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POPSPolicing YouTube The Wall Street Journal (via Ars Technica) on a company that monitors YouTube on behalf of Viacom for copyright-violating video clips. If Viacom is paying BayTSP more than $100,000 a month to issue takedown notices to YouTube, how much is it costing YouTube to process these requests from Viacom and other media companies? - Louis Hau
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POPSSkype On iPhone AT&T must be just thrilled to pieces to hear about this. Who needs rollover minutes when you've got Skype via your unlimited data plan? - Louis Hau
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POPSDiet Pill, Linked To Suicide, For Sale In India Between this and the recent decision that Gleevec, one of the most innovative cancer drugs of the past 20 years, it's hard to see how one can argue that India is offering even a modicum of patent protection. It would be ironic if this is what torpedoed Acomplia, which was unanimously rejected by an FDA panel. But it is hard to believe that will happen. Side effect monitoring is difficult in the U.S., but it is nonexistent in India. Expect lots of cheap Acomplia knockoffs to be sold in the Internet, where a drug the FDA's advisors universally acknowledged would not be safe will now be available on the gray market.
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POPSCocaine Use Hits 10-Year Low This is only among people who get tested at work. You have to wonder whether these people are getting smarter about testing or using other drugs. What happened to methamphetamine use during the same period? --Matt Herper
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POPSWarning: Made In China Here's a Sept. 2006 story from The Wall Street Journal that's worth taking another look at in the wake of Mattel's second recall this month of defective toys made in China. (You don't need a WSJ.com subscription to read the entire story.) Until Chinese authorities get serious about product safety regulation, informed consumers will remain wary of the "Made In China" tag. - Louis Hau
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POPSUser-generated customer service GigaOm highlights a startup company applying a Yahoo! Answers model to customer service. It's a promising concept that doesn't have to be restricted to product queries. For instance, one of the first Satisfaction forums set up is for the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada. - Louis Hau
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POPSPoison Elmo Bad for China. Bad for Mattel. Bad for kids, and parents. How long until we start seeing "not made in China" stickers on products? --Matt Herper
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POPSIntel Makes A Charitable Contribution One Laptop per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte had previously accused Intel of trying to undermine the philanthropy's goal of providing computers to children in the developing world by marketing it's own sub $100 laptop, the Classmate PC. --Ann Rafalko
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POPSSiemens Bribes Said To Top 1 Billion Euros A billion euros?? For those keeping score at home, that'd be more than $1.3 billion in bribes that Siemens is alleged to have paid to secure lucrative contracts. Der Spiegel says it has documents showing that Siemens' power plant division had an account in Lichtenstein through "hundreds of millions of euros were transferred." - Louis Hau
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POPSBeatles Not Yet Coming To iTunes? My ex-boss Peter Kafka hears from a source that Apple's press event next week won't include the unveiling of Beatles downloads, appearing to throw cold water on renewed press speculation that the Fab Four have concluded a deal with iTunes. Interesting tidbit about iPhone ringtones too. - Louis Hau
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POPSThis Just In: iPod Still Has No Built-In Mic Apple's iPod still lacks one feature that virtually every other MP3 player on the market already has: a built-in mic. Having to shell out an extra $50 to $70 for an iPod attachment that can record would seem to be something to poke fun at, not celebrate. - Louis Hau
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POPSFox Interactive Rev To Top $500M For Fiscal '07 My ex-boss Peter Kafka interviews Fox Interactive Media Chief Revenue Officer Mike Barrett ahead of News Corp.'s earnings on Wednesday. Interesting color on MySpace's rollout of profile-targeted ads and its competition with Facebook. While MySpace is outpacing its earlier revenue projections, Barrett concedes that when compared to Google or Yahoo, "everyone's under-performing." - Louis Hau
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POPSChina Buys U.S. Junk Too Yes, the U.S. gets a lot of cheap stuff from China. But the trading of cheap junk, while imbalanced, is a two-way street. - Tom Van Riper
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POPSSony: Ex-King, Now Also-ran, of Portable Music Here's the latest reminder that Sony -- the erstwhile consumer-electronics trailblazer that brought us the Walkman and the Discman -- is now a mere sidenote in the market for handheld music players. Sony still makes its own line of MP3 players. And it's not the only Apple rival that makes iPod accessories. Creative Technology also plays both sides of the street with its Zen MP3 players and its speaker systems for the iPod. Nonetheless, it's rather breathtaking to consider how far Sony has fallen in a market that it once owned. Back in the day, the company churned out music players with the best features, the coolest designs, an unbeatable brand name and a seemingly unerring sense of what consumers wanted -- in short, it was the Apple of its day. One big difference: the iPod is far more important to Apple than the Walkman ever was to Sony, so you can expect the former to be relentless in its efforts to keep the iPod on top.- Louis Hau
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POPSHollywood Goes Bollywood For Good Reason As noted in another clip, interesting NYT story comes on same day Weinstein bros. say they'll be staring $285 million movie fund to invest in Asia-themed projects, tho why anyone would remake Seven Samurai (again) is beyond me. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/08/ap3999455.html
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POPSNew Harry Potter Book On BitTorrent TorrentFreak (via TechCrunch) reports that the hotly anticipated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows has emerged on BitTorrent. TechCrunch astutely opines that, "the days of the mainstream media and publishers strictly controlling the dissemination of information has well and truly past." - Louis Hau
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POPSCreative Financing Bites American Home Mortgage American Home Mortgage is teetering on bankruptcy, thanks to an emphasis on creative financial instruments that boosted leverage and will force the company to sell many assets for pennies on the dollar. Customers of AHM and other lenders hit by the subprime meltdown should be okay if they have traditional mortgages - as most will likely be sold to other well capitalized institutions. Those who have a deal pending should be okay too, unless its an interest-only or other creative agreement. A new lender may not be apt to honor such terms.
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POPSJK Rowling And The Made For TV Documentary British telvision cameras have been following JK Rowling for the past twelve months as she wrote the final book in her wildly popular 'Harry Potter' series. No word yet if the series will be seen on American TV. --Ann Rafalko
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POPSMerv Griffin, R.I.P. Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Dance Fever, his own talk show, etc. - what a track record. - Louis Hau
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POPSGnarls Barkley, Men Of Mystery Some interesting color on the crazy-brilliant music duo Gnarls Barkley and their disdain for conventional music marketing. Their experience demonstrates that entertainers don't have to bare all to connect with fans -- holding something back can work too. It certainly did for Gnarls' 2006 album St. Elsewhere, which went platinum in the U.S. - Louis Hau
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POPSFox Business Channel To Launch In October News Corp. finally nails down a launch date for its much anticipated Fox Business Channel. It remains to be seen how the channel will position itself. Some observers have suggested that Fox might take a more Main Street approach to business news than the financial-market focus of CNBC. Either way, the acquisition of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal would provide the fledging network with instant street cred. As CNBC awaits the arrival of the competing network, it has been adding distinctly Fox-like flourishes to its programming, such as the "Keeping America Great" tagline it uses to introduce some of its stories. - Louis Hau
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POPSLetterman Sidekick Paul Shaffer Writing Memoir Celebrity memoirs are a dime a dozen, but Shaffer's tome could prove to be a fun read. He's best known as David Letterman's sidekick, knowingly swapping lame lines to make his boss look good. But he's also got amazing connections throughout the music industry, having backed countless musical guests on Letterman, serving as musical director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and playing on recording sessions for Robert Plant, Yoko Ono, Marshall Crenshaw and many others. He also played keyboards for the house band on Saturday Night Live during that show's early years. More good news -- Shaffer's book will be co-written by David Ritz, who co-authored Ray Charles' must-read autobiography Brother Ray, penned a definitive biography on Marvin Gaye and has collaborated with a long list of other musical figures on their memoirs. - Louis Hau
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POPSU.S. Victory on China Trade Issues This is a big first step in resolving U.S.-China trade disputes and an indication that economic relations between the two countries may be growing warmer--it comes just as Treasury Secretary Paulson is about to visit China for another round of the "Strategic Economic Dialogue" between the two countries. --Brian Wingfield
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POPSProduct Packaging That Says "Look At Me!" NYT story goes on to say some companies are looking at technology that would allow them to put a computer chip and a tiny speaker inside a package. Why? So a hunk of cheese could say, "I go well with crackers." God help us. - Louis Hau
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POPSSonus Pharmaceuticals Slammed Sonus' drug Tocosol was supposed to a new, improved version of Taxol. Instead, it didn't work as well, caused more loss of white blood cells and didn't have the planned benefit in reducing peripheral nerve damage. Also, Sonus and partner Bayer have stopped developing the medicine. --Matthew Herper
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POPS"Feature Creep" Invades! Companies feel that to keep consumers interested in their products they must constantly innovate. What are some of the products you wish companies would stop tinkering with? What product do you wish would be put back into the marketplace? --Ann Rafalko
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POPSU.S. and India Ink Nuke Pact A very healthy development that should do wonders to improve U.S.-Indian relations. While underplayed in the U.S., this has been a very big deal on the subcontinent and should go a long way in strengthening ties. Our columnist Gary Weiss has written a ton of smart stuff on the issue. Well worth reading. His latest: http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2007/07/02/weiss-india-nuclear-oped-cx_gw_0703weiss.html-- Dan Bigman
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