Filed under: Rumors, Products and services, Media World

It was bound to happen eventually. Backlash against English band Radiohead has emerged from the band’s former label EMI Group plc (ADR) (OTC: EMIPY) in response to the method used to release the band’s new album In Rainbows. You might recall that in October, Radiohead received a great deal of media attention and coverage after declaring that fans could “pay-want-they-want” for the new album. Despite hints that the band may have enjoyed a significant monetary figure from that decision, reports since then have claimed otherwise, stating the band took a loss when only about 40% of consumers paid any amount for the album.

The word slinging against Radiohead from EMI began late last week when an article for London-based The Times newspaper cited an EMI spokesman’s claim that the band had demanded

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Filed under: Products and services, Launches, Google (GOOG)

Will 2008 be the breakout year that some of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)’s products and services besides search-targeted ads are able to begin contributing revenue to the company’s bottom line? Pundits will be watching for that, as will Google shareholders, who are mostly large fans of the stock, but reserved in the “eggs in one basket” approach Google still has when it comes to revenue diversification.

Are Google’s products like Gmail, Docs and Spreadsheets, and Calendar holding up their fair share? Gmail is the only product that includes advertising, and Google is careful not to say how much revenue it receives from customers clicking on ads within Gmail. How about Google Base? It’s just an entry point into Google Search. Google Trends? Google Book Search? Google Page Creator? Google Notebook? All of these nifty products are — for now — free of charge to use, but don’t have any kind of ads, which could directly produce revenue.

Google’s hope for 2008 revenue beyond search advertising rests in many areas, from YouTube advertising to generating an actual income from subscribers to its Google Docs and Spreadsheets product for huge installations (universities, companies, small businesses, etc.) that would rather not to spend a small fortune on Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Office, and who also want web-based portability for their documents anywhere there is a web-connected personal.

Does the web search leader have plans to diversify revenue even further than these two examples? Surely — but gleaning that information from the company will be met with competitive-advantage silence for now.

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Filed under: Products and services, Launches, Google (GOOG)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) just loves trying to get users of its services a more interactive experience. This past summer, Google announced a very special new offering where readers may be able to add their own two cents to a new story indexed by Google News if they find themselves quoted in the news.

The New York Times‘ Noam Cohen reminds us of Liebling’s words: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” Well, with this service, Google has been allowing comments to be ‘paired’ with news articles indexed by its News website. Google News currently tracks over 4,500 news sources globally and is now resurfacing in the news as it gains more traction — and more watchers to what this could do to online news interaction.

The concept Google has here’s brilliant and was overdue before its launch in mid-2007. The big number of quotes and sayings printed daily that are taken out of context for some publisher’s agenda molds the minds of many millions of people who — believe it or not — believe everything they read. Pity. However, Google’s attempt to level the playing field is an admirable one, and 2008 should see the uptake of this new “feature” turn on the internet journalism more into a “blog-like” interaction between publisher and reader. Gone are the days of one-way journalism. Ask some newspapers about this.

The next step: Google needs to promote Google News as a one-stop source of news information regardless of location and language of the reader. Of course, Google is stressing that it is not in the business of journalism. Instead, it wants journalists and those used in news sources to embrace the feature even further to give differing perspectives on a news story, “across the political spectrum, geographically.” Sounds familiar with Google’s mantra of making information universally accessible. Currently, the English version of Google News is the only one that works with the new commenting service.

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Filed under: Products and services, Apple Inc (AAPL)

The end of 2007 was especially good for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) this year, as the company’s Mac line of personal desktop and laptop personal broke the 8% market share for the first time ever during the final two days of 2007, according to Net Applications, a web measurement firm.

That’s right — Apple now has 8% of the Computer marketplace. For a company that has been considered a ‘niche’ brand in the sector since, well, since forever, this is a large accomplishment. Keep in mind, though, that this data don’t represent sales numbers from global retailers as what’s generally used for market share references.

Net Applications saw 7.3% of the 40,000 websites it monitors browsed by Apple machines in December. Again, this data isn’t indicative of machines that browsed all, but a small collection of 40,000.

Still, this sample represents a good set of what Apple was able to accomplish last month. On December 30 and 31, the sites monitored by Net Applications saw Apple machines representing 8.01% of all machines. Not to fear, Windows lovers — Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) venerable operating system represented 91.8% market share in December (although it was down from November’s 92.4%).

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Filed under: Market matters, Personal finance, Politics, Housing

President Bush wants Congress to act fast on pending legislation that would give homeowners more options for refinancing their home loans. Economic adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters Bush wants Congress to act faster to “help make the market more stable.”

While some support this legislation, others think that those in trouble have made their own beds and now they have to lie in them. Even so, many people who didn’t make any mistake and have fixed-rate loans are still feeling the pain as home prices continue to fall. Anything that can be done to help homeowners avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes will help everyone. Fewer homes will end up on the market at fire sale prices and the market will start to stabilize.

What legislation does Bush want to pass? There are three key pieces:

• Make it easier for low-income homeowners to refinance adjustable-rate mortgages through the Federal Housing Administration. Of course, for this to work pre-payment penalties on those ARMs would have to be outlawed. Many of the ARMs set to jump 2% to 3% have prepayment penalties of $12,000 or more and home values lower than the mortgage amount due.

• Increase the allowable loans through Fannie Mae so it can help homeowners with loans higher than $417,000. This is aimed primarily at middle- and upper-income borrowers who want to refinance ARMs due to reset higher. Just before this crisis began many Republicans wanted to put tighter controls on the growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now that the crisis is at hand I think Congress is beginning to realize that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a critical part of this country’s housing market. Many lenders say that 80% of new loans are dependent on these government-mandated enterprises.

• Give says the authority to issue more tax-exempt bonds to help troubled homeowners refinance their homes. This will permit the says hardest hit with foreclosures to come up with state-sponsored aid programs.

All three programs are good fixes and will help homeowners to refinance and avoid upcoming resets to their ARMs that they can’t afford. Once investors see that homeowners have options they may finally realize that allowing homeowners to freeze current rates may be better than losing the income absolutely to a refinance and begin to make reasonable deals to keep the business. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has consistently said that about 80% of all ARMs are current on payments. These programs could help them stay that way and avoid even more foreclosures.

Lita Epstein has written more than 20 books including “The 250 Questions You Should Ask to Avoid Foreclosure” and the “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Improving Your Credit Score.”

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