It looks like Apple's making yet another and more aggressive go at Web TV, this time by extending its iTunes software with a $30-a-month subscription service. Riding "over the top" of existing infrastructure, the yet-to-be-announced service could potentially rival those offered by cable TV operators. But will content providers play along, and is this enough for Apple TV -- which has so far failed to excite many consumers -- to finally take off? In its favor, writes MediaMemo (which broke the news), the new Apple television service would likely be an extension of its iTunes software, …

The market capitalization -- i.e., the current share price times the number of shares outstanding -- both Google and Apple are currently tied at about $170 billion after Friday's market close. As Tech Crunch explains, analysts often compare market caps for public companies as an indicator of success / failure, and one surpassing the other as a sign that one is overtaking the other, regardless of whether they're actually full-fledged competitors or not. To the investment community, the tie in market cap means the companies are exactly the same size today, as the measurement is an important indicator …

As inconsequential and inane as so much of the Twittersphere seems, even staunch intellectuals are falling victim to its unprecedented distributive powers. Take, for example, the armchair book critic who recently tweeted of the tweets of Stephen Fry, the British writer, actor and television personality: "Much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit ... boring." As a result, the Birmingham-based man attracted a frenzy of vitriolic attacks along with public scorn. Along with power as a real-time and open broadcast platform, "it was also an example of how Twitter reinforces the tendency of adults …

Google Wave, the company's next generation communication client, is already being criticized by some as less than intuitive. Coming to the rescue is Lifehacker's Gina Trapani and Adam Pash, who've written up a Wave instructional manual to accompany Google's own 90-minute instructional video. The Complete Guide to Google Wave is being hailed as a straightforward, well-organized volume that goes a long way toward demystifying the new and what many see as a complex tool. It presently features eight chapters, which are just a preview to a more completion work to be launched as a PDF file later this …

New research finds that book-related apps saw quite an upsurge in launches back in September. Indeed, book-related applications actually overtook games in the App Store as a percentage of all released apps, according to a survey conducted by Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile application analytics company. And the trend isn't an aberration, insists GigaOm. In October, one out of every five new applications launching on the iPhone was a book, Flurry said. The iPhone is already acknowledged as a handheld gaming platform thanks to more apps being released in the "games" category than any other from August 2008 …

Hoping to finally turn a profit on YouTube, Google is appealing to music and film footage rights owners to make ad revenue from their content rather than remove it from the video-sharing site for breach of copyright. The search giant has been selling a fingerprinting system for rights holders that means YouTube can identify their material even when it has been altered and made part of user-generated content such as wedding videos or satirical clips. First developed two years ago, the ContentID system is finally attracting record labels, TV producers and sports rights owners with the promise of …

For not the first time in history, the music industry's greatest enemy might also be its best hope. Indeed, a new study finds that consumers who illegally download digital music files also happen to spend more money on music than any other group. "The people who file-share are the ones who are interested in music," Mark Mulligan of Forrester Research tells The Independent. "They use file-sharing as a discovery mechanism." The poll, conducted by Ipsos Mori on behalf of British think-tank Demos, surveyed 1,000 16- to 50-year-olds with Web access, and found that one in 10 people …