Filed under: Business

Grooveshark is a fantastic music service; it lets you immediately listen to almost any song or album you can think of. They've got an enormous library, and the quality is usually decent. We've covered it before, but what makes it special for me is that it is actually one of the few services that work in my geotarded neck of the woods (no Hulu or Spotify for me).

And now, Universal Music Group is suing Grooveshark. This is also not the first lawsuit they're facing, so they probably know the drill by now (they've reached a settlement with EMI).

Incidentally, do you think this has anything to do with Universal's new Vevo service, inspired by Hulu? I'm sure it's just a coincidence. I would tell you what Vevo is like, but I can't because it is "not currently available in my country". Go Universal, I love you guys.

[Thanks, Mark!]

Microsoft and Facebook have worked together for two and a half years now, with Microsoft selling display ads on the social network. In a newly-announced deal Facebook will be taking over responsibility for selling their own display ads -- which makes sense given that they've got their own ad network.

Microsoft's Bing web search service will be extended to Facebook worldwide, and Microsoft will continue to provide search ads. Beyond the advertising changes, Facebook will now have access to Bing's full set of features to implement as they see fit within Facebook, which could lead to some exciting new features.

Microsoft's strategy of exposing Bing to the at least 350 million active Facebook users is an attempt to kick-start the service's growth which is already recognized among web power-users as being comparable to Google in terms of quality.

Just days after Amazon.com decided to stop selling all books by Macmillan and its imprints, the online book giant has relented and added buy buttons back to Macmillan titles. The publisher vs. retailer dispute arose when Macmillan wanted to raise prices on its eBooks to $15, which is well over what Amazon currently charges (and, arguably, more than consumers will pay). You can get the details of the original dispute in an earlier post by Download Squad's Brad Linder.

For now, the details of the resolution aren't being made public, but Amazon has said it will allow major publishers to switch to an "agency" model for eBook sales. That means publishers like Macmillan and HarperCollins can sell you their eBooks directly, at whatever prices they wish, and Amazon will act as the middleman and take a 30% commission. The New York Times speculates that Amazon also asked the publishers not to make exclusive deals with other eBook vendors, like Apple's upcoming eBook store.

Sometimes, Apple's decisions about content in the App Store can be petty and anti-competitive -- like asking developers to remove any mention of Android. But sometimes, they make a call that seems to put users first. This time, it's a request that developers use your location to provide useful information, rather than just serving you location-based ads. Here's the text of the warning to developers, posted in Apple's developer forum:

If you build your application with features based on a user's location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.'

Developers might balk at the removal of a possible cheap and easy revenue stream, but I think Apple is doing the right thing, here. Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which allow business to advertise specials, should be unaffected, because they also your location for checking in, finding your friends, and other important game elements. The kind of app being targeted here has no reason to know where you are except to show you ads, and I can get behind Apple trying to block that use of the feature.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb actually seems pretty angry about the situation. His point is that if an app is going to show you ads, whether it has location-based features or not, it should be allowed to show you local ads. Marshall seems to balk more at the idea that Apple wants to decide what constitutes "beneficial information." I agree that Apple may have worded that part of the warning artlessly, but I think what they mean is "non-advertising information."

What do you think, Download Squad readers? I'd especially love to get an iPhone developer's perspective on the situation.

Apparently a small-time business in NYC called "Oh Nuts" claims Google paid them a visit and asked to take photos inside the store every six feet (that's every two meters for the rest of us), a-la Street View. They took photos of the aisles and of actual products.

Google say they're just experimenting and are not making any statements (how surprising), but still, it's an interesting prospect. If implemented on a broad scale, will it mean shopkeepers would have to keep their shelves super-neat until the Street View team comes along?

What if they decide to stop carrying a product? And if they've changed things around and decide they want the photos taken again?

I think the only way this can work is as a paid advertising service, with Google hiring out their photographers -- but then it would probably only be available in major cities. Still, I kind of like the idea because it sounds like something which could give the small guys a better chance and some exposure in their perpetual fight against big-time retailers.

[Via: Search Engine Land]

Competitive? Run a website? Curious to see how your favorite sites rank? I have just the thing.

WooRank is a new service that summarizes your entire website in one decidedly useful shot. Highlights include:

• Traffic estimation numbers using Google data, Alexa & Compete rankings
• An internal site SEO analysis with a Text/HTML ratio
• Off-site SEO with link counts from Delicious, Digg, Twitter & Wikipedia as well as a back link count total -- Nice
• It even does a Whois lookup and shows if the site is using compression

Good stuff. It summarizes all this using some behind the curtains wizardry to create a single score they call the woorank. Without knowing more about the algorithm it's hard to say if this number is meaningful but from their About page I would assume it's based heavily on search criteria Google finds relevant.

They appear to be adding features rapidly; in the last 24 hours a PDF feature appeared that will send the summary to an email address. The current services are free with unspecified premium features coming soon.

With everyone expecting Apple to announce a tablet less than 24 hours from now, the CEO of textbook publisher McGraw-Hill let the cat out of the bag in a CNBC interview earlier today. Yes, the tablet is going to be announced at Apple's event today, and yes, "the tablet is going to based on the iPhone operating system."

I'm not going to debate whether this was an accidental last-minute leak or a clever push by Apple to get one last round of media hype before they debut the new product. Either way, the announcement should happen today.

More than 90% of developers responding to a recent Appcelerator survey said they were interested in developing tablet apps this year, and it rated third behind iPhone and Android in terms of developer enthusiasm. Mind you, this is before the thing has even launched. If iPhone developers can easily port their apps to the tablet, as most tech pundits are speculating, it will hit the ground running with an impressive software database.

The iTunes Store infrastructure is already in place to deliver eBook content, too, which is where McGraw-Hill and other publishers come in. Expect to hear a lot about content partnerships at launch time.

[via AllThingsD]

There was a time when having a chat client on your computer at work was considered a no-no. These days, if you're not available via some sort of online chat or instant messaging, you're just not moving at the speed of business.

Many companies have begun using open instant messaging services for their internal discussions, but there are a couple of downsides to this approach. The first is a lack of control, and a potential lack of security. The second is a lack of collaboration tools; it's difficult to share files between multiple people in an instant messaging chat.

HipChat is a new start-up that aims to fix the problem of secure, controlled corporate chat. Based on Adobe AIR which provides cross-platform functionality, HipChat is a fully functional chat client that as GigaOM points out, bears a resemblance to 37Signals' Campfire product. To be fair, the basic layout of an IRC-like chat client has been the same for 15 years, so the similar look is not that much of a surprise.

Where HipChat has a definite advantage is in the fact that it is a desktop client (even if it does unfortunately rely on AIR), not a web client. While there are 3rd-party Campfire clients and even ways to run Campfire in a dedicated single-purpose browser, HipChat is simply a desktop chat client.

HipChat has plans available from $9/month for up to 12 users, to $99/month for up to 100 users, and offers a 30 day free trial.

[via GigaOM]

Since the FTC is now requiring bloggers and advertisers to clearly disclose in a conspicuous fashion when an author has received a payment for writing a post, bloggers have chosen to tackle the issue in various ways. Some sites (like Download Squad) are able to post a blanket policy because they don't accept any kind of payment in return for posting. Others take the opposite approach, offering a blanket statement that says readers should assume they are paid for everything - a particularly good example of this is Tim Ferris' fun disclosure page.

If, like many bloggers, you fall somewhere between on this issue, you might need to be more granular, and disclose payment on a case-by-case basis. Of course, you can always do this in the text of what you write, but if you want something standard you can just link to, have a look at what CMP.ly is offering.

CMP.ly offers a set of 5 standard disclosures using very short URLs that you can link to, as well as a sixth custom disclosure that you can modify to meet a specific scenario if you create an account. The URLs are short enough that they can be used anywhere that you write online, to make sure you're really covering your, well, all your bases.

Haven't we been through this before? The New York Times is apparently getting ready to charge readers for online access. According to sources close to Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. Two main models are being considered. One is the Wall Street Journal's part-free, part-paywalled plan, where users pay for access to a lot of the paper's content.

The other, more likely solution is a metered system, where readers will be able to read a fixed number of free articles before they have to subscribe. These models may be working - sort of - for other papers, but The New York Times is one of the papers of record in the US, and has a worldwide readership of 20 million to consider.

What makes Sulzberger think his paper's readership can sustain the shift to a pay model when so many users won't even read an article that requires a free account? I know this only anecdotal evidence, and maybe the board at the Times has studies that contradict it, but many people I know won't even read a free NYT article if they have to log in to do it. BugMeNot.com is swimming with Times accounts you can use to avoid the registration process. If users are willing to go that far to avoid registration, I can't imagine they'll react any more positively to the pay model.

That's not to say that the New York Times isn't worth paying for. It's an important resource full of crucial reporting, and I'm sure a great many people are willing to subscribe to the online edition. Unfortunately, the Times seems to have ruled out an NPR or public-TV-like donation model that could take advantage of this public goodwill. I'd like to see the paper give that a shot, considering how important its place as an international resource has become.

Meanwhile, the switch to pay could be preparation for a lucrative contract deal with Apple, based around the tablet device that's due out later this month. We should find out everything in the next couple of weeks. Until we do, enjoy the still-free-for-now New York Times!

[via New York magazine]

One time-tested approach to creating good software is to focus on very few features, but get them absolutely right. That's what Ketchup does when it comes to taking notes at meetings. This web app keeps all your meeting notes in one place, so you can quickly jump back and see who was at each meeting and what happened there. It's stupid-simple to use, and shareable via public or private URL with anyone who needs to see your notes.

Ketchup's default meetings view lets you add new meetings, with attendees and agenda items. Rearranging the agenda is a simple matter of drag and drop, and the printable version of the agenda looks clean and handout-worthy.

At the meeting, you can add notes to each agenda item, and they'll auto-save for later. Granted, there are plenty of apps for taking notes, and any of them can probably be squeezed into the role of "meeting notes app," but Ketchup is designed for the task.

[via Daring Fireball]

Steve Sheraton, a magician and software developer, has reportedly pulled off the neat trick of legally selling iPhone apps without going through Apple's iTunes App Store. Sheraton's product, Your App Shop, allows iPhone developers to create their own branded shops which deliver software to customers with none of the restrictions of Apple's store. In fact, one of the first shops to start using Your App Shop specializes in X-rated apps.

Sheraton is slated to present the big reveal of Your App Shop this week at the CES conference in Las Vegas. How it purports to legally avoid Apple's restrictions is still a mystery, and all the press releases say is that it's based on an "existing yet little-known technology." Sheraton's own development resumé includes novelty apps like iBeer and iSoda. With the real App Store still doing business like gangbusters - it just hit 3 billion app downloads - it'll be interesting to see whether Apple's legal department makes a move to protect the store's monopoly from Your App Shop.

[via AppScout]

Before I get started here, I have to say that I don't blame PointAbout one bit for coming up with AppMakr. All kinds of sites are launching branded iPhone apps to deliver their web content - our esteemed sister sites, TUAW and Engadget, both have neat little apps you can download - and at $199 or $499 for an easy way to make an app out of your site's RSS feed, AppMakr is probably looking at a tidy little profit.

I'm also not saying that AppMakr doesn't work. The demo video (check it out after the jump) shows off a quick and easy-to-use creation process, and the price is less than what you'd pay a dedicated developer to make you an app from scratch. AppMakr also helps you navigate the sometimes-dicey App Store approval process, and will even publish your app through its own Apple Developer account, which is all worth a bit of money in itself.

Here's my beef, though: an iPhone app based around an RSS feed of your web content is just annoying. Why would I want to download that, even for free, when I can just add your site to Google Reader along with my other favorites and view it in a great RSS app like Reeder? How obsessed with a site do you need to be before you'll clutter up your home screen with its logo? So, no offense to AppMakr, I just don't see the appeal of the trend it's riding.

[via Mashable]

Looks like Seesmic is still trying to position itself as the Twitter client that does it all. Loic LeMeur and Co.'s most recent move -buying Ping.fm - will enable Seesmic users to cross-post status updates to 50 different social networks at once. Ping.fm has half a million registered users who post hundreds of thousands of updates a day via the service.

Ping.fm will be fully integrated into Seesmic's various apps later this month, allowing Seesmic users to instantly post to the networks of their choice. Ping's SMS, chat and email functions will also become part of Seesmic, and users will be able to set up triggers to automatically post certain updates to specific networks.

Not only has Seesmic bought Ping.fm's software, it's also brought on Ping's team of developers. If anyone can help Seesmic become the all-in-one social networking hub Loic seems to be after, it's the guys who perfected the scorched-earth approach to telling the world what you had for lunch.

[via Mashable]

The Facebook iPhone app is a nice little slice of mobile UI design, with those big buttons that mimic the home screen of the iPhone itself. LinkedIn must think highly of it, too, because the business-oriented social network just launched a new iPhone app that takes the same design approach.

From the home screen to the activity stream, LinkedIn 3.0 for iPhone looks blatantly, extremely Facebooky. Not that that's a bad thing ...

The new layout is attractive and it also makes navigation easy. You can quickly search contacts, read and comment on status updates, or reconnect with a former colleague.

You can even change the app's theme to a different color, although a nice Facebook-esque blue suits it just fine. The app even includes a Bump-like "In Person" feature that lets you exchange LinkedIn info with a new acquaintance over Bluetooth.

[via Mashable]