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Spybot S&D Claims Other Anti-Malware Providers Playing Dirty

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 7, 2009 at 10:44 am

Independent anti-malware company Spybot Search & Destroy is claiming that bigger companies are picking on them. The company, which has arguably made its name for itself through its listing on Fileforum alone (they claim 67 million downloads), went to Fileforum’s sister news site Betanews to levy some serious charges on its competitors.

SS&D is free, which may bother those in the anti-malware industry trying to make a buck on keeping your PC clean. This may be spurring some to go as far as to actively break or force the uninstall of the application in order to use the for-profit application, claiming “incompatibilities.”

At least three software packages are playing dirty with SS&D, the company claims. They are Trend Micro, Kaspersky Labs, and McAfee Software. The setup applications in these company’s products causes a conflict with SS&D in something called ‘TeaTimer.exe.’ This causes the application to become unstable.

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Apple Goes to Variable Pricing, Amazon Now A Better Deal

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 7, 2009 at 9:31 am

ituneslogoWell, it happened. iTunes instituted variable pricing early Tuesday, and the effects are already rippling through the online music store. Five of the top 10, and eight of the top 25 songs now cost $1.29.

One thing we’ve still been unable to locate? Those 69-cent tracks. Nowhere to be found — maybe we’re missing them? But I guess if we’re looking at things overall, the price increase isn’t as widespread as some may have thought.

The price hike certainly opens up the door to Amazon MP3. All songs on that store are still 99 cents, but this could be more a function of a different expiration date on that store’s contract with the record labels. Then again, this could be a veiled trick to push all of us to music stores other than Apple in an attempt to break iTunes dominance.

Record labels have made it no secret that they aren’t happy that Apple is pretty much the only game in town when it comes to digital music.

In any case, Amazon MP3 is showing signs of life. While iTunes had a 87 percent share of the market in 2008, its competitor has managed a 16 percent share, the best showing so far for anybody according to NPD data.

Amazon’s music store is having a good deal of success with the older crowd, so the company may find it prudent to begin targeting this demographic a little heavier in an attempt to gain some more share.

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Blockbuster–R.I.P.?

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 6, 2009 at 9:27 pm

blockbusterThe death knell may be ringing for Blockbuster. Today the video-rental giant admitted that if it cannot complete the financing deals that it is currently working on, there is a good chance the company may be forced to shut its doors. While the company last week said it was in the process of getting a $250 million revolving loan from creditors, that may be in jeopardy.

Why? The loan apparently has some conditions to it, and Blockbuster is now not sure it can meet them. Even worse, whether the loan goes through are not, it is not even sure that would be enough to save the company.

During my days at BetaNews, I always seemed to get the Netflix vs. Blockbuster stories and the pricing war and war of words that went on between the two. I can tell you from what I wrote during that period that Blockbuster’s financial problems stem from that fight.

Neither side was willing to lay off, and both put out lots of money to one up the other through promotions, advertising, and the like. Even more, the pricing war that went on between the two cut into each company’s revenues. While Netflix is still going, it too was bruised financially by the fight.

(It’s probably fair to say Netflix’s lack of overhead is why its wounds were less deep.)

I sure hope that Blockbuster can find a way out of this mess, but it could be a victim of the changing face of how we consume media just like the newspaper industry. I guess time will tell.

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Yahoo Music Gets Friendly With YouTube, iTunes, Others

Posted by Jared Newman on April 6, 2009 at 4:46 pm

YahooTomorrow, Yahoo will embrace all sorts of third-party widgets at its Yahoo Music pages, allowing visitors to create their own layouts of videos, listening stations and online stores.

The relaunched Yahoo Music intends to become a “starting point for music fans,” according to the press release. The logic goes that curiosity or love for a recording artist will compel you to visit the artist’s page on Yahoo Music, which acts as a content hub. Widgets, or “modules,” can be added, removed or moved around the page for each individual viewer, allowing you to nix iTunes if Amazon is your preference and dump Pandora if you prefer Last.fm. There are modules for YouTube and Rhapsody as well.

Yahoo Music currently hosts 500,000 artist pages, but down the line, the company wants to open artist page creation for any musician or record label. That sounds like an ambitious undertaking, but it could work well for indie bands with enough devotees.  A spokeswoman tells me that other modules will follow, such as online merch shops. CNet says this is all part of the company’s “Open” strategy of adding third-party features to its existing Web services.

I poked around the old Yahoo Music site today, and actually enjoyed its current form. The listening limit on the embedded Rhapsody links are a downer, but otherwise the site was clean and easy to navigate. Hopefully, the addition of extra modules won’t clutter the screen or grind down on my poor little netbook.

My other concern is remembering to visit when my first instinct for any curiosity is to plug a search into Firefox’s Google toolbar. Yahoo searchers will find the stuff easily, but it’d be really great if Yahoo Music could get enough Google juice to land on the front page of those Web searches, above or near Wikipedia. That would probably be too friendly.

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Get a Bunch of Mac Software for $39, Support a Charity

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 6, 2009 at 1:33 pm

Unfortunately, we’ve run across this a bit late but a group called MacHeist — probably a nod to the steal of a deal for the amount of software you get for a rock bottom price — is offering a special deal on Mac software with 25% of all proceeds going to charity.

You’ve got one day to snap it up.

The group got it’s start in December 2006 with the first software bundle, which featured 10 software apps and raised nearly $200,000. Another bundle came a year later with 14 applications, raising over $500,000.

Both times the package was offered, it cost $49. However this year, in what the group has called its own “stimulus package,” the price has dropped to $39. Since the event has reached a certain level of donations, again 14 apps are available for download.

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Silly Sony, PSPs Are for Kids!

Posted by Jared Newman on April 6, 2009 at 12:52 pm

pspslimThough I try to abstain from fanboyism, I’m addicted to the console wars. And I’m not talking about insults flung around by loyal customers; only official company statements from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony will do. The more ridiculous, the better.

Spin factor is always high, but the latest remarks on the Nintendo DSi by SCEA director of hardware marketing John Koller are even more satisfying, because they’re false.

Here’s his statement, in part:

“If Nintendo is really committed to reaching a broader, more diverse audience of gamers beyond the “kids” market that they’ve always engaged, there isn’t much new with the DSi to support that. Significant gamer demographic groups are being ignored … Compare that with the PSP platform, where we have many blockbuster franchises from our publishing partners launching this year, representing a wide variety of genres and targeting diverse demographics.”

I want to focus on the idea that the DS is for “kids,” while the PSP is apparently for everyone. Let’s put aside anecdotal evidence, such as the recent release of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the DS, because then you’ve got to subjectively compare entire game libraries.

Instead, let’s look at what Sony’s Koller said to Edge magazine last September as he explained why the PSP was losing support from third-party publishers. Koller himself said the PSP’s demographics had shifted younger since launch, and publishers weren’t grasping that fact because they kept putting out mature games that sold poorly. To wit:

“When we launched the PSP it launched at a 28-year old, heavily male, New York subway [demographic], and that slowly trended down. Now we’re in the mid-teens with a lot of tracking even younger than that. Our research shows that in the next 12 months young moms actually are set to have the highest propensity to purchase the hardware and software for their young children.”

Isn’t this the “kids” demographic Koller was alluding to this weekend, or was he trying to say that Nintendo DS owners are primarily young goats?

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Windows XP: I'm Not Dead Yet(?)

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 6, 2009 at 11:24 am

Windows XP LogoWell, Microsoft just can’t seem to quit Windows XP. It is now being reported that the company has given HP an extension to continue selling the aging OS until April 10, 2010.

The rumor’s source is fairly dubious — it comes from AppleInsider, which typically only reports on Apple rumors, and even there its accuracy rate has not been the best. In any case, it claims the information comes from a source within HP.

If true, it would mean that Microsoft would essentially offer XP and Windows 7 side by side with at least one manufacturer for possibly as long as six months. While no firm date has been announced for Windows 7’s launch, it is expected to debut later this year.

Support for XP officially from Microsoft will end on April 14, save for important security updates. If this rumor is true, it may be worthwhile to watch Redmond over the next week to see if they go ahead and push the support cut-off for the OS once more.

I always thought Microsoft would end up doing this, especially with the number of netbooks still coming out preloaded with XP.

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When Did You Last Read a Newspaper? Me, I Can't Remember

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 6, 2009 at 11:10 am

Boston GlobeOn Friday, word came out that the New York Times is threatening to shut down the print incarnation of the Boston Globe unless the paper’s unions agree to $20 million in cost reductions. As a former Bostonian, I still think of the Globe as one of my hometown papers–and my current hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is currently under a similar deathwatch imposed by its owner, Hearst.

I’m shocked and distressed by both developments. But I’m also part of the problem. I stopped subscribing to the Globe years before I left Boston, and have never taken the Chronicle. The last print paper I subscribed to was the New York Times, and I canceled that a couple of years ago–in part because it kept getting stolen off my stoop, but also because it often sat unread in my living room.

But it’s not just that I don’t need any newspaper enough to pay to get it delivered to my home. I’m having trouble remembering the last time I read any copy of any newspaper. It was probably a USA Today that was sitting outside my hotel room during a trip–when I pick up that paper and stick it on the dresser, I usually glance at the headlines, at least. But not always. And I can’t tell you when I last spent enough time with USA Today to open the paper up and read the stories it contained. (By the time I encounter it, I’ve usually read a lot of news. On the Web. Which I can do without so much as opening the door.)

I’m feeling guilty just writing this–I grew up in a family that subscribed to three or four papers; my first job was delivering the Boston Herald (badly); I used to spend hours in the Boston Public Library’s newspaper room reading articles and comics from around the world; and I might not have gotten into the profession I did if it weren’t for all that exposure to inspiring journalism printed on dead trees. But I get my news from the Web now, with a dose of radio and a smidgen of TV. I don’t think I could retrain myself to read papers if I tried.

Here’s a little silly T-Poll:

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Will the iPhone Go FM? Maybe. But I Kind of Doubt It.

Posted by Harry McCracken on April 6, 2009 at 10:11 am

9 to 5 Mac is reporting that the new iPhone–whatever it is, and whenever it arrives–will sport a Broadcom wireless chip with the ability to send and receive FM signals. 9 to 5 is saying that it could enable the new phone to broadcast music over stereo systems (a feature some people currently enable by buying a third-party FM transmitter) and to receive FM radio broadcasts (a feature that’s common on other MP3 players but famously absent on iPods).

Assuming that the Broadcom chip is indeed inside the next iPhone, I’d still be surprised to see the phone use it for FM transmitting and reception. Even the best FM transmitters I’ve used are pretty fuzzy and crackly under all but optimum circumstances, and I find it hard to believe that Apple would be satisfied. And the time when the ability to listen to FM radio on an Apple device came and went a long time ago–the wealth of Internet radio that’s already available on the iPhone would make FM redundant.

Or so I think. I’m happy to be proven wrong–especially if Apple and Broadcom have figured out a way to do truly decent wireless FM transmitting to a car stereo…

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