• #shortyawards #politics @JIDF b/c he will win always #

• #shortyawards #politics @JIDF bc he's leading the fight #

• Noveau Art : http://is.gd/4SL2O #

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – A judge ordered a California online music service to stop delivering Beatles songs to users, according to a copy of the ruling posted online.

US District Court Judge John Walter in Los Angeles sided with British music giant EMI, which filed suit this week accusing Bluebeat.com and its parent company Media Rights Technologies of infringing on its rights to Beatles songs.

Walter brushed aside Bluebeat’s contention that it wasn’t violating copyright laws because Beatles tunes at its website were re-recorded "audio visual performances with related sounds."

Bluebeat did not submit any reliable evidence to support its claim that it "independently developed their own original sounds," the judge said in his ruling.

Walter issued a restraining order barring Bluebeat from streaming or selling Beatles digital downloads of Beatles music and said he believed EMI was likely to win its legal case against the Internet firm.

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There was no shortage of netbooks — those inexpensive and underpowered laptops that have been all the rage for the last year — at this year’s CES convention, with many wondering if they haven’t completely hit the point where they’ve become interchangeable commodities.

High-end netbooks like Sony’s Lifestyle PC aside, most netbooks now look and act about the same, offering the same features, components, and screen size.

So what’s the market’s next move? Cut prices, of course. Netbook pricing has been slowly creeping up over the last year as buyers looked for bigger hard drives, better performance, roomier keyboards, and larger screens. That feature creep means it’s not uncommon to see prices well above $400 for entry-level devices.

The folks at Freescale Semiconductor want to turn that trend around, offering a low-power chip designed to sip electricity while letting netbook makers offer devices for less than $200.

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RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – What do Jigsaw from "Saw," Freddy Krueger, and Jason from "Friday the 13th" all have in common, besides serial killing? Video games, if the horror stars’ latest round of promotions are to be believed.

Horror video games are having a record year as zombies, monsters, demons, and chain-sawing wielding psychos fight against the consoles, making video games the new home of horror for some.

Michael Pachter, video-game analyst for Wedbush Morgan Securities, said about $147 million worth of horror video games have sold in the United States alone this year through September compared to $131 million in total for all of 2008.

Actor Kane Hodder, best known as the man behind Jason’s mask in the "Friday the 13th" movies, believes scary games have an advantage over horror movies as disillusionment sets in with horror movie remakes and recycling old horror themes.

"Whenever horror movies do well, Hollywood always rushes more into theaters and people get a little burned out on them," said Hodder, who has worked in the videogame industry.

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[E-Commerce Times] – Amazon is offering a service that will let users supply a phrase and a PIN to make purchases at Amazon.com and any other participating Web site. Shoppers would not have to log in or supply credit card information to make a purchase. The system lets users set up multiple "pay phrases" to be linked to the same payment account, and it offers optional settings for preapproving purchases and setting allowances.

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) has introduced a new shortcut for consumers to pay for their purchases on Amazon.com and partner Web sites.

Amazon PayPhrase lets shoppers pick their own phrase — for example, "Knick Knack" or "Jack’s Allowance" — and use it in lieu of entering a credit card number to make purchases. The phrase is accompanied by a pre-established PIN.

Amazon did not return a call from the E-Commerce Times in time for publication.

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[ECT News Network] – Employees sometimes perceive a CRM system as something that benefits only managers or owners. To avoid this, managers should show that the system will provide value to everyone in the company. "Salespeople are a resistant bunch by nature," remarked SugarCRM’s Martin Schneider. They’re usually the ones entering the data, but it’s rarely a priority for them. They’d rather be selling.

Small businesses frequently rely on a haphazard assortment of tools to manage their CRM processes, such as email, contact managers and spreadsheets. However, such methods are usually not sustainable or scalable.

"Their customer  data ends up fragmented across 10 different applications and physical locations," Dmitri Eroshenko, CEO of Relenta, told CRM Buyer.

A good CRM solution can help small businesses tremendously by reducing data fragmentation and administrative tasks, he said. Team and individual productivity will then increase.

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[E-Commerce Times] – Google has added new features that help users search for music, giving site visitors the chance to listen to and buy the songs they find through a wide variety of partners. Discover Music will provide links to preview and purchase music when users search by artists’ names, album titles, song titles, or even a handful of remembered lyrics.

Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) new music search service, announced Wednesday, is in tune with that company’s overall goal to make every last bit of information searchable on the Web. After all, "two of our top 10 queries of all time are music-related," according to an introductory video on Google’s Discover Music landing page.

However, for online streaming music service Lala, the chance to join in Google’s effort is the equivalent of getting two thumbs up from "American Idol’s" Simon Cowell.

"We’re thrilled to be a part of it, obviously," Lala CEO Geoff Ralston told the E-Commerce Times. "It validates the business model we’ve put out there, which is music in the cloud and being able to access it from anywhere — but even more so the consumption and collection and ownership-based model, which is what Lala is all about."

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The social networking site jumps on the digital music bandwagon by selling songs in its gift shop.
Facebook is going to start selling music at its online gift shop as part of a revamped design and ramped up inventory roll out.

The social networking site started testing the sale of physical goods a few months ago, including such items as flowers and gift baskets, at the Facebook Gift Shop, which is primarily used for virtual products, such as specialty icons.

"We now are unveiling a newly stocked and redesigned Gift Shop, with new categories of gifts and additional gifts for charity, music and sports from developers. With so many gifts available, we also introduced a new design to make it easier for you to browse and purchase gifts with different gift categories. We will be rolling these changes out to everyone in the coming weeks, so don’t worry if you don’t see them just yet," writes Will Chen, Facebook engineer, at the site’s blog.

To buy Facebook gifts, users must purchase credits, which cost $0.10 each, from Facebook by using a credit card.

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