Starbucks will expect to sell digital songs and videos within a year. With his recent speech at New York’s Levin Institute, CEO Howard Schultz expects customers to be able to “walk into a Starbucks and digitally be able to fill up your MP3 player with music”. Their October 2006 agreement with Apple have increased speculation that the download platform for their instore downloads will probably be Apple iTunes.

Via [The Seattle Times]

The Internet, magazines, newspapers, mobile phones, radio, and recently, maybe even billboards. But is Google going to top all those media this year by working with CBS to set up an online auction for TV advertising spots? Reports conflict, and Google, as usual, will not “comment on rumor or speculation.”

Google says its main mission is to index the world’s information and to do it in an un-evil way. Of course, the cost of indexing and not-evil business practices is provided by advertising. They should amend that mission statement to include, “collect all the world’s advertising money.”

AdAge’s expert disagrees with MediaPost’s expert about the likelihood of a Google/CBS partnership to sell TV ads online.
But for those of us who’ve watched Google closely, we know that anything is possible - and likely.

Tim Spengler, chief activation officer at Initiative North America, believes Google and CBS will make a big announcement in 2007 that they will test an “online auction with local media.”

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Source: Jason Lee Miller, Staff Writer, Webpronews

Apple continues to break records for revenue and profit thanks to a surge in sales of Macs and the illustrious iPod. Apple announced first quarter earnings for fiscal year 2007, ending December 30, 2006. They managed to push through over 21 million iPods during the quarter (that works out to about 162 iPods per minute!) and 1.6 million Macs. These numbers represent a 50% and a 28% increase respectively for those products versus Q1 2006. I personally helped to contribute to that number by buying 2 iPods (one video, one shuffle) as gifts for the holidays. All those Macs and iPods add up to a 78% revenue increase versus Q1 2006.

The bottom line is that Apple, the company that was pretty much written off the map 10 years ago, posted a profit (yeah, that’s actual money in the bank) of $1 billion. To me, that’s simply amazing. I know that other companies post bigger profits than that, but think about the size of the market that Apple caters to. As far as computers are concerned, Macs are barely on the map at like less than 5% of the total market. And I know the iPod has a huge market share in the mp3 market, but it’s still amazing what this company has been able to pull off in a fairly short time span.

And let me insert my disclaimer here, I am a Mac user. Yes, I am probably the biggest Apple fanboy out there (I ordered my Apple TV as soon as it was available online at the Apple Store) but you have to respect a company that has made all the right moves to become a dominant force in the computer/technology industry. And now that the company has dropped the “computer” from it’s name, I can only think they will be venturing forth into other areas.

But will Apple be able to maintain the dominance as a consumer electronics company? Could they be the new Sony? Time will only tell, but we could get a hint of that dominance in June with the (proposed) release of the iPhone (or whatever they may have to call it). I’m looking forward to seeing what Apple will do. However, my credit card is not so hopeful…

Read [Apple] via [DailyTech]

eBay is preparing to add another layer of security to the PayPal online payment system. Not that PayPal security is anything to laugh at in the first place, but it’s always nice to have another buffer between you and Johnny Phisher. But that layer of security isn’t a new sitekey system like so many banks are using now, it comes in the form of a key fob.

The diminutive hardware device cranks out a new password every 30 seconds. This system ensures that only the holder of said key fob has the password to access the account. I’ve seen a few of these devices used by corporate managers and they’re actually pretty neat. The devices I’ve seen were provided by RSA and even offer a countdown timer to know when you’ll receive a new password.

Sara Bettencourt, a PayPal spokesperson, said that, “if a fraudulent party somehow got hold of a person’s username and password, they still wouldn’t be able to get into the account because they don’t have the six-digit code.” But don’t go thinking that you’ll be 100% safe with your PayPal account. It’s still a great idea to change your password every so often, roughly every 90 days.

I’m glad to see that eBay and PayPal are doing something to help combat the flood of phishing scams on the web today. The only thing I don’t like about the device is the fact that it will more than likely be lost by a number of people. Then what? I’m sure PayPal has addressed this issue, but it would still stink to lose the access keyfob to your account. Thanks, Johnny Phisher. You’ve succeeded in making everyone else’s lives a little more miserable. Why can’t you just learn how to make money the honest way like all the rest of us?

The new key fobs should be available in the next month or so, as PayPal has been testing internally for a couple of months. If you’re a business customer with PayPal, your key fob will be free. Personal account holders will need to shell out $5 to add another layer of security, one that I think is well worth the investment.

Read [Daily Tech]

Xerox Corporation has come up with a winner for those who are into recycling i.e. the Erasable Paper, a paper where prints last about a day before being automatically erased.

The experimental printing technology, a collaboration between the Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.), could someday replace printed pages that are used for just a brief time before being discarded. Xerox estimates that as many as two out of every five pages printed in the office are for what it calls “daily” use, like e-mails, Web pages and reference materials that have been printed for a single viewing.

So how does it work? The paper is used just like conventional paper for printing or writing text. When it is printed, the developed compounds of the paper change color when they absorb a certain wavelength of light and it gradually erases the ink until the page is completely blank. The process takes around 16-24 hours from when the original piece of paper is printed on.

The technology is still in the early stages of development, so it will be some time before we’ll see this product in the shops.

This is a smart idea but the rate at which it automatically erases the text on the paper could prove worrying to some and issues may occur with people using it in negative ways and to their advantage e.g. deliberately asking clients or businesses to sign legal contracts (on this erasable paper) but having no trace of it 24 hours later.

Product Page [Xerox]