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Confirming a widely reported rumor, web retailing giant Amazon today announced it would be entering the music-download market; and notably it will be doing it without Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions attached to the music. 

The removal of DRM technologies is a significant breakthrough for online music retailers.   Earlier this year, Apple’s CEO raised questions of DRM’s benefits in an open letter (more info here and here). And shortly after, announced a deal with EMI to offer music without DRM. 

In a statement Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos said “Our MP3 only strategy means that all music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device.”

Absent DRM restrictions all of the songs sold at Amazon will play on any MP3 player; a move that will make a consumers choice of which MP3 player to buy more a factor of price and features rather than the music catalog available to them.

The Amazon music store will be launched later this year. Record label EMI, which was the first label to break ranks with the music industry and offer its music without copyright protections, is the first label to join Amazon.  Warner Music and Vivendi’s Universal Music group are reported to still be experimenting on their own with DRM-Free offers and may or may not participate in DRM-Free marketplaces like Amazon’s.

The launch of Amazon’s service is expected in time for holiday buying – and may well be marketed with promotions to sell MP3 players at that time.  Amazon is saying 12,000 labels representing millions of songs will be available.  At this time, which labels are included has not been disclosed.

On Tuesday, Disney’s ABC Television group announced it would make available, beginning immediately, episodes of some of its popular programs, including Grey’s Anatomy, Lost and Ugly Betty to video-equipped phones on the Sprint network. The four most recent episodes of programs will be available to subscribers who use participating data-plans at no extra charge. At some point in the future, commercials will be added to the content.

The deal will be the first attempt by major media to offer full-length programming on phones, or over cellular. (Verizon has been offering short form video content).

In a statement that clearly shows Sprint made the deal in an effort to compete with the upcoming Apple iPhone (which can play video’s, including TV shows, downloaded through iTunes) Sprint’s VP for wireless data services said “You won’t need to buy episodes individually or sync to a PC to access this kind of content.”

Personally, I’m still not convinced that consumers will find much more than a novelty factor in having TV available on-demand on their phones. With so called time-shifting devices (Tivo, DVR’s etc) allowing consumers to watch programming at times that suit their schedules and not only when originally broadcast, the market for ultra-portable on-demand services seems small. If i can see a program anytime on a much bigger screen, why watch on my cell phone? It’s hard to believe this kind of service will appeal to anyone beyond the extremely bored, or the die-hard fan.

In a separate, unrelated announcement that was timed to coincide with press releases for Motorola’s next generation phones, Music subscription service Napster announced it was making its music service available on Motorola phones. The companies will share promotional efforts in North America, the UK and Germany. It was not clear how, or if, the partnership would include cellular carriers. In either case, as with the Sprint/Disney announcement, this release is another clear effort to compete against Apple’s upcoming iTunes and iPhone combination.

Yesterday Amazon acquired popular London-based digital camera review site DPReview for undisclosed terms. DPreview, which was founded in 1998 by Phil Askey, offers unbiased, reviews of digital cameras and accessories as well as discussion forums, industry news and a product comparison database.

The DPReview site, which has fans on both sides of the Atlantic, has become extremely popular. For March, the site had more than 7m unique viewers. That coincides with the rapid growth in the digital camera marketplace. Last year (digital still-photography) generated nearly $18b in camera sales.

An article on financial news blog Seeking Alpha is noting that the back&ndashend infrastructure for DPReview’s ecommerce links has been provided historically by CNET. If that report is accurate, the purchase by Amazon could steal away some traffic from CNET’s monthly totals.

Following the announcement, web forums have been filled with speculation about the terms of the deal. The web has also been abuzz with questions of whether DPreview will retain its editorial independence. DPReview has largely been known for its unbiased reviews. Fans are questioning whether they will continue to be able offer the same unbiased quality of services that built the site’s reputation if it is now owned by a retailer who will have a vested interest in the reporting it offers. Without that independence DPReview will be no different than any of the many companies providing professional, or user-rated, reviews of cameras: from Yahoo to AOL, etc.

Earlier today, MySpace announced it would be launching branded video channels that will feature news and lifestyle video syndicated from partners including the New York Times and National Geographic.

The announcement was timed to make a statement.  This is the week when the major television networks begin the sales push for advertising for their fall show lineup. By announcing today, MySpace is boldly saying “Net Video is here to stay, and it’s going after TV.”

Among the content to be offered will be shorts from National Geographic shows like Explorer, movie reviews, content from News Corp’s IGN Entertainment channel, as well features on young celebrities, animation, and a channel from the popular web property The Daily Reel – a selection of short video clips from around the web.

Some large portion of the content will be available through a number of other outlets including traditional and Internet TV (National Geographic has been actively licensing its content including most recently to IPTV company, Joost). 

Five or six years ago, one of the hot topics in academic and enterprise computing technology was something called Grid Computing. The concept, which had been in development for years in the academic and research community, was (explained in an over-simplified way) to have the resources of many computers and networks available in a similar fashion to electricity, or water – they’d be distributed, widely available; and available in varying quantities as needed.  The idea was assembling and selling computing power and resources (storage etc.) on demand.

If NASA needed to build a complicated weather model to plan for Space Shuttle launches, or if Pfizer needed to simulate thousands of chemical reactions in the search for a cancer drug, or if a hedge fund wanted to build a complex mathematical model of some esoteric market to manage risk– they’d all be able to buy the resources on a Grid, rather than having to buy and network tens, or hundreds of computers.   By design, computational Grids could allow scientists and companies to process incredibly large amounts of data, or run extremely complex calculations, more quickly and without the expense of a Super Computer. 

At the time, doing consulting work, I was fortunate enough to work a bit with some of the founding developers of Grid technology, and others who were working on Grid projects at the National Center for Supercomputing. I got to speak with them about commercial application of their work.  I learned a lot from them but I’m virtually certain none of them would have foreseen what’s happened in the past year with the Stanford Folding@home project – specifically, its expansion of Grid technologies to video game platforms.

The project (which is sometimes referred to as FAH or F@H) is a grid based project from Stanford designed to build simulations of protein folding, a biologic process that, when gone wrong, is theorized to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, some cancers and other maladies.  FAH has been active since 2000 and as of March 30th, 49 research papers have been published using the projects work.

What’s remarkable is that a good part of the FAH computational power comes from Video games and not idle desktop computers. Click to Read More

Last week was relatively busy with news about Apple and its products. Here’s a quick consolidated look at what came out of the shareholder meeting and what else is brewing from Apple-land in Cupertino:

Beatles are coming to iTunes

Not officially yet, but soon.  The rumors have been swirling since Steve Jobs played the Beatles song Lovely Rita during the announcement for the iPhone in January (not to mention Apple resolving its issues with Apple Corps and EMI).  But this week, Paul McCartney confirmed that a deal is imminent.  He said the Beatles library would be available soon in an interview with Billboard magazine.  He characterized the deal as “virtually settled.”   The report also confirmed McCartney’s next solo album “Memory Almost Full” will be available for download.  The press reports would lead me to expect the Beatles music will be available within the month but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple waited to announce a deal until it rolls out the iPhone in mid June.  That kind of two-pronged high-profile announcement fits well with the company (and its CEO’s) showmanship style.

Two Sided Device Possibly in the Works

News of a January patent filing specifying a hand–held device with a smaller touch sensitive screen on one side and a larger touch/pressure-sensitive input screen on the back, flooded the web.  The basic concept of the patent was a device with user controls on one side and user-displays on the other. The most likely application is to allow the use of a full virtual keyboard on future devices (something that’s long been wished for, but that would be difficult to use even as on overlay on a full screen device) Speculation abounded as to whether this might be for a next-generation iPod (Nano or Full Size), or even a second generation iPod, or a new device altogether.   As is sometimes the case with patents, what has been filed may be defensive and never implemented – accordingly, speculating on what device this is for may be futile. The one sure conclusion is that Apple remains committed to improving and advancing user-interface technologies (and defending their IP in the space). Click to Read More

New York celebrity, gossip and news blog Jossip was reporting today that CBS News (CBS Corporation) was acquiring Jossip’s fellow New York blog Wallstrip for approximately $5m in cash with a formal announcement likely early this week.

I try to stay away from reporting on rumors but sources and information regarding this deal are credible enough to suggest it is highly likely the rumors are dancing around truth – though the price may be exaggerated.

Wallstrip is a video blog characterized as one part Saturday Night Live and one part CNBC.   It’s comedic, off-beat approach targets Generation Y and the so-called "YouTube Generation" with 3 minute episodes covering stock market news or corporate with a less than traditional tone.

Wallstrips’s audience is growing but it is not yet substantial and its content is considered inconsistent. It’s most popular episode was a show spoofing CNBC’s Jim Cramer. That episode generated 30k viewers in January. According to a Business Week article Wallstrip did reach 10k viewers in its first three months.  

While Wallstrip did receive 500k in Angel investment, from a technology standpoint there is little to no innovation worthy of acquisition – the site is built using Revver (a YouTube competitor) for its video technology and the open-source Wordpress platform is the foundation of  its website. Wallstrip’s website at this time is not directly ad-supported leading to reports that the company has revenue of $0. Jossip got that part wrong. Revver, the platform Wallstrip is built on (and distributed through) shares revenue from ads incorporated into the video 50/50 with the content creator. Revver’s revenue sharing system is well documented in their sites Frequently Asked Questions section. Still, Wallstrip’s revenue is likely small.

The rumor being reported is that CBS wants the services of Wallstrip’s host, 29 year old actress Lindsay Campbell for its own online, and possibly TV, news services.   (Lindsay’s bio and background can be found here on her personal site. She is originally from Northern California, has a degree from Stanford, and has appeared a number of New York based TV shows including Law and Order and the Sopranos.)

It’s not unrealistic that Lindsay’s caught the eye of folks at CBS. She extremely attractive and manages to comes across as more than just a pretty lady. She is well educated, credible and articulate, balanced with a style that feels hip, casual and light-hearted enough to appeal to younger audiences in Gen X and Gen Y. It’s certainly true that CBS is actively developing its online presence, including last weeks investment in Joost.  Lindsay may fit into that, and based on the rumor, would only sign a contract if Wallstrip was acquired.   

It’s unclear what underlies a price tag of $5m, or if that information is accurate.  Even as a relatively low dollar number, it seems exorbitantly rich for a start-up of Wallstrip’s stage based on available information, and likewise, however talented Ms Campbell may be, and however creative a method of recruiting/hiring personnel, $5m is an exorbitantly high cost for corporate headhunting.