Next week, likewise, should shape up to be a big one for digital music. iLike already has a partnership in place with RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service so that members can stream full-length songs, and the company announced this summer that membership has surpassed 30 million users.

CNET News’ Caroline McCarthy contributed to this report.

It looks like social music site iLike will launch its developer platform early next week.

A source close to the music industry, who requested anonymity, also said that iLike’s platform was opening next week.

iLike is making this announcement in conjunction with the Web 2.0 Expo, the O’Reilly Media-organized confab set to hit New York next week. But conferences aside, this is a particularly notable time for iLike, which rose to fame as an application on Facebook’s developer platform, to make this move. The News Corp.-owned social network MySpace will be launching its much-anticipated MySpace Music service soon, and has confirmed that on Monday it will be announcing the program’s initial brand advertisers.

Two weeks ago, iLike’s President Hadi Partovi, wrote an e-mail to third-party developers notifying them that the company was “gearing up to prepare for launch” of the platform. According to Partovi’s e-mail, the iLike Developer Platform is designed to add “interactive music features to Facebook apps and Web sites.”

This is a time when other social music businesses, iLike among them, are scrambling to make their own moves and snag a bit of the limelight. The rapid-fire, competing-announcement phenomenon is something the tech industry saw last spring when the press was barraged with data-portability announcements: Google Friend Connect, MySpace Data Availability, and Facebook Connect all were announced within a week of each other.

The Seattle-based company, which announced plans to build a third-party developer platform in July, has begun notifying news outlets that it will have a “significant technology announcement” on Wednesday.

“If you’re working on a Web site or Facebook app and are interested, shoot me an e-mail and we’ll get you into the early preview. And if you’re interested in being referenced as part of our launch and PR efforts, let me know too. We’re considering picking a short list of launch partners to promote to our 15mm Facebook users.”

“We’ll open up detailed information very soon,” Partovi said in his August 29 e-mail. “In the mean time, we’d love to encourage a few Web sites or (Facebook) apps to be early adopters.”

Might I have a spot of tea with that handcuff, guvnah?

While you sit around dreaming of 1s and 0s, real men and women are out busting heads as Bobbies in the badlands of London. You code in your free time? These guys arrest people for not minding the gap!

By the way, I’m not sure I’d feel safer knowing my safety depended on volunteers….

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Newsweek’s Steven Levy recently had a similar experience with a MacBook Air he had on loan from Apple.

Now, I’m not blaming Apple. And I freely (or expensively) admit that I am more forgetful than most. I just think that the next time you see the ad and lust that the MacBook Air is small enough to fit in a manila envelope, remember one thing: it is small enough to fit in a manila envelope.

(Credit:
Apple)

Missing: One iPod Touch, last seen somewhere around here…

It’s not the first time the thinness of Apple’s products has wreaked havoc in my household. There was an incident a couple years back where an iPod Nano was left in a back pocket of some jeans and went through the washing machine. It’s still a sore subject, so I won’t go into details. Suffice to say, it is the cleanest, whitest, nonfunctioning Nano you’ve ever seen.

It’s one thing to lose a gadget and know where you lost it. It’s another thing to have the thing seemingly vanish.

Such was the experience I had last December with the
iPod Touch I had shelled out $400 for just a couple months earlier. I had it one night and went to look for it the next day and it was gone. For weeks, I thought it might be somewhere in my house or the friend’s house I was at that night. But it never turned up either place.

The only thing that I think Apple’s products have added to the mix is a thinness that makes it possible to lose the things without even knowing you have lost them.

From the very beginning, Apple understood what no other company did: people want a product that works well, but also offers the end-to-end solution that won’t require them to fire up too many programs to get songs onto their devices. And although some of its competitors don’t want to admit it, Apple was the first, and to be honest the only real, end-to-end solution for all consumers.

So what’s the deal? Is it really true that iPods are the only MP3 players that matter? You better believe it.

“We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated,” said a GameStop spokesperson. “It (also) did not fit with our product mix.”

The MP3 player market is one where logic is thrown out the window and as long as the player is manufactured by Apple, it’ll perform quite well. Although there have been a number of solid alternatives, none have gained ground. And by the look of things, the
Zune is up next on the chopping block.

But until then, we’re stuck with a market that’s utterly dominated by the iPod and products like the Zune have little chance of survival regardless of their merit as a fine device.

And perhaps that’s the biggest issue we’re facing. Today’s MP3 player market is so lopsided, most companies are basically copying the best features from each other in an attempt to take the No. 2 spot, while Apple laughs all the way to the bank.

The competition should pack it in and try to do something new. If it doesn’t, we’ll be stuck with boring updates to the same devices while doing all we can to satiate our burning desire for a revolutionary device. If it’s out there now, I’d surely like to see it.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like there’s any real chance for any other player besides the iPod to do well in the current environment. Apple commands such a large portion of the market with its current stable of products, there’s no reason to suggest any company can break in and change the way things have been done for so long.

GameStop’s decision to remove the Zune from its store shelves reflects an increasingly prominent notion among retailers that suggests that only the
iPod is a viable product regardless of the fact that Microsoft has sold more than 2 million Zunes and its other competitors have fought valiantly.

For more on what Don is up to, follow him on Twitter!

Going forward, there’s no debating the fact that Apple will lead the charge, but I’m not so sure it’ll stay on top forever. Who knows if something totally new will come along and supplant it as the leader in the portable audio market much like the Walkman did. If you ask me, it could happen sooner than you think.

CNET, Google (Search and the Google Reader application), News.com (CNET), Digg, LinuxToday, News.Google.com, Slashdot, Reddit, Stumble Upon, and My.Yahoo.com (RSS reader).

I can’t really track RSS readers since CNET has chosen not to use Feedburner or other technology to track it. I really, really wish that I could.

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Traffic on the Open Road blog

My commitment for the coming year is to focus on improved fairness and accuracy if ever I’m going to write something negative about a company. I also hope to avoid ever writing something negative about a person. I’m a highly imperfect person, so help me keep my word.

Because of such references, the traffic for this blog has increased significantly. How significantly? Put it this way: Traffic has gone up 1000 percent since July 2007. We’ve had millions of visitors and page views in The Open Road’s inaugural year.

In the meantime, thank you for reading and be sure to let me know areas in which you think the blog can be improved.

I just realized that a little over a year and 2,064 posts ago, this blog was born. I’ve had a lot of fun with the blog. While I’m not always right (a nice way of saying “often wrong”), I appreciate the patience and insight that many readers share in the comments section, and in other blogs that reference The Open Road.

Well, sort of. Cargo Cosmetics has launched a new line called Blu_ray, designed for makeup artists who need to adapt to high-definition cameras. Design blog Notcot notes that it’s marketed toward filming, photography, bridal makeup jobs, and other occurrences where high technology means that the camera really doesn’t lie–those HD cameras can highlight any flaw.

In case you were wondering, it’s able to skirt copyright regulations by calling itself Blu_ray rather than Blu-ray.

HD DVD, just in case you didn’t get the word, you’re toast. The cosmetics industry says so, and would like to blow you a high-definition kiss goodbye. Mwah.

This week at GDC 09, we learned about OnLive, a new “cloud”-based on-demand video game and entertainment service. It promises high-quality streaming of first-run major publisher games to many Macs and PCs, and it could threaten the traditional console model for gamers that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have built their game businesses around.

The companies have definitely taken notice, but what are they saying behind closed doors? Which of these responses would you most like to hear from the gaming behemoths?

Nintendo: Cloud? Isn’t that what Lakitu rides in Super Mario Bros.?
Microsoft: Xbox 360 requires no cloud to overheat repeatedly and die
Sony: Even if everyone got OnLive free, PS3 would still be the best-selling console
Apple: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet

View results

Some of the changes and enhancements seem to compensate for the white-balance and exposure problems we encountered with the older model, such as the new Shadow Adjustment Technology and improved white-balance algorithms. Olympus also says continuous-shooting speed picks up from its predecessor’s three frames per second to 3.5fps.

Along with the E-420, Olympus announced a low-profile 25mm f2.8 lens (equivalent to 50mm in the Four Thirds standard); a kit with that lens will run $699.99. The body alone will cost $499.99, while a kit with the f3.5-5.6 14-42mm lens (28-84mm equivalent) will be $599.99. All are slated to ship in May.

The following products are available:

On Sale Now: $409.95 - $443.01
View the latest prices for Olympus E-420 (Body only)

On Sale Now: $469.99
View the latest prices for Olympus E-420 (Kit with 14-42mm lens)

Though Olympus makes a big deal about the E-420’s size, in truth it’s only 0.01 to 0.02 inches smaller in any dimension than its predecessor, and in fact weighs a couple of ounces more. Still, it remains relatively compact compared with the rest of the field. Olympus has increased the size of the LCD from 2.5 inches to 2.7 and made the grip a bit larger as well.

There isn’t a helluva lot new about the E-420, Olympus’ minor update to its E-410 bottom-of-the-line dSLR, but that’s not unexpected for a model that will only set you back between $500 and $700. The most significant new capability is a built-in wireless flash controller, which Olympus seems to be putting in many of its enthusiast models (including the SP-570 UZ).

Olympus E-420

On Sale Now: $599.95
View the latest prices for Olympus E-420 (Kit with 25mm F/2.8 lens)

Estonians rely heavily on the Internet for basic services such as paying for food, water, and gas, said Gadi Evron, security evangelist for Beyond Security. Evron has studied the incident thoroughly. “The more technology there is within a country, the more dependent the country is on technology and therefore, the more vulnerable,” he said.

A 20-year-old Russian has been convicted for organizing some of the attacks on Estonia’s government sites during spring 2007, the Agence France-Presse reported on Thursday.

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which some security experts have alternatively called a flash mob or the first-ever cyberwar, was prompted by an Estonian government plan to move a statue and grave sites honoring Russian-Estonians who died fighting the Nazis. From late April through mid-May 2007, various Internet-based services within Estonia were not accessible.

Apparently, the ads are not a response to the unsolicited Microsoft bid for the company, as Gossain said Yahoo began planning the ad campaign in December. Microsoft went public with its offer on February 1. The companies are talking, but Yahoo is holding out for more money.

(Credit:
Yahoo)
“Search engines like Google get you lost in all the links, but not Yahoo search,” one of the ads says before noting that Yahoo offers drop-down menus with related suggestions as the searcher types.

“The rationale is we feel like we’ve built a better mouse trap and, quite frankly, we wanted to remind users that there really is a choice in search engines,” Gossain said. “We’ve got a better, simpler, easier-to-use mouse trap.”

“You won’t find that on your Google page!” it says, before ending with the trademark Yahoo yodel.

The radio ads will “introduce Yahoo search to folks who perhaps haven’t tried us in awhile,” he said. “We’ve got capabilities in our search experience that the competition doesn’t have.”

Updated 10 a.m. PDT with quotes from radio ad.

The radio spots started running in the Bay Area a week ago, said Raj Gossain, vice president of marketing for the Yahoo Search team. He wouldn’t say what other markets are involved or how much the company is spending on the spots. Ads are running online, too.

Yahoo not only wants to show off new features added to its search engine in October, like search assist, short cuts, and multimedia results, but also to remind people that there is an alternative to Google.

Gossain acknowledged that it is hard to get people to change their habits, especially for something like Web search where people seem to go on auto-pilot.

Yahoo is running radio ads in the San Francisco Bay Area and several other markets in an effort to get more people to use its search engine instead of Google’s.