TechCrunch: “And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Madonna Dumps Record Industry“:
“The only real question now is how fast will the music industry model come tumbling down. When Radiohead led the way in offering their music directly to fans many predicted that the move was the beginning of the end; Madonna may well be the tipping point from where we will now see a flood of recording artists dumping record labels and where todays model will shortly become a footnote in Wikipedia.”
UPDATE: SIlicon Alley Insider: Radiohead: 1.3 million downloads!
In 1998 I co-wrote with C. Mende an article entitled “Madonna and Audio Streaming” where I’m sure I predicted all of this because I’m so damn prescient, but I’m getting a “page not found error” from ljextra.com, so it’s like the article never even existed.
UPDATE: oh, it looks like someone saved a copy of “Madonna and Audio Streaming.” Looks like my prediction that ‘only time will tell’ was wrong.

News.com: Tech Titans Seek Virtual World Interoperability
“Unfortunately for those who like that notion of interoperability, it’s not going to be happening just yet. But a group of representatives from some of the biggest and most powerful technology companies on earth–including IBM, Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Google and Sony, as well as from leading virtual-world developers like Second Life publisher Linden Lab, the Multiverse Network, Mindark and others–is hoping to change that in the not too distant future.
The first really public shot in this battle was fired Wednesday when Linden Lab and IBM announced their intention to work toward a day when virtual-world users can port a single virtual identity from one service to another.”

WSJ.com: “What’s the Hindi Word for Dot-Com?“:
“Long-dominated by English, the language of its founders, the Internet is about to take a big step toward becoming a truly world-wide Web.
Starting on Monday, Web surfers will be able to test Internet addresses in 11 languages that don’t use the Roman alphabet — the 26 letters used in English and most other European languages.”

Austn360.com: “The Ethics Of Domain Name Selling”
A few days ago, I got an e-mail from someone who wanted to buy the domain. The man said he and his wife were starting a baby-related business and wanted to use babycation.com. . . .
I asked a friend of mine who works in the Internet business what he’d do. He’s sold several domains over the years, some of them for established sites that had lots of traffic. He suggested I offer it for sale for $1,000, a pretty crazy profit margin, but not unusual for a domain that somebody wants to buy.
I wrote the guy back and told him I would sell him babycation.com for $1,000. I told him in the e-mail that I was open to negotiation and would very likely accept a lower offer. (Check out my hardball tactics.)
He wrote back and he and his wife just had an idea for a small business and that there was no way they could pay that kind of money. He didn’t make a counter-offer. He gave up.
And now I feel terrible. I feel greedy. I feel like I should write the guy back and offer to give him the domain on the cheap and help him and his wife out.”
This is an illustration of how the domain name system sometimes function as a tax on small business.