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Tim Westergren, Founder of Pandora.com

Recently Pandora.com founder Tim Westergren posted on his blog what he calls the end of royalty crisis. Pandora has been fighting the internet radio royalty war with Copyright Royalty Board for over 2 years and they seem to have settled on agreement that’ll let the amazing music streaming service stream music without any interruption.

Tim says, “The revised royalties are quite high – higher in fact than any other form of radio. As a consequence, we will have to make an adjustment that will affect about 10% of our users who are our heaviest listeners.”

The revision will affect only 1 out of 10 Pandora users. Pandora earns more than $125 million a year and will have to pay 25% of their gross revenues in royalties or 0.09 cents per song – whichever is higher. By 2015 the rates will increase to 0.14 cents per song from 0.09 cents.

Good news for Pandora is that they bagged $35 million in venture capital funding by Greylock Partners just after they reached the agreement.

The question is as a Pandora user will you pay a dollar (equals the cost of downloading a song from iTunes) for unlimited music?

Pandora also offers a premium version for $36/year without ads and other features.

[image credit : lyngraft]

B&N's ebook reader

Monopolies are harmful. We have seen it time and time again – Microsoft in software, Google in search and Amazon in books.

Amazon changed the way ebooks were consumed with its ebook reading device Kindle. Kindle soon became immensely popular and Amazon will soon be shipping out Kindle DX. There has been a huge outcry from bibliophiles who complained that Amazon unrightfully deleted purchased ebooks from their Kindles. While the story is still hot, Barnes & Nobles has struck the iron by announcing its own ebook store.

Barnes & Nobles is trying to gain entry into Amazon’s untouched empire – the ebook market. Amazon has been making a nice change by charging $9.99 for ebooks to be read on Kindle. Sony has a nice ebook reader but nothing compared to the amount of books that Amazon distributes for the Kindle. A few days ago Sony partnered with Google Books to offer almost 5,00,000 books to Sony consumers.

B&N already has the distribution channel – its online store as well as the retail stores. B&N has also stated that they have partnered with Plastic Logic and plan to release an ebook reader by 2010 – a major competition to the Amazon owned Kindle.

B&N already has desktop software for Windows and Macs and mobile software for iPhone and Blackberry but the ebook device is what everyone is waiting for! B&N’s reader will be touchscreen a major feature that Kindle lacks with its clunky buttons.

If the reader wants to succeed against the Kindle then it has to provide more for less. Cheap reader, nice features, easy-to-use, extensive collection of ebooks at prices much lower than Amazon’s (B&N says they’ll be offering 7,00,000 titles for $9.99!!) and of course DRM-free content because consumers have seen enough of that. Support for PDF, ePub and other open formats will be a refreshing change.

It is still a fertile ground for anyone bold enough to change things for the good of consumers. Because it will finally decide the long-lasting war that’ll ensue once everyone chooses their device. The market just got too competitive for Mr. Bezos!

See the video demo of D7 Barnes&Nobles’ ebook reader by AllThingsDigital -

Related articles -

Barnes & Noble partners with Plastic Logic; Opens up; Targets Kindle -ZDNet

Barnes & Noble goes with Plastic Logic; supports EPUB; offers 6% affiliate comm. – TeleRead

Barnes & Noble Launches World’s Largest eBookstore – B&N

During the elections Obama spellbounded his audiences with his speech. People literally got hypnotised while listening to his speeches. It can’t be denied that the speeches that he delivered significantly improved his chances of winning as a Presidential candidate.

There is a lot that you can learn from his speeches. If you’re afraid of public speaking then these tips will greatly help you overcome the fear of speaking in front of large groups of people. You can also benefit if you’re an entreprenuer, student, businessman, salesperson or anyone who wants to get his points across.

BNET published an article – 5 Ways to Speak Like Obama written by Sims Wyeth featuring important oratory skills from Obama. They are -

1. Talk about audience’s concerns – People care about themselves and everything related to them. They get emotional with things that involve them. In Obama’s speeches he addressed their concerns and when he had their attention he tried to convince them.

2. Keep it Simple – People often have a habit to make simple things seem complicated. It always doesn’t have to be this way. Everyone likes to pay attention to something which is explained in layman’s terms. You wouldn’t like to sit with a Physics professor for an hour listening to his metaphysics lecture (unless you are a Physics student, of course!), would you?

Successful companies and people often sum up the ideas into a simple sentence. For example, Google’s motto is “to organise the world’s information”. Simple and Sweet. Even a 5 year old will “GET” it. Obama used – “change you can believe in” and people did making him the President.

3. Anticipate what the audience is thinking – Great orators read the minds of their audiences. They often predict, rather correctly the possible outcomes of their speeches. And they unfold their speeches to get a positive response from the audience.

4. Learn to Pause – This is rather an art I should say. I’ve seen many people go on and on and..well you get it. They bore me to death. I’d rather ask someone to hammer me than to sit listening to a person who doesn’t know where to take a pause. Pause not only retains interest in what you’re trying to say but also gives time for them to assimilate what you’ve already said. The article shows a nifty little trick to use “/” to mark where to pause in your speeches. My sister taught it to me when I was a kid and it still helps me and will help for a very long time.

5. Master the Body Language of Leadership – People speak more from their body language then through their mouths. I’ve been to a couple of body language workshops and I’ve become quite good at reading through people. And let me tell you this – people with similar traits have a common body language. Focussing on one word like confident will urge you to behave so. If you’ve got something to add please do so.

Many predict that the future of personal computing is Netbooks. Netbooks are a new breed of laptop computers primarily designed for web-browsing and email usage. They are smaller in size, well within the reach of the average consumer and can do almost anything that majority of PC users do on their desktops or laptops.

While it may still be too soon to predict the demise of the laptop PC in favor of Netbooks, the stars have aligned themselves very well to support the growing Netbook market.

The concept of netbook was made popular by Asus Eee PC which caused a whirlwind in the market since its release. The Eee PC has been a hit among the younger and well as the “on-the-go” crowds mainly due to its small, sleek, light-weight and ultra-portable nature.

The start for the netbook market has been harsh. Proprietory software, expensive hardware, low performance and design issues made it tough for netbooks to gain a wide acceptance among the crowds. Although most of these issues have been given attention by the manufacturers netbooks remain a good and viable alternative to traditional laptops for professionals who need to travel a lot.

One of the main dilemna of netbooks is that they don’t have big screens, comfortable & standard keyboards, power to run all your powerful software. But the trend is changing for the good.

The netbooks are light-weight making it very easy to carry them around. Due to their compact size they can provide longer battery backups which make it extremely convenient to use when you really need that extra hour of backup i.e. during conferences, meetings, places where electricity is hard to find. Some netbooks claim as much as 8 hours of backup!

The netbook market has become hot once again since the announcement of Google Chrome Operating System by Google a few days ago. It will be mainly targeted towards the netbook market and built upon the Linux kernel. Just like the Google Chrome web browser the Chrome OS will be fast, simple and secured which complement netbooks very well! With one of the most influential company backing up the netbooks it wouldn’t be co-incidence if we see the laptop market eaten up by netbooks. It is estimated that netbooks have already eaten up 20% laptop market share which is a pretty favorable number for the industry which is still in its infancy.

Another reason of netbooks proving to be hit is the cloud. More and more people are storing their pictures, music and documents on the web. Email, social networking, CRM and a whole lot of other services have made it big in the cloud. Want to create a document, a spreasheet or a presentation? No problem. Head to Google Docs or Zoho and you’ll be able to access it all using nothing but a web browser and internet connection. And this is the philosophy which netbooks have embraced. Because they don’t need heavy computing they can compromise on memory and drive down the costs within the reach of everyone.

All netbooks support WiFi wireless networking and many service providers provide data plans to bundle with the netbooks. A wide range of netbooks also support dialup as well as Ethernet ports to connect to the internet.

Why you should consider buying a netbook?

Netbooks have come a very long way and are almost as capable as PCs and laptops that seemed high-end a couple of years ago. 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, around 3 pounds in weight and a 5-inch to 10-inch screen is what a typical netbook looks like. If you ask me, thats pretty good computer configuration to get started with.

It is perfect if you’re a student and don’t want to carry a lot of weight around the campus. Netbooks have upto 8 hours battery backup so you wouldn’t need to get up from the peaceful campus location you just found out!

Netbooks are also a perfect choice if you want to use your computer to check emails and weather while on business or travelling. Some netbooks have also started to include a built-in 3G modems so you can use internet even if you don’t have a Wi-Fi hotspot near you!

Remember those Mac vs PC ads? Well, who doesn’t? After all it gets some credit to make Mac more popular and perceived cooler among the crowds. Microsoft has been tolerating it for a long period until it released its own series – first with “I’m a PC” and then those “Laptop Hunters” advertisements. In the Laptop Hunters Microsoft gets hold of random people and then they ask them to configure a PC according to their needs. When the people finish configuring the laptop PC’s Microsoft reimburses them for the “bargain” that they just had by choosing a PC instead of a Mac.

The PC World magazine reports a funny thing that happened at Microsoft’s 2009 Worldwide Partner Conference on Wednesday. Kevin Turner, COO , Microsoft in a presentation revealed that he received a call from Apple’s legal department asking them to take down the Laptop Hunter ads as they misrepresented Apple with regards to cost. Microsoft hit Apple where it hurts – price!

As far as I can remember this is the first time Apple has responded to Microsoft by slashing the prices of their over-priced costly Macs. This is the excerpt of what Turner had to say -

“And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)

I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, “Is this a joke? Who are you?” Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.”

It seems that Microsoft is pretty happy with those ads and Apple just signaled that it was working damn fine for Microsoft to keep those running forever. It reminds me of the story in which a boy conquered his weakness – Apple couldn’t possibly get hold of Microsoft’s left arm

The amount of blogs on the web is staggering. Millions of blogs surface daily but most of them don’t get read by anyone?other than the writer. Here is a 3-point checklist to make compelling blog posts by Seth Godin. Seth owns the most?popular marketing blog on the web visit http://sethgodin.typepad.com

This video was featured on WSJ titled – Best Media is Free Media. In this video, Wendy Bounds asks Seth for “3 tips to?write compelling blog posts”.

1. Be Interesting – As his number 1 tip Seth asks the bloggers to be interesting and amazing. If you’re not interesting then?you need to reconsider blogging because if you’re just syndicating content then no one wants to go to you. But if you?provide your opinion over some subject or news then people want to read what you have to say.

2. Be Concise – The second tip is about being short and concise. Seth says that you should only write as much as is?needed. People don’t read but skim the content on the web. In his words, “not one-word longer than it needs to be”.

3. Write about ideas worth spreading – I’ve read Seth writing about this many times. He says that a blogger should write?about things that people want to read. They shouldn’t blog about their cats, dogs, what food they ate today or any other?trivial subjects because people care about themselves – their jobs, businesses and everything that relates to them. It?should be about them and NOT you!

I think you SHOULD watch the video as it is just about 3:30 minutes but provides great insights. You’ll also find 3?marketing ideas you can use today.

Please don’t forget to share what you think about the video in the comments below! It matters.

Sergey Aleynikov

Sergey Aleynikov, a 39 year Russian developer has been arrested on the charges of stealing the source code of Goldman Sachs High-Frequency Trading platform.

Sergey was a VP at Goldman Sachs before he resigned his $4,00,000 a year job.

Aleynikov uploaded the source code files from the Goldman Sachs server to a server in Germany through a secured server protocol. Sergey uploaded the 32MB files in ASCII form about 4 times. Once he finished compressing and copying the files from Goldman’s servers through bash shell he tried to erase the bash history. But unfortunately for him Goldman Sachs keeps a backup of everyone’s history. This is what has led to his arrest.

Sergey is currently out on a $7,50,000 bail. In his defense, Aleynikov explained the FBI officials that he only intended to download open source files (available freely for anyone to download) from the Goldman Sachs servers but ended up downloading more than he wanted to. As if we believe you Sergey!

What did he really steal?

Goldman Sachs uses a High-Frequency Trading software to buy stock within a few milliseconds of company news being released and selling those stocks moments later when the same news reached other companies for a hefty profit.

As everyone knows, a computer software can perform bulk operations in a few milliseconds which could take days to do it all manually. Sergey Aleynikov helped build that doomsday software for Goldman Sachs. It is estimated by experts that if the source code makes it to the wrong hands then it could make a very adverse impact on the stock market and hit Goldman Sachs into millions.

Goldman Sachs has reported that it hasn’t experienced anything bad due to the leaked source code.? The market is already hit by recession and this news can have long-lasting effects.

Aleynikov is also known for his ballroom dancing which he’ll get plenty of time to practice in the jail if ever he gets arrested.

Read more at Deep Politics Monitor -Goldman Sachs Algorithms Stolen By Sergey Aleynikov Now Leaked On The Internet