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Google Music, the cloud streaming service introduced earlier this year, has moved out of beta today, adding a download catalog.

The store will compete directly with iTunes and Amazon MP3 but goes a step further by allowing users to trade and share songs with friends on Google+, the social network.

Just like rivals, tracks will cost $0.99 to $1.29 and around $9.99 per album but will be better quality at 320kbps.

Additionally, the original features of Google Music will remain intact, allowing users to upload 20,000 tracks to the cloud for free and stream them on Android devices or any PC with Internet access.

Looking to get new artists out there, Google has created Artist Hub, a service that allows unsigned bands to build storefronts in Google Music and sell from their YouTube pages. The fee is just $25 (one-time) for the service.

Google Music has 8 million tracks from Sony Music, Universal Music and EMI but is notably missing Warner Music, who has so far declined to sign a licensing agreement.

Google, whilst announcing their Google Music music download store today, has announced why T-Mobile was invited to the event.

The carrier will be Google's first carrier partner, with others expected to join later.

T-Mobile will allow you charge purchases right to your monthly bill, paying nothing up front.

Finally, the carrier also says they will have exclusive content for their subscribers, although they did not make it clear what that would entail.

A quick glance shows some free tracks from Drake.

Adult movie maker Vivid Entertainment has sent a cease-and-desist letter to smartphone maker HTC over the new "Vivid" phone for AT&T.

The company wants HTC to change the name or risk a lawsuit over trademark infringement.

HTC has responded with a canned release:

We are reviewing the complaint and don't expect to have any further comment until it is resolved.

Spotify has now expanded to three new countries, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria.

Last month, the company expanded to Denmark, the ninth country to have the unlimited music service.

As with other countries, there will be three different models.

Spotify Free features occasional advertising but offers free streaming of millions of tracks for a certain point.

Spotify Unlimited offers unlimited streaming, no ads.

Spotify Premium gives unlimited access, no ads, mobile access and better sound quality.

Engadget has posted the HTC Zeta concept phone today, a possible flagship device featuring a 2.5GHz quad-core processor.

The leaked handset will also have a 4.5-inch 720p HD screen, with 1280x768 resolution.

Additionally, the device will ship with Ice Cream Sandwich installed, HTC Sense 4.0 and 1GB RAM.

Finally, the phone will have 32GB internal storage, integrated Beats Audio, dual cameras 8MP/1.3MP, Bluetooth 4.0 and weigh 5.15 ounces.

The site also has pics, posted here below. As stated, the phone is just a concept for now, but could become reality next year.

As the entertainment industry pushes for legislation to punish sites for profiting from others' copyright infringement, they may be getting a first hand look from the other side.

A coalition led by producer, director, and digital distribution entrepeneur Alki David is suing CBS Interactive and CNET. CBS has owned CNET since 2008.

The plaintiffs claim CNET's operation of download sites offering P2P software makes them liable for secondary copyright infringement as defined by the Supreme Court in the Grokster case.

At first glance, it's hard to tell if this is an honest attempt to take advantage of the current law enforcement and judicial environment which has set the bar for assigning liability for copyright infringement ridiculously low. It could, instead be a brilliantly planned satirical attack on bills like PROTECT IP and SOPA, and even the ACTA intellectual property treaty.

Just one day after release, the Kindle Fire has already been rooted.

On the XDA forums, the developer has rooted the popular tablet using ADB and SuperOneClick 2.2.

By rooting the device, you can side load apps and eventually add custom ROMs to the device.

For those on the fence, Amazon has said it will not try to stop people from rooting their devices, but did not go out of its way to encourage it.

For those interested, read the post here: [ROOT][ONE-CLICK] How-To Get ADB running AND Root with SuperOneClick

According to multiple sources, Sony is considering beginning an online service that will be an alternative to cable TV.

The company has already approached several media companies in an effort to negotiate rights to offer TV channels via the Internet.

If Sony is successful, the company will be able to stream the channels via Sony devices like the PlayStation 3, BRAVIA TVs and Blu-ray players.

Sony has 18 million PS3 owners in the U.S., alone, and there are an estimated 15 million more Sony Internet-connected device owners.

By comparison, the largest cable operator, Comcast, has 22.4 million subscribers.

As Google TV continues to get the lion's share of press coverage for online TV alternatives, Boxee remains arguably the most successful offering for cord cutters.

Now they are adding a crucial component to their service by integrating over the air TV and unencrypted cable TV (ClearQAM) capabilities to the Boxee Box. In January they will begin shipping a USB TV tuner accessory for their set-top box.

The tuner can be pre-ordered now from the Boxee website.

The primary focus of Boxee is on delivering free online content through their software and hardware clients. In addition to the Boxee Box, there are also Windows, OS X, and even Apple TV clients.

However, the tuner will only work with the Boxee Box.

This seems like an obvious move considering support for TV broadcasts has been a frequently requested feature from early on. If there's one major feature still missing, it would be DVR functionality.

Universal Music Group is suing National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh for refusing to pay $45 million to cover a settlement for back royalties owed in Canada.

The facts of the original case are far from surprising if you know anything about how major labels treat artists. UMG was accused of failing to pay artists when their songs were included on compilation albums.

Instead, the royalties owed were put on a list to be paid later. The problem is those payments weren't actually made.

UMG, whose Canadian subsidiary was named in the suit along with Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, and EMI Music Canada, agreed to settle the class action for copyright infringement because National Union rejected their claim from the beginning.

The settlement is actually quite generous, apparently amounting to only the amount originally owed in royalties, rather than close to $6 billion they could have been liable for under Canadian coypright law.

UMG claims their insurance policy covers both the settlement and the cost of their unsuccessful defense. In their suit against National Union, UMG lawyers claim:

More than 100 noted US law professors have signed an open letter to the US House of Representatives protesting the SOPA bill (formerly E-PARASITE) which would, among other things, elminate nearly all the safe harbor protections afforded by service providers by the DMCA.

The letter highlights the same problems many people have already pointed out. In a summary of the letter, they say SOPA will:

• Redefine the standard for copyright infringement on the Internet, changing the definition of inducement in a! way that would not only conflict with Supreme Court precedent but would make YouTube, Google, and numerous other web sites liable for copyright infringement.
• Allow the government to block Internet access to any web site that "facilitated" copyright or trademark infringement - a term that the Department of Justice currently interprets to require nothing more than having a link on a web page to another site that turns out to be infringing.
• Allow any private copyright or trademark owner to interfere with the ability of web sites to host advertising or charge purchases to credit cards, putting enormous obstacles in the path of electronic commerce.

A security researcher has identified a rootkit present on smartphones manufactured for two of the biggest US carriers. Both Verizon and Sprint are selling phones which come preinstalled with CarrierIQ, which is intended to be used for analyzing network and connection problems.

However, as Trevor Eckhart points out, it can be used for much more than that. More importantly, its very existence is hidden from the user, making it difficult to detect and even harder to remove.

So what exactly can CarrierIQ do? According to Eckhart it can gather all kinds of data you may not wish to share with your carrier (via AndroidSecurityTest):

Carrier IQ is able to query any metric from a device. A metric can be a dropped call because of lack of service. The scope of the word metric is very broad though, including device type, such as manufacturer and model, available memory and battery life, the type of applications resident on the device, the geographical location of the device, the end user?s pressing of keys on the device, usage history of the device, including those that characterize a user?s interaction with a device.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has ended speculation today by announcing that Windows 8 would be made available on phones.

The operating system had been confirmed for PCs (obviously) and tablets, so far.

Says Ballmer: "We are driving Windows down to the phone with Windows 8."

Because the operating system will also be somewhat integrated to the Xbox 360, the OS will unify all of Microsoft's platforms for the first time ever.

Windows Phone will likely not be identical to its tablet and desktop counterpart but will most likely share the same NT kernel.

There is a debate as to whether Ballmer just misspoke (didn't pause long enough to separate sentences but guess for yourself):

According to research firm Gartner, the Android operating system was on 52.5 percent of all smartphones sold in the Q3.

Year-over-year, the OS jumped from 25 percent share.

Overall, smartphone sales volume increased by 42 percent, even with eager buyers waiting until October to purchase the iPhone 4S.

Says Gartner (via Bloomberg):

Android benefited from more mass-market offerings, a weaker competitive environment, and the lack of exciting new products on alternative operating systems.

The entry-level Android smartphones are getting better and better. This lower end is really what will be driving more growth next year.

One of the changes in Windows 8 is new behavior related to automatic restarts when updates are installed.

In the latest post on the Building Windows 8 blog, Farzana Rahman of the Windows Update team explained what these changes are, and why they were made.

Farzana identified the sometimes frequent notifications from Windows Update as a common complaint among Windows Users. The main problems, she says, is that most people don't want to be bothered when updates are about to be installed and they don't want their work disrupted by a restart.

In order to address these issues, a number of changes were made in Windows 8. Perhaps the most significant was moving every update which requires a restart, but which isn't considered critical, into the monthly security release.

This will result in restarts happening less often.

In addition, rather than bugging you frequently when your computer needs to be restarted following the monthly security update, you will receive notifications on the login screen for 3 days before Windows automatically restarts.

She described the process in detail, complete with pictures:

1. A message about the upcoming restart is shown in the login screen for three days or until the PC is restarted (whichever is sooner). This means you now have three days to restart the PC at your convenience. All you need to do is see the login screen once in 3 days to see the message about the upcoming restart and by default the lock screen will appear after 15-minute idle timeout.
   
   


2. In addition to the restart notification on the login screen, the Power options on the lock screen will change to ?Update and restart? immediately after the update occurs, and will include ?Update and shutdown? on days two and three, to make the message even more apparent to you. This allows you to restart your PC at your own convenience.
   
   
   
   
   


3. If after three days, the restart still has not occurred, then WU will automatically restart your PC for you. In this case, the automatic restart will happen either at the end of the three-day grace period, or, to prevent data loss if WU detects that there are critical applications open at the end of the three-day grace period, it will wait to automatically restart the next time you login. I?ll address this behavior in more depth in the next section.
   
   


4. After the restart has occurred, the message on the login screen will go away and the power options will revert to the original choices. We know people would like Windows to automatically log in after the restart, but we strongly advise against doing so, given the potential security issues with this configuration.