
<?phpxml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" 
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
>
<channel>
<title>Haaze.com / grydladziepo / All</title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com</link>
<description>Test Web 2.0 Content Management System</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<language>en</language>
<item>
<title><![CDATA[Supreme Court won't block antitrust suit against labels]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=supreme-court-wont-block-antitrust-suit-against-labels</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=supreme-court-wont-block-antitrust-suit-against-labels</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:10:53 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>grydladziepo</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=supreme-court-wont-block-antitrust-suit-against-labels</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The U.S. Supreme Court says an antitrust suit against major record companies can go forward.(Credit:Daniel Terdiman/CNET)The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that a lawsuit, filed by a group of online music buyers who allege the four largest record companies conspired nearly a decade ago to fix prices of songs sold online, can now move forward. The high court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by the labels--Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Group--to block the suit, according to reports by Bloomberg and Reuters. Instead, the decision by a federal appeals court that the plaintiffs had supplied enough evidence to sue the labels will stand. The lawsuit by the music buyers alleged that the record labels agreed to set a wholesale price floor of about 70 cents per song when competitors were offering songs on the Web for less. A spokeswoman for Warner Music declined to comment. Representatives from the other labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) did not immediately respond to interview requests. The roots of the case can be traced to 2001, when the top labels were preparing to try their hand at selling digital music out of their own Internet stores. Bertelsmann, Warner Music, and EMI had backed a service called MusicNet. Sony and UMG built Pressplay. &quot;All defendants signed distribution agreements with MusicNet or Pressplay,&quot; according to the consumers' group. The labels &quot;sold music directly to consumers over the Internet through these joint ventures. Both the joint ventures and the (RIAA) provided a forum and means through which defendants could communicate about pricing, terms, and use restrictions.&quot;&quot;[The labels] sold music directly to consumers over the Internet through these joint ventures. Both the joint ventures and the (RIAA) provided a forum and means through which defendants could communicate about pricing, terms, and use restrictions.&quot; --Plaintiffs suing labels&quot;To obtain Internet Music from all major record labels,&quot; the consumer group continued, &quot;a consumer initially would have had to subscribe to both MusicNet and Pressplay at a cost of approximately $240 per year.&quot;The plaintiffs also noted that the labels were investigated about four years ago by the office of the New York State attorney general regarding wholesale prices charged for digital music and were the focus of an inquiry by the Department of Justice into possible &quot;collusion and price fixing&quot; and to determine whether &quot;defendants misled DOJ about the formation and operation of MusicNet and Pressplay.&quot; None of the investigations appeared to go anywhere. In court documents, the plaintiffs accused MusicNet and Pressplay with being anticonsumer and attempting to restrict access to online music. Even after those services began selling songs, the labels required these other outlets to &quot;only sell defendants' music if they contracted with MusicNet to provide Internet Music for the same prices and with the same restrictions as MusicNet itself or other MusicNet licensees. If the licensee attempted to license music from another company, defendants forced them to pay penalties or terminated their licenses.&quot; Rick Boucher, former congressman from Virginia.(Credit:U.S. Congress)Pressplay and MusicNet were the music industries responses to Napster and illegal file sharing. They were attempts to seize back control of distribution and cram the toothpaste back into the tube. They didn't work. Large audiences that were then just going online gravitated towards the now-defunct LimeWire and other peer-to-peer networks. From their start, MusicNet and Pressplay drew a lot of criticism. Critics, who included then Congressman Rick Boucher, warned that the labels' direct-to-consumer services could violate antitrust laws. At a tech conference in 2002, Boucher predicted that there would be trouble. &quot;That level of duopoly...of content ownership and the ownership of distribution is threatening to the arrival of competition in the delivery of music on the Web,&quot; Boucher said then. <br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Microsoft releases free Security Essentials 2.0]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-releases-free-security-essentials-2-0</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-releases-free-security-essentials-2-0</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:10:45 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>grydladziepo</dc:creator>
<category>Technology</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=microsoft-releases-free-security-essentials-2-0</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Microsoft has launched the latest version of its free Security Essentials.(Credit:Microsoft)Microsoft yesterday quietly released the latest version of its Security Essentials anti-malware software.Security Essentials 2.0 is available as a free download with several changes over its predecessor. A Microsoft representative today confirmed the release.Microsoft said the updated anti-malware engine makes the software faster and smarter at detecting security hazards. The software also now ties in with Windows Firewall, giving you the option of turning the firewall on or off. When I installed the 2.0 edition, it detected that Windows Firewall was not running and asked if I wanted to enable it.The new version integrates with Internet Explorer to detect Web-based threats and can watch out for malware coming in through a network, though only for those running Windows Vista orWindows 7.The successor to Live OneCare, Security Essentials 1.0 debuted in September 2009 and garnered positive reviews and user feedback. Microsoft released a beta edition of the 2.0 upgrade in July.Initially, Security Essentials was legally available only for individual home users, but in October Microsoft relaxed the rules so that businesses with up to 10 users can install the product as well.Updated at 8:30 a.m. PTwith confirmation of the release yesterday.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Tumblr Finally Starts Recovering After 24 Hours Of&nbsp'Downtime]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=tumblr-finally-starts-recovering-after-24-hours-ofnbspdowntime</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=tumblr-finally-starts-recovering-after-24-hours-ofnbspdowntime</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>grydladziepo</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=tumblr-finally-starts-recovering-after-24-hours-ofnbspdowntime</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Popular blogging service Tumblr is finally recovering from its seemingly endless downtime. The final tally: over 24 hours, based on the tweet Tumblr sent out around 4PM PST yesterday announcing that it was &amp;''working quickly to recover from a major issue in one of our database clusters.&amp;'' Tumblr followed that up over the ensuing day with some intermittent (and overly optimistic) status updates, and tweeted an hour ago that &amp;''All blogs are online and we&amp;'re incrementally restoring access to the Dashboard.&amp;''Note that Tumbr isn&amp;'t fully functional yet, as only some users can add content to their sites now. But at least visitors aren&amp;'t getting an error message any more.Obviously this was a horrible day for the startup, which is raising a big new round of funding led by Sequoia Capital.a4sIt&amp;'s usually a big deal when popular platforms go down for an hour or twoa4sa4&quot;a4sI can&amp;'t remember hearing about a site as popular as Tumblr going down for a full day. The site has a famously small headcount a4&quot;a4shopefully the new funding will help it ensure this was a one-time issue.Tumblr founder David Karp gave this statement about the downtime last night' we&amp;'ll update once the site posts an overview of what happened:Some scheduled maintenance yesterday that wasna4a4t intended to interrupt service went haywire and wound up taking down a critical database cluster.  Rebuilding the entire cluster has been a painfully slow and manual process, but wea4a4re almost through.  Wea4a4ll be posting a recap when wea4a4re back up.CrunchBase InformationTumblrInformation provided by CrunchBase<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[CardPool lets you cash in gift cards for Facebook Credits]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=cardpool-lets-you-cash-in-gift-cards-for-facebook-credits</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=cardpool-lets-you-cash-in-gift-cards-for-facebook-credits</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>grydladziepo</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=cardpool-lets-you-cash-in-gift-cards-for-facebook-credits</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This holiday season should be a crazy time for gift-card exchanges, where users can unload unwanted cards. And one of those exchanges, CardPool, just added a novel way to pay you for those cards: with Facebook Credits.CardPool makes money by buying gift cards off users at a discount, then reselling them. For example, if youa4a4ve received a $50 gift card at a store that youa4a4ll never shop at, you could sell it to CardPool for $40, then CardPool could sell it to someone else for $45. You can also trade in your gift card for an Amazon.com card.So why would you want to receive payment in Facebook money (Credits are used in Facebook applications like FarmVille) rather than real cashWell, you might be a FarmVille addict. And even if youa4a4re not, founder and chief executive Anson Tsai said Facebook Credits remove one of most annoying steps of the exchange process. With any other gift card, youa4a4d have to mail it in to CardPool, then wait for the check. With this program, you just enter your gift card number in CardPool, and you get your Credits right away.Tsai said hea4a4d like to expand the a4Ano maila4 option to other payment types, but CardPool still needs to figure out how to avoid fraud.a4AFacebook is a great start because we use Facebook Connect as a way to authenticate users and hopefully keep out the bad guys,a4 he said.CardPool was incubated by Y Combinator and has raised funding from angel investors including StubHub founder Jeff Fluhr, PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, and Zappos chairman Alfred Lin.Next Story: Smart grid in Europe is all about renewables Previous Story: WeGame launches digital game distribution with a social twistPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: Facebook Credits, gift card exchanges, gift cardsCompanies: CardPool, FacebookPeople: Anson Tsai          Tags: Facebook Credits, gift card exchanges, gift cardsCompanies: CardPool, FacebookPeople: Anson TsaiAnthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.VentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>
