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Buzz Out Loud 768: Windows Mobile 7: Get fired up!

You never knew you had so many reasons to love Windows Mobile 7, but you'll find out a few of them today. Also, Amazon offers on-demand movie and TV streaming (on PCs and Macs both!), Microsoft explains the weird Halo no-show at E3...and the explanation is typical, baffling and infuriating. So, good work, Microsoft, as usual. Oh, and that asteroid that was going to kill us and then wasn't going to kill us? It's probably going to kill us, but we won't know for sure because we can't afford a subscription to New Scientist … Read more

eMusic going Web 2.0

It's sometimes lost in all the flavor-of-the-week mix-remix-download-social networking sites, but eMusic has been selling DRM-free MP3s--meaning they can be played on the iPod or any other player--from independent labels and artists for a decade now, and has a reasonable claim to be the No. 2 music store behind iTunes.

A planned redesign is meant to help eMusic retain this position. According to reports in Fortune and Digital Music News, the site's slated for an overhaul beginning next week. Artist pages will be updated with Wikipedia biographies, original editorial content, and embedded YouTube videos. In a nod to … Read more

Amazon launches new video store

Corrected at 11:10 p.m.: Amazon customers do not need to purchase the Sony Bravia TV before accessing the new Video on Demand download store.

Fresh from a failed attempt at online video, Amazon is giving it another go.

Amazon is opening a streaming video store, called Amazon Video On Demand, that will offer 40,000 movies and TV shows for download and rental to people's computers, according to a story that appeared Wednesday evening in The New York Times. The service will be made available to a limited number of invited Amazon customers initially and will be … Read more

Report: New Kindle due in October

Two new Kindle models are expected to be available on Amazon.com in time for the holiday shipping season, with the first coming as early as October, an "insider" tells CrunchGear.

The first model will be an update of the current e-book reader, with the same screen size and an improved interface, according to the tipster. The source told CrunchGear that Amazon has "skipped three or four generations" with the update.

The second new model will be considerably larger, shaped like an 8.5-inch by 11-inch piece of paper, and is expected to be available next … Read more

Would the cloud have saved Apple's iPhone 3G launch?

Apple had a serious problem with its iPhone 3G product launch last week, coupled with its limp-along release of its iPhone 2.0 software. Could Amazon.com's cloud have helped? Lee Faus, in his "Popularity Sucks" post, thinks so.

As he notes, the ability to spin up resources for a short-term crush on Apple's servers could have worked wonders (at least, for the 2.0 software upgrade), just as it could have benefited Mozilla during its launch of Firefox 3.0:

This would have been ideal for Mozilla (Firefox 3 Install Images on S3 with Apache … Read more

Jeff Bezos backs Social Gaming Network

Even though the iPhone has been dominating developer headlines recently, it looks as if there's still some air in the social-network gaming space.

The Social Gaming Network, a start-up that develops games for social platforms such as Facebook and OpenSocial, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos' personal investment firm, Bezos Expeditions.

This comes just months after the company closed a $15 million Series A round from Greylock Partners, the Founders Fund, and others.

Founded by the creators of Web 1.0 page creator Freewebs (which now calls itself Webs.com), the Social … Read more

Rhapsody's new MP3 store offers full song previews

The story originally stated that Verizon's over-the-air music service downloaded DRM-free MP3 files directly to the user's handset. It was later learned that Verizon's direct-to-phone music download is not in the MP3 format. The copy delivered to the user's computer, however, is in the MP3 format.

Read the updated story here.

Pluribo summarizes Web content, starting with reviews

When I'm parsing product reviews on Amazon.com I usually look at two things after the price tag: the rating and how many people have reviewed it. This simple system tends to breaks down when it comes time to dig deeper into those sometimes thousands of reviews, which is where Pluribo comes in handy.

This small browser extension will go over everyone's ratings and pull out bits and pieces it finds noteworthy based on a similar words that pop up in rated reviews. The developer says it currently works the best on electronics items but that other items … Read more

Rhapsody MP3 store opens

Update: there is a lightweight browser plug-in that lets you play song samples without having to download and install the full Rhapsody client. When I tried the MP3 download service yesterday, I was unable to play the 25 free songs in that browser window--it only let me play 30-second samples. Today, using the same username and password, it started my 25-song count. So my major complaint with the service has been solved. Kudos to Rhapsody.

Amazon was first out of the gate with a comprehensive MP3 download store last September, and they've steadily upgraded the site since then. I'… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 756: Dicker caught dickering

You know how sometimes the punishment fits the crime? In this case the criminal fits the crime. GoDaddy's VP of domain auctions, appropriately named Dicker, was caught bidding (dickering?) on domains on his own auction site. D'oh! Also, Sony starts offering some creative incentives to get you to buy their TVs: their movies. Hmm. Listen now: Download today's podcast Episode 756

Save Windows XP http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/06/editors_blog_sa.html http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/30/BUDG11GE33.DTL

Google taps ‘Family Guy’ guy for Web series … Read more