Richard Howard

In a recent article on the status of the could music battle between Amazon, Google and Apple, I tendered my opinion that victory wouldn’t be based on chronological order, but on a litany of factors. I also touched on the fact that Apple has a storied history of entering the market later than competitors with a superior product and almost immediately leaving said competitors to fight for a very distant second place. Well I’m not one who revels in saying ‘I told you so’ (that’s an absolute lie, I love it) but a recently unearthed patent application strongly suggests that Apple’s cloud-based music service could be a game changer.

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I don’t care if you’re a war buff or what sport you’re into, you’re going to be hard pressed to find a more back and forth battle than that for supremacy of the cloud music market right now. Increasing definitive headlines all proved to be premature: “Amazon wins cloud war”, “Google and Apple will acquire licensing before releasing music lockers” and “Apple to beat Google on cloud music.” Now that the dust is somewhat beginning to settle, the only thing that can be said with complete surety is that the enormous number of variables involved promises a very interesting future for the business of cloud computing.

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“Who are the Seans?” one might ask. Well, they may not officially be ‘The Seans’ just yet, but if their most recent venture blows up, they may well achieve that single name, ‘Winkelvii’ type status (without the d-bag-y conotations). Individually, you just may have heard of them though. Sean Parker? You know – that guy played by the pop star in one of last year’s biggest movies, Founding President of Facebook; the one that seems to have the Midas Touch with any tech startup? That Sean. Then there’s Shawn Fanning (sorry buddy, the ‘Sean’ spelling is more popular). In creating Napster, he almost single-handedly changed (Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich would write that as ‘destroyed’) the music industry. Yeah, they’ve done stuff.

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The appeals court has ruled against the Winklevoss twins in their suit against Facebook; going so far as to say, in so many words, the time for litigation to end has come. The twins’ next move? More, litigation, duh.

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If it ain’t one thing, it’s another: Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even given a chance to rest the one week he wasn’t being sued by the Winklevoss twins: the dark horse with the previously laughable case has now earned the title ‘most likely to take a whole lot of Zuck-bucks.’

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Microsoft accuses Google of being a liar. Google calls Microsoft a dastardly cur, sullying Google’s good name. Sure, they were never good friends, but here’s the hoop-la that’s made them what seem to be soap opera type enemies and the latest scuffle that’s kicking up a whole lot of dust.

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The newest meme on the scene takes the natural creepiness of Steve Buscemi and pairs it with hot females. Every red-blooded male’s dream.

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After GroupOn snubs Google’s acquisition attempt, the search giant creates Google Offers. Will Google’s massive web presence make it a success, or will it be an embarrassing footnote in the coupon rush?

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Google has updated their search algorithm so that ‘content farms’ and sites with duplicated content get less hits. Internet users trying to find better info are happy, but there are many sites that feel they were unfairly targeted.

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[Editor Update: Jim Gilliam pointed out that our title was inaccurate. We deeply regret the mistake and we've updated the title to accurately analyze his interesting idea.]

Jim Gilliam is a self-described “geeky activist building internet tools to shake up a broken political system.” In addition to his websites to this end like govluv.org, he also seems to have a serious love for (obsession with?) Twitter and its potential. And with good reason – Twitter’s unique structure and API should give it an enviable advantage in constructing any number of revenue streams and business alliances.

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