beforetheend.org

Live Nation has also started offering “360″ representation for artists, taking the place of a music label and touring manager, as well as a promoter.

The announcement is in anticipation of Live Nation’s ticketing service, which launches in January and will sell tickets for venues that Live Nation already represents as a promoter as well as third-party partners. Under the terms of the agreement, Live Nation will be the exclusive outlet for SMG’s tickets; Live Nation expects the SMG deal to raise its potential ticketing volume by 25 percent.

Music giant Live Nation announced on Thursday that it has partnered with SMG, the operator of 216 stadiums, arenas, convention centers, and concert halls, in an agreement that lasts through 2011.

Live Nation recently ended its ticketing contract with Ticketmaster, owned by InterActiveCorp before CEO Barry Diller spun it off into a separate company. When Live Nation Ticketing launches, the two companies will be direct competitors.

5. The earnings themselves, as well as guidance

This is usually the least interesting part for the tech crowd, especially since Microsoft’s earnings tend to be so predictable. That said, it will be interesting to see what the company turns in.

4. PDC

Microsoft’s big developer conference is next week and perhaps the company might let out a few more product details on the call. Steve Ballmer has been dropping hints for about a month now, but he’s not usually the one speaking on the conference calls, so this one might be a long shot.

1. The economy

It’s obviously top of mind for everyone right now and it will be interesting to see how one of the companies with the strongest balance sheets and most predictable revenue streams expects to be affected.

2. Hiring plans
Microsoft has already said it is “rethinking” its staffing plans in the wake of the economy. Word is that some departments have been told to put the brakes on hiring, while Microsoft has said there is not a companywide freeze, and indeed, it is still adding lots of jobs in some areas, particularly its online services area. Still, it’s been a couple of weeks since Microsoft offered its assessment and it may go into more details.

3. Sales/contracts pipeline

Microsoft gets a good chunk of its sales from multi-year sales agreements with big businesses. I’m curious to see how it is seeing renewals in that area and whether companies are holding off signing new contracts.

With Microsoft earnings due after the market closes Thursday, here’s my top five list of things to watch for:

There are privacy tools available now, like the Tor anonymity network, the Freenet Project and PGP encryption software, but they aren’t necessarily easy to use for the non-tech savvy citizen. De Winter says he is looking to bundle products so they are pre-configured and easy to install. He says he will initially focus on basic privacy tools, such as e-mail encryption.

Brenno de Winter launched his project on Saturday with the aim of making it easier for people to keep their online communications safe from the prying eyes of governments around the world. A case in point is the European Data Retention Directive that is being adopted by countries in the EU. It requires that ISPs and phone companies retain data for several years.

“We might have to develop our own technology as well, but we don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” he says.

“The system starts to monitor people and draw inferences out of that and those inferences might hinder you. Like the no-fly list in the U.S.,” says de Winter. “You don’t know what they do with the information and there’s no way to defend yourself.”

A Dutch hacker activist and journalist has launched the Small Sister Project, which is designed to help consumers counter the privacy invasions of Big Brother.

As an example, de Winter says he blocks tons of e-mail from Pakistan that is spam, but authorities looking at ISP logs don’t know that it is spam and that he is blocking it.

After the relaunch, Kiwibox hopes to rev up its numbers with an impending marketing campaign as well as content partnerships that will syndicate its own content across the Web and bring in new third-party content. There will be technological partnerships as well, including a deal with a video partner to create a branded player.

Something you probably didn’t know: the oddly named Kiwibox first launched in 1999, meaning that it’s been around since before many of its young members could read. The good news is that it’s stayed afloat. The not-so-good news is that its membership count is still only 1.8 million, enough for an active user base but still a fraction of the size of much younger sites like MySpace or even smaller ones like Piczo.

As with many teen-oriented sites, Kiwibox members earn “points” for completing activities on the site–writing articles for its weekly online magazine, filling out certain profile criteria–which they can then redeem for real-world prizes like iPods. Right now, Kiwibox has about 60 pieces of original content per day,

CEO Lin Dai is confident it’ll succeed, too. “We know the content plus social network model really works,” he said in an interview with CNET News.com last week.

Today in teen news: Kiwibox, a social network and editorial content site geared toward the Miley Cyrus set, announced Monday that it’s exited beta and launched “Kiwibox 2.0.” In the new launch are sleeker drag-and-drop profile pages, a new casual-gaming section, more video content aggregated on “KiwiboxTV,” and more editorial content contributed by members.

(Credit: Mygazines.com)

Just months after its launch, the magazine-sharing Web site Mygazines.com is largely cutting back on the free content it offers, after reaching a settlement agreement in a suit filed by a group of magazine publishers.

Mygazines still offers digital copies of magazines like Today’s Bride and Computer Graphics World.

A settlement was reached on September 8, under which Mygazines agreed to remove the publishers’ copyrighted content and review uploaded content for unauthorized material, according to Folio.

Launched in late July, Mygazines allows users to upload and share magazines and originally offered clear, complete digital copies of popular magazines such as People, Esquire, and Allure. A number of publishers, including Time Inc., Hearst, and Newsweek, filed suit in a New York district court on August 21, asking the site to be shut down in the U.S.

The suit was filed against Budd Salveo, run by a Canadian named Darren Budd, which registered the site in the Caribbean island of Anguilla. On September 9, a Toronto court issued an order to uphold the settlement.

Keeping Household Electronics Out of the Landfill - The New York Times
Very good cheat sheet on what to do about electronics gathering dust around the house.
Firepower of the Lowly Caulk Gun - The Wall Street Journal
Have you done a home energy audit yet? Weatherizing homes with insulation and air sealing is the first step to greening your home–and the country’s buildings.

(Credit:
Martin LaMonica/CNET)

Geothermal Power Heats Up in a Down Economy - Earth2Tech
The proverbial “untapped” resource, geothermal is less than 1 percent of electricity production.
Google: Clean Energy Goes ‘Straight to the Bottom Line’ - The Wall Street Journal
“Green energy done right is more profitable than old energy,” CEO Eric Schmidt said. “Is that a crisp enough answer for you?”
eSolar signs license with Acme to construct 1 gigawatt of solar power plants in India - press release
Start-up eSolar lands big deal to license its solar thermal technology. Expect to see more of this sort of “strategic partnership” to get green tech on the ground.
Duke Energy: Obama plan would bring higher rates - CharlotteObserver.com
Get ready for some serious jockeying, lobbying, and mud-slinging in carbon regulations debate. Duke CEO James Rogers, by the way, is an advocate for carbon regulations.
The Real Price of Obama’s Cap-and-Trade Plan - Technology Review
Some initial estimates of how a proposed carbon cap-and-trade regime would raise electricity prices.
Businesses Riding First Wave of Green IT - Greentech Media
Deloitte claims to see movement on making data centers more energy efficient, with virtualization and power management as the first steps. Next up: smarter air conditioning.

Green home gadgetry: a thermal imaging gun.

A sampling of
green-tech news with quick commentary.

As for Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft has said very little publicly. Ballmer did make reference to it in a speech to enthusiasts in April.

“The thing that they are trying to do is they are trying to own the services,” Rockfeld said, saying that is a move that has plenty of carriers worried. “They don’t want to sit there and just become a dumb pipe.”

Rockfeld also tried to make the case that Microsoft’s business model is friendlier to hardware makers and cell phone carriers than those of rivals, including Google.

Microsoft, he said, is willing to work with carriers to power their own services. “We’re happy sharing the limelight,” he said.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

Microsoft, for its part, declined to comment on its plans. In an interview, group product manager Scott Rockfeld noted that CEO Steve Ballmer and mobile unit head Andy Lees did meet with 17 of the company’s largest cell phone maker and carrier partners.

In addition, a number of carriers and handset makers have been working with Microsoft to add new touch interfaces and other features, separate from Microsoft’s operating system updates. The T-Mobile Shadow was one of the first devices to benefit from such work, while more recent products from HTC also have their own custom interfaces above and beyond those included in the most recent version of Windows Mobile.

Microsoft is not expected to have a major update to its core operating system ahead of Windows Mobile 7. However, other improvements are expected to debut sooner, most notably an improved browser that brings the rendering engine of Internet Explorer 6 onto Windows Mobile. That update, still expected this year, should pave the way for Windows Mobile phones to display rich Web pages, including those that are home to Flash content and Ajax applications.

Windows Mobile 7 is expected to be a dramatic improvement over 6.1, shown here, but when will it arrive?

The delay also comes amid stepped-up competition. Google is preparing Tuesday to launch the first phone running its Android operating system, while Apple has its updated iPhone 3G, and new models are also debuting from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

“Customers don’t have to sit back and wait,” Rockfeld said. “There’s tons of stuff coming from us and our partners.”

Microsoft has informed some of its partners that it has had to delay Windows Mobile 7, a much anticipated update to its cell phone operating system.

The delay is a significant blow for the software maker, which has been counting on the next version of Windows Mobile to enable devices that better rival Apple’s
iPhone. Among the features widely expected to be part of the release is advanced gesture recognition, perhaps along the lines of the iPhone, but possibly also using the camera as a means for reading gestures. Microsoft’s Tellme unit, which focuses on speech input, has also been working on Windows Mobile 7 features.

During the speech, he talked about how Windows Mobile would outsell Apple and RIM during 2008. He then added: “And I think that certainly this should be a good year for us for sales, but the work we’re doing on Windows Mobile 7, which is the next major release of Windows Mobile, not just in the Windows Mobile team, but across Windows Mobile, in Silverlight, the development platform, the e-mail, the back-end, I think you’ll continue to see that as an area of major excitement and innovation for the company as we move forward.”

Although Microsoft has not publicly said when to expect Windows Mobile 7, partners who had expected to have a final release in their hands by early next year have been told now that it won’t be ready until the second half of next year, sources told CNET News.

“They all expressed their excitement of what we are doing in the short term and the long term,” Rockfeld said.

But I just saw Novatel’s new Linux-based MiFi product, and I’ll admit I’m drooling at the prospects.

Basically, it’s a portable 3G broadband wireless modem/router…one that can fit in the palm of your hand. Roughly the size of a credit card, the worst thing about the MiFi is that my odds of losing it are pretty high.

The Novatel MiFi is set to start shipping in early 2009. Too bad I can’t get it as a stocking stuffer.

I’ve been using Novatel’s Merlin XU870 broadband card for a year or two now with my AT&T Wireless account, and have loved it (though I do wish it were a little faster).

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