The Cloud That Rains Music
By DAVID POGUE
For years now, the most popular music system — Apple’s — has worked like this. You buy song files from the iTunes store. They download to your computer. If you want to listen to them on the road, you connect your iPod or iPhone to that computer and copy the files to it.
Amazon, whose online music store competes with Apple’s, has two problems with that arrangement. First, your music library is messily scattered. When you buy a new song at home, you can’t listen to it at work, at least not without copying it manually. You might buy a song on your phone, but it won’t be on your computer until you do a sync. And if your music library is big, you can fit only a portion of it onto your phone.
Second, Amazon wishes more people would buy music from its store instead of iTunes.
This week, the online retailer took the wraps off a slick suite of software and services that solves both problems, and offers some sweet incentives for you to consider it.
Amazon’s big idea is that instead of sitting on your computer, your music collection will sit online ( or “in the cloud,” as hipsters insist on saying). That way, you can listen to it from any computer — at home, at work, at a friend’s — by logging into a special Web page called the Amazon Cloud Player.
You can also listen to anything in your music collection on an Android phone. No copying or syncing of music is ever required; all your songs are always available everywhere, and they don’t hog any storage on the phone itself.
E-Textbooks Get a Lift From Publishers
Over the years, publishers have tried a variety of strategies to sell digital textbooks but with limited success. Most students continue to buy print books despite the inconvenience of having to lug them around in their backpacks.
Two major publishers are trying a new tactic. They have invested in Inkling, a company that makes interactive textbooks available on the iPad. They have also agreed to make dozens of their titles available on Inkling’s service.
The investment by Pearson and McGraw-Hill, announced on Wednesday, is a major step for Inkling, a company founded in 2009. Inkling sells interactive textbooks that incorporate audio, video and interactive quizzes.
The amount invested by Pearson and McGraw-Hill, among the biggest textbook publishers, was not disclosed. Inkling’s total investment to date, including money invested previously by several venture capital firms, is just under $10 million, according to a source who requested anonymity because of the confidential nature of the deals.
Online-Ad Surge Powers Google
Giant's Profit Jumps 32% as Users Click on More Search and Display Ads; Hiring Spree Continues
By AMIR EFRATI
Google Inc. provided powerful evidence of a resurgence in online advertising, posting a 32% jump in profit and 23% increase in revenue as some newer businesses bolstered the company's core search-ad sales.
Following the report, Google's shares surged 8.9% in after-hours trading to $589.30, after ending at 4 p.m. at $540.93 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The results showed how Google, among other Web companies, is benefiting from a broad recovery in online ad spending this year. U.S. Internet ad revenues reached a record $12.1 billion in the first half of this year, up more than 11% from the first half of 2009, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Paid clicks, a measure of how frequently consumers click on Google's ads, rose 16% in the September quarter compared with a year earlier. The average price that marketers paid Google per click increased 3% from a year earlier.
Tech Firms Intensify Patent Spats
Spate of Lawsuits Concentrate on Mobile-Phone Market as Rivals Aggressively Seek Strategic Edge
SHAYNDI RAICE
Microsoft Corp.'s lawsuit Friday against Motorola Inc. is the latest sign that technology giants are more aggressively wielding patents against their rivals, seeking strategic advantages and financial rewards.
The recent spate of lawsuits is mainly focused on the mobile-phone market, where relative newcomers from the computer industry are jostling for position, tangling with entrenched players. By contrast, patent lawsuits between direct competitors have become relatively rare in computing hardware and software, fields in which competitive positions have solidified.
Filing patent suits can increase uncertainty about competitors' prospects, legal experts say, while helping plaintiffs generate financial returns from their patents.
Some technology firms have built up patent-licensing businesses—following the lead of companies like International Business Machines Corp. and Qualcomm Inc.—and use lawsuits as a tool to win lucrative settlements.