Entertainment

In a move that could open a new front in the search engine wars, America Online has purchased Singingfish, a search company that focuses exclusively on helping Web surfers find audio and video clips on the Internet and whose customers include Microsoft and RealNetworks. Although AOL did not disclose...

Microsoft has announced it is putting the finishing touches on its own entry into the music download business, setting up a competitive showdown with a host of already established players in the marketplace. The software giant has not set a specific date for the launch of its service, which will be ...

Now that Apple's iTunes Music Store (iTMS) does Windows and Napster has been rehabilitated, more people are venturing into the world of legal music downloads. However, the onset of legal music download services has brought a new issue front and center: sound quality. The bit rate of an iTMS AAC file...

In part 1 of this article, "The High-Stakes World of Online Gambling," the E-Commerce Times looked at the state of the Internet betting industry and its remarkable popularity. Roughly half of the industry's revenues come from U.S. residents. Even with the potential for anti-gambling laws on the hori...

Just as Las Vegas pioneer Bugsy Siegel imagined a city of dice games and slot machines in the middle of the desert, entrepreneurs looked at the Web a few years ago and saw an audience hungry for online gaming. They were right to suspect there was gold in all those clicks. A December 2002 report by t...

The matchup many fans and advertisers had hoped to see in baseball's World Series failed to materialize this year as both the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox fell apart just short of advancing to the Fall Classic. Nevertheless, fans' feverish interest in the playoffs may have helped propel the o...

Declaring itself the early leader in the race to win market share in the digital music arena, Apple has announced it sold more than 1 million songs in less than four days after launching a Windows version of its iTunes music download site. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said his company's goal is to sell 100 ...

For large and small e-tailers alike, the traditional method of doing business online has been fairly standard. They present a bevy of products, build a secure purchase interface and advertise so that customers will come clicking to their virtual doorstep. In the past couple of years, however, some e...

Napster, the onetime file-swapping nexus that sparked fear in the hearts -- and bottom lines -- of record labels, has officially been tamed and will relaunch as a legitimate online music service, parent company Roxio has announced. Napster 2.0 will be available to U.S. residents on October 29th. Use...

Seeking an advantage in its brutal battle with Dell for dominance in the consumer computing market, Hewlett-Packard has announced it will launch a $300 million worldwide ad campaign aimed at the average technology user. The push is designed to support HP's August release of nearly 150 different cons...

Hoping to light a fire under sales of home PCs, Microsoft has unveiled the newest version of its Windows XP Media Center, which is designed to make it easier to download media and burn CDs and DVDs. The company also has debuted several content partnerships designed to emphasize the range of entertai...

In Part 1 of this story, The Mac Observer publisher Bryan Chaffin told the E-Commerce Times that the market standing of Apple's iPod will play a critical role in determining iTunes' success. However, the iPod faces increasing competition. Dell recently announced a new hard drive-based music player, ...

Before the year is out, Apple plans to launch a Windows version of its well-received iTunes Music Store. However, iTunes' success thus far -- Apple has sold 10 million songs through the Mac-only version -- has galvanized other sellers of digital music, which are launching Windows-based services at a...

At first glance, the consumer PC market can seem quite polarized. At one end of the spectrum are big players like Dell and HP, and at the other are small companies that assemble standard components into generic "white boxes." However, it is the middle ground that may be most worth watching. The com...

Perhaps no industry was as blindsided by the power of the Internet as the music business. The sudden rise of Napster pitted content owners against customers, and now, with the RIAA suing individual file swappers in an effort to stop rampant music piracy, a crisis is in full swing. Enter DRM, or digi...