Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Apple Finally Closes the Deal with Universal for iCloud Music Service, Ready to Be Previewed at WWDC

Universal Music GroupImage via Wikipedia
It is finally confirmed by concealed sources that Apple has signed the deal with the last among the four major music labels it was going to take on-board for its cloud music service, iCloud. Apple had already scored the last three deals few weeks in advance but the deal signing with Universal Music Group was lingering since then, but now this deal has also been confirmed. Now Apple has the approval of all four major music labels, which includes EMI, Sony, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. Whereas, the only thing that Apple lacked were the agreements with music publishers, but now apparently it has been revealed that these have also been taken care of. It was revealed that Apple has acquired agreements with many publishers already, and that the puzzle of creating a flawless cloud music service was finally complete and ready for WWDC.
It has been officially declared by Apple representatives that the annual WWDC will be taking place through the next week and begin this monody, whereas for the first time ever, the lineup of the conference was also informed in advance. Apple has formally disclosed that along with its cloud-based online music service, iClould, it will also be revealing the latest version of its mobile OS, i.e. iOS5 and the Mac Lion OS as well. Though no further detail, regarding any of these software enhancements, has been disclosed so for all that we know, iCloud could not even be a cloud based music service at all, since it is not officially confirmed by Apple Inc.

State Of Tennessee, the Home to Country Music, Passes New Law on Online Entertainment Piracy

Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, TennesseeImage via Wikipedia

The state of Tennessee, which is called the capital of Country Music, has now passed a new law declaring that using someone else’s username and password, either by the user’s permission or not, for getting online entertainment is a crime. Obviously this state law has been praised tremendously be the entire music industry. This law was agreed upon by both the chambers of the Tennessee General Assembly on 19th May and later also signed into becoming state law by the Governor Bill Haslam on the Memorial Day.
The main support behind getting this bill passed was provided by Nashville's recording industry, along with the recent federal efforts to eradicate the theft of online entertainment by misusing user names and passwords on services like Rhapsody and Netflix. Mitch Glazer, the VP of public privacy and industry relations with RIAA, stated that "given the significant economic contributions of the music industry to the state (Tennessee), it's important to ensure that the hard work of artists, musicians and labels is protected against emerging ways to steal music."

Google Expects to Counter Facebook’s Superiority with Its New “+1” Recommendation Tool

Google has enrolled its “+1” feature to the World Wide Web on 1st June, 2011. Google Inc expects that all major websites will adopt its new feature in respect to its gigantic search engine, as this new recommendation tool will enhance that search engine to display better online content and ads. Google has been using this "+1" recommendation button in its own official websites, like Google blogs etc, since two months from now, but the feature is now expanded to all other publishers on the web as of this Wednesday.
Analyst’s claim that this new +1 feature is quite akin to Facebook’s revolutionary "Like" button, which is now one of the world’s most integrated share features on almost every website on the web. The “+1” button will allow the users to recommend any content on the web, like articles, photos, products, videos, songs or anything else of that sort, to their Google friends. This new tool will also allow Google to collect more personal information of its users, as it is beneficial for either Google or Facebook, to gain this information for providing their users with more related online adverts generating them immense revenue.
Facebook is always getting more inside and personal information regarding its users as they spend most of their time sharing their thoughts, photos and links on the website. This strength of Facebook is very troublesome for Google as this personal information of Facebook users, which are more than 500 million users, is not even remotely shared with Google's search engine. Former CEO of Google Inc., Eric Schmidt, admitted that ever growing popularity of Facebook is a great threat for Google, while he was giving an interview on Tuesday at the D: All Things Digital conference. Schmidt confessed that his powerlessness to counteract Facebook four years ago was one of the biggest regret of his decade-long career.
Hence now the current CEO of Google Inc., Larry Page, is doing all he can to develop the social networking aspect of Google’s Search Engine. This release of +1 button is also aimed to get the people’s review on their interest and gather more personal information as they highlight their recommendations in Google's influential search engine. The results with friend’s recommendation will only be visible to the search results of the users who have told Google to enable the new feature.
Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase
These personal recommendations of Google will also be shared with Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine, as Bing also continues collaborating with Facebook's Like button as part of a partnership.

China Highly Accused For By U.S. Officials for Being Responsible for Lockheed hacking

The widely growing suspicion of a citizen or an organization from China being responsible for the recent cyber attacks on Lockheed Martin has taken another turn, as more and more investigation is being done on the matter. One of the U.S. officials anonymously stated that "It's unclear at this point precisely who conducted the attacks, but given past history with these sorts of things, there's a strong tendency to look east. The Far East, in fact, and a country that not so long ago hosted the Olympics," from which it is clear that it’s China is being accused so far.
The Consulate General of the People's Republic...                               Image via Wikipedia
The government and private sources working on the national cyber security control reported that forensic tracing of these attacks has revealed that it was aimed to target the Lockheed network temporarily. It was mentioned that the hackers have cleverly laid an elaborative false trail behind their tracks. Even then, according to another U.S. official working on this investigation, reported that the suspicion is largely getting stronger that the Lockheed hack was initiated from "someone in China."
Free counters!