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Twittering against communism

Updated 1.00PST to include latest news from the protesters' Twitter feed

I must admit to having the impression that communism really isn't for everybody.

So I will admit to a slight lack of surprise when I hear that anti-communist supporters in Moldova are a little unhappy that recent elections resulted in a victory for Vladimir Voronin's Communist party.

The protesters believe that the election was rigged--the Communist Party seems to have won just enough votes in order to amend the constitution so that President Voronin can govern for a third term.

In order to organize themselves into … Read more

Advocates for blind protest loss of Kindle's voice function

The controversy regarding the text-to-speech function offered by Amazon.com's Kindle 2 digital book reader appears to be heating up again.

Groups advocating for the blind and reading disabled on Tuesday held a protest at the Manhattan offices of the Authors Guild. The guild was very vocal in opposing the text-to-speech technology in the Kindle. The group, which represents 4,000 authors, argued that the Kindle infringes on copyright and could hurt audio book sales.

The whole debate seemed to be over in February when Amazon appeared to give in. The Web's largest retailer said it had decided … Read more

Will consumers determine iTunes prices?

Updated at 12:45 p.m. to include quotes from Harvard economist Anita Elberse.

If iTunes shoppers truly believe in our free-market system, then they shouldn't worry about a $1.29 price for songs.

On Tuesday, Apple's traditional 99-cent song price was shelved. From now on, record labels can choose to charge $1.29 for new releases. Some older catalog titles will sell for 69 cents, and everything else will be available for the tried-and-true 99 cents. CNET first reported the price changes in January.

The blogosphere is full of gloomy warnings about how Apple's new pricing … Read more

Kindle owners stage e-book price protest

Wired's Gadget Lab blog has a story about how a group of about 250 Kindle owners are staging an online protest over Kindle e-books that cost more than $9.99. The weapon they're using is Amazon's own tagging system, as price offenders are getting hit with a special "9 99 boycott" tag.

The roving--and most likely growing--band of annoyed Kindle owners includes such folks as Connecticut librarian Crystal O'Brien, who spends "a few minutes every day in the Kindle book store tagging the more expensive digital books with the '9 99 boycott' tag … Read more

Google to publishers: We're not evil or illegal

A day after the editor of The Wall Street Journal referred to online news aggregators--particularly Google and its Google News product--as "parasites or tech tapeworms," and the chairman of the Associated Press announced an initiative to protect print media content from infringing use online, Google has fired back in a blog.

The gist of Tuesday's blog post, penned by Google associate general counsel Alexander Macgillivray: don't point fingers at us.

"We show snippets and links under the doctrine of fair use enshrined in the United States Copyright Act," he wrote. "Even though the … Read more

Taking your health records online

roundup Many companies are working on efforts to make patients' medical records available on the Internet.

Wireless industry wants in on health care stimulus money Wireless industry is hoping it can reap the rewards of billions of dollars being spent on health care technology as part of the economic stimulus package. (Posted in Wireless by Marguerite Reardon) April 7, 2009 4:00 AM PDT

Google Health expands deal with CVS Customers of CVS' pharmacy will now be able to import their prescription records into Google Health. (Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried) April 6, 2009 12:48 PM PDT … Read more

Wall Street Journal, AP take aim at Google

Traditional media is once again rattling sabers in the direction of Google and other sites that aggregate news stories.

There's tough talk coming from managers at The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press that include threats of legal challenges and even name calling.

"There is no doubt that certain Web sites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet," Robert Thomson, the Journal's editor, was quoted in Australian newspaper The Australian on Monday. "It's certainly true that readers have been socialized--wrongly I believe--that much content should be … Read more

Amazon finds niche in iTunes-dominant market

The NPD Group just sent out some interesting statistics, based on a study conducted by its music-tracking service.

"In 2008, 87 percent of digital-music buyers in the U.S. used iTunes to download music, versus just 16 percent who used Amazon MP3," according to a spokesman for the research group. (Those surveyed could list more than one store.)

On the face of it, the study's numbers don't sound so bad.

Russ Crupnick, an NPD analyst agreed that they should encourage Amazon. For one, the online retailer's music store is in second place only 18 months … Read more

Yahoo Music opening pages to YouTube, others

Yahoo plans to fire up a revamped version of its Artist Pages on Tuesday, a service that lets people add content from iTunes, YouTube, and other sites to the Yahoo Music site that previously only had Yahoo's own content.

The site publishes information including tour dates and music videos for more than 500,000 artists and lets people download and purchase music. Now the site will blend in information from non-Yahoo sources, the company said, part of an effort to make the site a better starting point.

First come modules from iTunes, Amazon.com, Last.fm, Rhapsody, Pandora, YouTube, … Read more