kafka says new data from Nielsen//NetRatings supports the counterargument that despite tough economic times, financial advertisers still have to spend to attract new customers--and it's cheapest to attract new customers via the Web. In its monthly release on U.S. Web advertising, the same four mortgage/financial advertisers showed up in the list of top ten Web spenders in August, as in July. In fact, three of the …

Sources tell BusinessWeek that Apple is considering joining the Federal Communications Commission's January auction for the last chunk of radio spectrum sizable enough to create a new wireless network. The 700Mhz spectrum has been called "beachfront property" by the FCC because of its size and speed; BusinessWeek says its signals would provide "far faster" Web access than existing cellular or Wi-Fi networks, unaffected by weather and able to pass through buildings. For Apple, there's very low risk in competing in the auction, the report says. The minimum bid is $4.6 billion--although experts believe the portion for a new nationwide …

The "R" word (recession) was bandied about last week by financial people after it was revealed Friday that 40,000 jobs were lost in August (analysts were expecting a gain of around 100,000), as companies started to lay off employees in the wake of an economy-wide credit crunch. So what does this mean for the Web industry, GigaOm asks? Is the Silicon Valley startup bubble about to burst? Venture capitalists and Web 2.0 wannabes are all at risk, says Giga's Anne Zelenka. If the economy starts to hurt real bad across all sectors, "it could be everyone's turn to practice austerity," …

The opening of Facebook, received as a blessing by many software developers, has created a few pitfalls for the social network, too, says The New York Times' Saul Hansell. Last week, TechCrunch reported that one software developer created a program that allows users to change their people's "status" messages without logging into Facebook. Well, Facebook didn't like that, and pressured the guy to remove the program. "Status" messages are kind of like "away" messages on an instant messaging client, except that "Facebook allows developers to use information from status updates and to add other information to the news feed on …

The experts of the online gaming world convened last week at the Austin Game Developers Conference to talk about the state of the burgeoning industry. Most believe that online gaming will continue to grow, but not without setbacks. Marketing in games and branded advergames are two areas of particular promise, but not all marketers will be successful. Experimentation is risky but potentially rewarding, too. Which isn't to say that the market isn't already full of such experiments. As Chris Sherman, executive director of Virtual Worlds Management, points out, many big-name consumer goods and toy brands have successfully reached out to …

Six months after Mark Zuckerberg opened his social network, Facebook, to software developers, there are more than 3,000 programs of various shapes, sizes and business models for users to add to their profiles. Their various functions range from linking to and learning from friends' music collections to turning friends into zombies. Eighty percent of Facebook's 40 million users have at least one app attached to their profile. What we have here is a growing Facebook economy, says the L.A. Times--albeit with very little money changing hands, as yet. However, the potential for such a universe appears limitless, the report says. …

As many analysts expected, Apple got a hefty dose of consumer backlash yesterday for announcing on Wednesday that it was chopping its iPhone price by $200, a little more than two months after its launch. Understandably, early-adopter iPhone owners were irate that they'd overpaid for the device by one-third of its original cost. Apple, which "has made few missteps over the last decade," acknowledged that it had angered its core customer base, and responded with a $100 store credit for early iPhone buyers. The New York Times called CEO Steve Jobs' letter on Apple's Web site "a remarkable concession." Another …