One music industry executive said his company was told that Microsoft had made a large financial commitment to market a player this year. A senior TV network executive said that Microsoft had talked to the networks about selling their programming through the online store, but that "no deals are in place."

Music and video may be so crucial to how computers are used in the future — a potentially big source of new growth in software and hardware sales — that Microsoft cannot strategically afford to let Apple continue to hold the upper hand.

Apple is reported to have a wireless version of the iPod waiting in the wings, and it is also said to be close to introducing a version with a touch screen. Those bits of consumer polish might outshine Microsoft just as it was entering the business with its own hardware.

Strategy Shift by Microsoft to Fight iPod

Why ever trust a computer model to run your investments? Because, in the real world, it seems to pay off.

How a Computer Knows What Many Managers Don't

Apple Computer Inc. said yesterday that Google Inc. chief executive Eric E. Schmidt will join the company's board of directors, creating a bond between two technology powerhouses that compete fiercely with Microsoft Corp.

Google Chief Schmidt Joins Apple As Director

I lived across the street from Tower for three years. They are missed.

The storied Tower Records chain has filed for bankruptcy. Musician and Day to Day contributor David Was says he is saddened by what he sees as the long, slow death of the brick-and-mortar record business in the age of the MP3 download.

In December of last year I decided to sell a bunch of old audio CDs, most from back in my music club days. I tried unsuccessfully to sell them 'locally' at a face-to-face retail outlet; those places are dropping out of the business faster than you can speed dial them.

I called one grizzled retailer, mostly of used vinyl, who offered to take a look at my offering, but said it wouldn't be even worth my time to drive over to his shop. He explained that he was going to close his store in less than a year, because no one was buying music in physical form any more.

An Epitaph for a Much-Loved Tower Records

Chris appears to believe that in a long tail world brand fractures and fragments as customers themselves, or at least the tastemakers and celebrities among us, develop reputations as trusted advisors to help others navigate through the long tail. I hold that, in a long tail world, customer relationship businesses have an opportunity to create very powerful and scalable brands based on the proposition that they know individual audience members or customers better than anyone else and can be trusted to use that knowledge to become ever more helpful to the audience member or customer.

The Long Tail and the Structure of the Media Industry

"The police are really good at understanding someone stole my credit card and ran up a lot of money. It's a lot harder to get them to buy into 'someone stole my magic sword.'"

Do identity theft laws apply to virtual identities? Or are they property?

"Those of you who are working on massively multiplayer online games, organized crime is already looking at you."
-- Dave Weinstein, Microsoft

I'm having a hard time picturing Tony Soprano raking it in on WoW.

Microsoft warning on online games

It looks like Amazon is becoming a video competitor to Apple's iTunes.

Coming Soon from Amazon: Unboxed Videos

SpiralFrog is a new online music destination, offering ad-supported legal downloads of audio and video content licensed from the catalogs of the world’s major and independent record labels.

SpiralFrog will be a secure environment where music lovers can satisfy their unyielding passion and thirst for music, entertainment, and information. Our site will be as multifaceted, smart, and current as the audience we hope to attract. An audience that we believe is the driving force behind the way music is created, discovered, and consumed today.

SPIRAL FROG [ a digital entertainment destination ]

Timothy Brown, CEO, IDEO

Not so long ago, Tim Brown recounts, designers belonged to a “priesthood.” Given an assignment, a designer would disappear into a back room, “bring the result out under a black sheet and present it to the client.” Brown and his colleagues at IDEO, the company that brought us the first Apple Macintosh mouse, couldn’t have traveled farther from this notion.

At IDEO, a “design thinker” must not only be intensely collaborative, but “empathic, as well as have a craft to making things real in the world.” Since design flavors virtually all of our experiences, from products to services to spaces, a design thinker must explore a “landscape of innovation” that has to do with people, their needs, technology and business. Brown dips into three central “buckets” in the process of creating a new design: inspiration, ideation and implementation.

Design thinkers must set out like anthropologists or psychologists, investigating how people experience the world emotionally and cognitively. While designing a new hospital, IDEO staff stretched out on a gurney to see what the emergency room experience felt like. “You see 20 minutes of ceiling tiles,” says Brown, and realize the “most important thing is telling people what’s going on.” In a completely different venue, IDEO visited a NASCAR pit crew to come up with a more effective design for operating theaters.

After inspiration comes “building to think:” often a hundred prototypes created quickly, both to test the design and to create stakeholders in the process. Says Brown, “So many good ideas fail to make it out to market because they couldn’t navigate through the system.” IDEO counts on storytelling to develop and express its ideas, and to buy key players into the concept. Finally, IDEO relies on constantly refreshing its sources of inspiration by bringing in bold thinkers to campus, and increasingly, focusing on socially oriented design problems.

Innovation Through Design Thinking

Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year.

The UN says this is "very bad news." They also noted:

"This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium -- a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent."

President Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the results.

35 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product is estimated to come from the narcotics trade.

Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan