Sony just announced that they plan to launch an online store to sell music, books, movies and other downloadable applications for mobile devices. No dates or specifications have been disclosed yet but speculations are that it will be very similar in nature to Apple’s iTunes. With a number of mobile devices like mp3 players, ebook readers e.t.c. , the store will work as a platform to link all such products to Sony’s digital library.

With thin margins in hardware, Sony does need to make this one work to be profitable like earlier and to become a top player in the market. As part of their strategy to move into the software market, Sony also brought in Tim Schaaf, one of the main software people at Apple, back in 2006.

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Let’s say that you are shopping at one of your favorite online retailers. You decide to make a credit card purchase and when you finish checking out, you see an offer to save money.

(image credit U.S. Senate)

Apparently, all you need to do is fill in your email address and click a button. Now you’ve entered an agreement to pay some third-party website, which you’ve never heard of, several dollars a month via your credit card. This money keeps coming out every month until you notice it on your credit card statements.

How do they get your credit card info? Some very popular websites are giving them the information while you check-out during a purchase at their site. They get a kick-back for referring you and it adds up to millions of dollars. Classmates.com made over $70 million dollars this way.

Here’s how it works:

Here are the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

The Good:

Class Action Lawsuit in 2006 is settled in 2009.

U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation – investigation involving Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue.

The Bad:

Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue – I won’t even give you links to their sites. These are the sneaky guys who bill you every month for services you’ve never used.

The Ugly:

This image contains a list of popular web sites that cared more about making money than about your security. This is very ugly.

(image credit – U.S. Senate)

Thanks to my friend Bob C, who emailed this to me.

Be sure to offer your comments below.

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As of today, Xbox 360 users who have an Xbox live membership can enjoy popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Zune HD on their consoles. Facebook and Twitter will appear automatically on the dashboard within your My Community Channel. While Zune HD and Last.fm can be found in the Video and Music channels respectively.

So now Xbox 360 users can update their Facebook and Twitter status right from their consoles and connect to their friends in real-time. The option to view full-screen photos is also available within the Facebook feature. Zune HD allows users to stream HD videos on your Xbox 360 while Last.fm allows you to listen to music from all over the world. You can also skip, ban and love tracks as you listen to them.

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When TweetDeck released their updated version (v 1.1) on November 6th, it had a number of bugs that made the app crash for a number of users. The app quickly disappeared from the app store. TweetDeck support team claims that they took it down while some blogs state that they were kicked out.

Anyways, they fixed the bugs and re-submitted the app within a couple of hours but the app still hasn’t been approved after 4  whole days. Is Apple being extra cautious?

Note that this issue doesn’t affect the users who are still using the older version of TweetDeck on their iPhones.

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Coming back to the rant, everytime Apple decides to push a upgrade to iTunes, users have to download almost 100MB of data to their PC, to just upgrade iTunes. And this happens each and  every time Apple releases a update.

Given the technology team Apple has, can’t it just provide users with intelligent updates? Why should a user have to download the a huge file, just to upgrade something that already exists on their PC or Mac?

I am certainly looking at iTunes alternatives, including DoubleTwist, which is much more better than iTunes.

Do you use iTunes? Have you upgraded the software to the latest version? What do you think about the not so intelligent upgrades provided by Apple?

For those who are interested, here are the new features in iTunes 9.0.2:

• An improved look and feel, including a new Column Browser for easily browsing your artists or albums, movies, TV shows, and more.
• iTunes Store has a brand new look, with improved navigation for quick and easy exploration.
• iTunes LP and iTunes Extras create unique experiences that feature exclusive interviews, videos, photos, and more — available with select album and movie purchases on the iTunes Store.
• Home Sharing helps you manage your family’s iTunes collection between computers in your home. iTunes can automatically transfer new purchases, or you can choose just the items you want.
• Genius Mixes are created for you by iTunes and play songs from your library that go great together.
• iPod and iPhone syncing now allows you to organize your iPhone and iPod touch home screens directly in iTunes. Syncing is now also more flexible, allowing you to sync individual artists, genres, or TV show and Podcast episodes.
• iTunes U items are now organized into their own section in your iTunes library.
• Sync with iPod nano (5th generation), iPod classic (Fall 2009), and iPod touch (Fall 2009).
• iTunes 9 also includes many other improvements, such as HE-AAC encoding and playback, more flexibility with Smart Playlists rules, simpler organization of your media files inside an iTunes Media folder, and more.

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Google uses numerous sources to find new webpages, from links we find on the web to submitted URLs. We aim to discover new pages quickly so that users can find new content in Google search results soon after they go live. We recently launched a feature that uses RSS and Atom feeds for the discovery of new webpages.

I am not sure, but Google has been scanning RSS feeds for quite sometime now. In the past few months, I have seen our feed URL http://feeds.techie-buzz.com/techiebuzz being indexed faster than the regular URL.

What has your experience been with Google indexing RSS feeds? Do let me know about them through your comments.

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The site http://www.whitehouse.gov/ is now running on Drupal. This is definitely good news as the open source momentum will gain better support, now that it is running the websites of the World’s biggest government.

Have you ever used Drupal before? What are your thoughts about the White House move to start using Drupal?

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If you are a Trekkie, or simply curious, you must have a chat with Fake Kirk. This Captain Kirk look-alike bot will try to carry on a conversation with you. You will be amazed or disappointed, but you won’t come away without an opinion.

Here’s what happened when I went on a 5 minute mission to explore a new website. I am the Lieutenant in the chat below.

Captain’s Log:

Lieutenant: What is the Star Date?
Fake Kirk: Stardate Tuesday, October 27, 2009.

Lieutenant: Where is Spock?
Fake Kirk: He is on the planet.Lieutenant: Do you love Tribbles?
Fake Kirk: Only a few of them.Lieutenant: What is the meaning of life?
Fake Kirk: Our five year mission: to seek out new worlds and new civilizations. To go boldly where no man has gone before.

Follow these links to find out more about Pandorabots, or you can see a list of the most popular bots. By the way, one of the bots is named “God”. Don’t ask him about false idols, he gets really angry.

Techie Buzz Verdict:

Fun, just plain old fun. This web app should work in any modern browser with Adobe Flash installed.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5

Do you have any questions about A.I. or chatbots? Do you have any ideas you’d like to share? Be sure to add a comment below or email me. I’d love to hear from you.

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Initially, with the Windows 7 launch, Microsoft hinted about a Windows version of the software coming soon and now Amazon is announcing that a Mac version is on its way as well. This is an effort by Amazon to make Kindle compatible with more and more platforms to acquire more market share. Amazon Kindle already has a compatible version for iPhone/iPod Touch.

There is no estimated shipping date for the software yet. However, an interesting point is that release of Apple Tablet would put Apple in direct competition with Amazon due to its small size and portability.

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The next portal that is being added to Netflix streaming service is Sony Playstation 3. The streaming would start next month and anybody who has a Netflix membership to instant movies will be able to watch movies using their PS3. Netflix is continuously increasing the number of instantly watchable movies which makes good sense with their strategy of partnering with more and more platforms.

Unfortunately, this is only for US as instantly watchable movies are not available outside of the US yet. With an estimated installed base of 9 million users, PS3 would give Netflix a good push-up in terms of growth.

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