While illegal MP3 downloads may be giving the internet a bad name, here's a story proving it isn't all theft and piracy in the world of digital music.

Scars on 45, a UK band funded by fans via the Slicethepie website, have just bagged themselves a major label record deal with Atlantic Records.

With Slicethepie, music aficionados take on the A&R role, making money by reviewing tracks, spotting new talent and ensuring the best bands get put forward for financing. Fans can also invest anything from £1 upwards to help a band they think are worthy of hitting the big-time.

And that's just what they did with Scars on 45. Within weeks of signing up to the site, the band had raised £15,000 directly from music fans to record their self-produced debut album. Their track "Beauty's Running Wild" was then featured on hit US show CSI:NY and from there on in it all fell into place.

David Courtier-Dutton, Slicethepie CEO said: 'We are delighted for both the band and their fans who, in this case, have truly been instrumental in their success. We believe that consumer driven filtering has an increasingly influential role to play in the future of the industry enabling talented artists to access an ever widening range of commercial opportunities."

Check the Scars on 45 Myspace page here.

Think you've got an ear for the next saviours of pop? Try your hand at a bit of online A&R at Slicethepie here.

Google has launched real-time search functions into its search engine today. Making Twitter feeds appear as part of search results, up-to-the-second information is now available from the search giant.

While currently only Twitter feeds have been implemented, updates from social networks Myspace and Facebook will dynamically be fed into searches from early in the new year.

"Information is being created at a pace I have never seen before and in this environment, seconds matter," said Google's Amit Singhal. "There is so much information being generated out there that getting you relevant information is the key to the success of a product like this. It's all about relevance, relevance, relevance."

With Microsoft's Bing search engine making ground on Google's search engine dominance, such a move was necessary for Google to stamp its authority onto the market. Google currently hold around 65% of the search engine market, with Bing trailing at 30%.

Google also launched Google Goggles for the Android platform. The tool allows users to upload images as part of a search, which are then compared to a database of other images in order to find relevant information.

"In the nature of computer vision we are at the beginning here and the technology is just getting underway," said Google's vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra, "this today marks the beginning of this visual journey. We are at the cusp of a an entire new computing era where devices will help us explore the world around us."

Via: BBC News

Twitter is, like, SO in right now. Don't believe us? Then just ask the folks over at Vogue Italia, who have dedicated a whole issue to the micro-blogging craze.

The December issue of the fashion bible has a cover montage made using TwitPics of famous models such as Christy Turlington, Natalia Voaianova and Gisele Bundchen, and includes a Twitter-styled editorial piece.

While the choice to go all out and devote a whole issue to Twitter is a tad unusual, Twitter does have its place in the fashion world. An ever growing platform for news, Twitter is becoming a great source for the fashion community to pick up on incoming trends and styles.

If you don't want to splash out on a netbook, or perhaps just want a simple introduction to the wonders of the web for a loved one, take a quick look at the Chumby widget box.

Connect it up to your Wi-Fi internet connection, and the Chumby will let you browse as many as 1500 internet widgets. It's a simple, intuitive device that makes use of a 3.2 inch touchscreen to let you browse content from Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and a whole host of other sites.

The Chumby also comes with built in 2W speakers, an accelerometer for gaming and two USB ports for accessing a limited range of media files.

You can pickup a Chumby from Firebox priced £139.99, or for more information on the widget box, click here.

In its annual round up of all things wordy, the Global Language Monitor has announced Twitter its word of the year for 2009.

It beats "Obama", "vampire" and timely entries such as "unemployed", "deficit" and "H1N1" to the top spot.

Top phrases are also calculated, and so it's unsurprising to see "King of Pop", the late Michael Jackson's moniker, heading that list.

Any suggestions for what could top the list next year? Tweet them to @techdigestnews or leave a message in the comments box below.

Via: Mashable

If you've ever suffered the crushing heartbreak of being cast asunder by an online pal, you're probably pretty familiar with the term "unfriend".

Well, it look as though even the internet-phobic are set to become accustomed to the phrase, as "unfriend" enters next year's edition of the New Oxford American dictionary.

The term, which originated on social-networking sites such as Facebook beat "sexting", "intexticated", "netbook", "funemployed", "hashtag", "paywall" and "greenstate" for the title of Word of the Year.

According to a senior lexicographer, the term has (we kid you not) "lex appeal"...

Via: Silicon Republic

Myspace have acquired music streaming service Imeem for an undisclosed sum that industry experts estimate is a figure in the region of $8 million.

The service pioneered ad-based music streaming, but the $8 million sum will not go far towards covering the $30 million dollar investment the company initially received.

As a result, up to half of Imeem's workforce now faces unemployment.

The Imeem buyout follows Myspace's acquisition of iLike, another troubled music streaming website. Both iLike and Imeem could not support licensing costs from the major labels on ad-based revenue alone, despite Imeem receiving heavily subsidised licenses from all four majors.

Myspace itself has fallen on hard times, recently conceeding defeat in the social-networking race to Facebook. How it plans on incorporating Imeem and iLike into its Myspace Music service, which the company now claim is its main focus, could decide whether Myspace sinks or swims.

Via: CNet

Business-orientated social-networking site LinkedIn has today announced its new partnership with Microsoft.

Coming hot on the heels of their partnership with Twitter, LinkedIn and Microsoft aim to join forces on Outlook 2010. The planned integration of LinkedIn will see Outlook 2010 users able to maintain their professional network through the program, keeping up to date with all the latest developments and activities via Outlook Social connector.

The business network currently has 50 million users worldwide.

It's an important move for LinkedIn, with integration to a native Windows program offering huge exposure to the network.

To find out more, check http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/11/18/linkedin-microsoft-outlook/

If you want to get your kids web-aware at an early age, why not introduce them to the KidZui web browser?

KidZui are launching version 5.0 of their browser today, which is set to help parents and children share and discover new experiences through the Internet.

Children can send KidZui approved content to friends and parents with the browser's new "KidConnect" functions. KidZui have trawled the web to find over 2 million websites, games, photographs and videos suitable for children, jointly approved by parents and teachers who already use the service.

ZuiTube has also recently been launched, acting like a kid-friendly YouTube lite.

Parents will also be able to connect with one another through in-built Facebook support, as well as receive weekly emails reporting on their children's web habits.

For more information, visit http://www.kidzui.com/

LinkedIn, the social networking site aimed mostly it seems at young professionals touting for work, has announced a partnership with microblogging platform Twitter. As a result of the deal, members will now be able to share status updates between their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

The integration of the two networks through the Tweets app allows members of LinkedIn to automatically share their updates on the professional network with their Twitter followers. They can also select Twitter status updates to share with their LinkedIn network by adding the #in hashtag to tweets on the microblogging site. LinkedIn members will be able to track and manage their Twitter feed from within their LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network with over 51 million members, including 11 million in Europe and almost 3 million in the UK. However it seems that many people who have LinkedIn pages spend very little time updating their status or their profile. LinkedIn will no doubt be hoping that the Twitter integration will make their service a little more dynamic. The new Twitter integration facility will be available in the next few days.

For more information check out the LinkedIn blog at: http://blog.linkedin.com/

Microsoft is set to launch an overhauled design for its MSN.com web portal.

Social media and customisation are high on the agenda, with users able to import streams from both their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Video content will also feature more predominantly, as the site gets rid of its cluttered look of old. Bing, Microsoft's search engine, will also be a more prominent feature of the site.

With so many changes set to feature, Microsoft are planning a staggered release of the new-look site. With MSN.com attracting huge numbers of visitors and the new design pushing Bing to the foreground, nailing an aesthetically pleasing design could swing the web-search wars Microsoft's way.

You can see a preview of the new site here. There's no news yet on when it will debut in the UK.

The Google and Bing search engines are set to feature results pooled from Twitter. The landmark licensing deals will represent the first major revenue stream for Twitter, a company notoriously tight-lipped about their business plans.

Bing and Google will now have access to the real-time "fire-hose" stream of micro-messages created by Twitter users around the globe. The real-time information will be invaluable to those looking for up-to-the-minute news, with Twitter now allowing the search robots full access to index its feed.

Links that are being re-tweeted often will likely move up the page rankings lists, and spikes in keywords too will affect results.

But will the search engines be able to ensure results are relevant, with so many thousands of messages being published every minute? Will the Twitter results be organised by publication time or the notoriety of the Twitter user?

While the answers to these questions pose the biggest problems for real-time search, a Beta version of Bing's integration of Twitter has already gone live. Test it for yourself (if you are in the US, the service isn't live in the UK at the moment) at www.bing.com/twitter .

In a bid to play catch up with Facebook and Twitter, the guys at MySpace - remember them - are launching a wave of new music products for the social networking site.

At the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco last night MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta announced several new MySpace Music services for users including a MySpace Music Videos product, MySpace Music Artist Dashboard and Apple/ iTunes integration.

MySpace Music Videos aggregates music video content from all of the company's major and independent label partners complete with video search to enables users to search by video and bring up artist profiles and songs. A new video player includes integrated "Buy" buttons so users can purchase artist's music through iTunes or Amazon.

MySpace's Music Artist Dashboard is a free, comprehensive data dashboard which provides global artists and labels with detailed analytics about their content within the MySpace community including charts, graphs, and snapshots. Data includes fan geography, song plays, profile views, friend count, and profile visitors.

Finally, MySpace Music users can now purchase and download music through iTunes in addition to Amazon MP3, and MP3 ringtones via Jamster.

Here's an interesting and simple idea - a bit like a Karaoke version of the Million Dollar home page guy meets those naff T-Mobile ads in Trafalgar Square.

Dell and MTV have joined together to produce Amplichoir. The idea is simple. You record yourself singing Lollipop (the music used in the Dell adverts of course) using a webcam and microphone and you can see and hear yourself by clicking on a thumbnail on the home screen.

Billed as the world's biggest karaoke, it's so far attracted around 500 people to participate. The incentive for people to take part - apart from the chance of singing a rubbishy, but very catchy, song out of tune? The chance to win VIP tickets to the European MTV Music Awards and afterparty in Berlin on November 5th.

The prize includes flights and accommodation for you and a friend, stretch limousine transfers to and from the airport and awards, champagne and flowers in your room when you arrive, dinner for two at Fischers Fritz (the only 2 Michelin Star restaurant in Berlin), a relaxing massage in the Regent Spa, make-up/hairdresser to get you looking good for the awards and after-party, and an EMA Award presented to you on the red carpet. So what are you waiting for? Time to dust off that miicrophone and croon with the best of them.

http://www.amplichoir.com/

A mixture of Twitter, a city travel guide and location game, FourSquare was released in London yesterday, to an enthusiastic buzz, some confusion and a few unimpressed "mehs". The hypey new iPhone and Android app has already been set up in about 30 cities around the world, mostly in the US. What exactly does FourSquare do and should you really be interested in it?
So what does it do?
Well, Foursquare lets you see little comments and tips that people have left pegged to locations in London. You too can leave these tips reader, call them geo-tagged tweets if you will. Like some kind of game, you get rewarded for leaving more tips by being given badges. You set up a minimal profile, and add friends and can also contact your friends over the service.

What do people say?
Things other people have said include:
@The Bricklayers Arms "try the cherry beer" via David S.
@Ray's Jazz Cafe "Order the apple cake and sit on the leather chair" via Alexandra S.
You see the tips and shouts that are located near you, then there's a map showing the location of the venues. People genuinely have quite interesting things to say, though some are dumb. Like mine.

Should I be excited by FourSquare?
Well, if you're city-living networker who likes talking about what you do, AND have an iPhone AND the push notification is switched on, then yes Foursquare could be quite fun. The game aspect is interesting, visit and review enough pubs and you get a badge, perhaps the Crunked badge; range widely and leave tips and reviews all over London and get the Explorer badget. Visit somewhere enough and become the FourSquare Mayor of a location. In theory, this will keep people coming back.

I don't have any friends.
Ha ha. No seriously. It's a problem for the early adopters isn't it. But this lets you import friends from your email contacts, and better, from your twitter account. Yes, you're giving them a lot of information - phone number, email and err, where you are, but hey that's how it goes these days.

Who is going to like it?
Well the twitter crowd will find it similar to Twitter, just pegged to locations. The social networking is made a bit more interesting by the possibility of real networking. Passers-by might find it useful as a restaurant guide/ tips hoard - is that cherry beer any good?

Can I just add: the language is cute: "Uh-oh we can't find the internets".

What will people complain about?
1. It's not going to be loads of fun till everyone's doing it.
2. Foursquare is yet another what-to-do-in-a-city app, there are a lot of these already, and it's not much use if you don't live in London.
3. With the tips and shouts, there's the old User-Generated-Content debate - it can be great if the users are articulate and interesting, not so much if they're not.
4.There are a few privacy issues: you have to give a phone number and email address and (of course) information about your location. Only your friends get this, but not great if you're worried about crazy stalkers.

Will enough outgoing, iPhone-owning, London-living people use it? Will it just languish on page three of their iPhone home screen? I don't know. I think location-based games are fun though and expect some more developments here.

Story originally appeared on Shiny Shiny

It must be tough being Ev Williams at the moment. So your start up Twitter has taken over the world and you have just landed a further $100 million to shore up its technology and infrastructure. But now it seems inevitable that you will have to plaster your beloved online baby with ads.

Well according to a survey from Los Angeles-based research group Interpret LLC, Ev really shouldn't have too many sleepless nights as it concludes that if ads are placed on Twitter its users would happily click away.

The report suggests that Twitter users are twice as likely to review or rate products, visit online visit company profiles and click on advertisements or sponsors than Facebook or MySpace users are.

Interpret said the data suggest that Twitter users uniquely demonstrate higher engagement with brands.

"Twitter has gone from digerati fad to industry force," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, in the report."Vendors ignoring Twitter users along with their reach and influence do so at their own peril."

There has already been a great deal of debate in the UK on how brands' reputations have suffered after they have taken a kicking at the hands of micro bloggers.

So far Twitter founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone have been very tight lipped about how the company intends to make money. There has been talk of special services for business users, though so far no concrete details have been given.

Were Twitter to include ads on the site it would certainly turn it into one of the most profitable sites on the web. The problem for Williams and Stone is how many users will be put off by the ads and migrate to rival micro blogging services.

More here

One of the big issues facing the music industry at the moment is how does it work out who are the most popular musicians around? Working on the premise that the download chart will go the way of CD and record sales charts (as fewer people pay for music), it is clear that we need a new chart that maybe counts online streaming, band's fan pages views and more.

Well, The Next Big Sound might just be the template for the charts of tomorrow. It is a very clever site that lets you find out how popular bands are online. It does this by collating plays, views, fans, comments, and other data for almost half a million artists across major online properties, including iTunes, Last.fm, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.

It might sound boring, but believe me it is hugely entertaining and completely addictive - just input your favorite bands and away you go. It is not only fascinating to see if Lady Gaga is bigger online than our very own Florence and The Machine, but you can also compare four bands at a time - which is great for old geezers comparing obscure indie 80s bands etc. It is also interesting to note that the bands that generate the most comments and posts aren't always the ones that get played the most.

The only annoying thing about it is that it doesn't seem to let you save results. Def check it out though.

So who is the most popular Briton on Twitter? Stephen Fry with his old pal Wossy close behind? Well no, there are some new, interesting and controversial names at the top now.

If you check the figures on Twitterholic you'll see Coldplay are the most popular micro blogging Brits by some distance. Last time I looked they were homing in on two million followers and had the likes of Miley Cyrus and Lance Armstrong in their sights. Coldplay's Twitter feed is an excellent example of how a brand can use social media to engage with their fans but as Coldplay are a band not an individual they don't count in my list.

Those rules also mean the next Briton on the list, Pete Cashmore, is out of the running too. The Scottish fella, who spends much of his time in San Francisco at the moment, is the brains behind Mashable, which these days is quite possibly the world's most influential tech blog.

So the first genuine Briton is none other than Lily Rose Allen who today will probably become the first Brit to pass 1.5 million followers on Twitter. She is currently in a mini spat with Chris Moyles, who in spite of thinking himself a big noise in the micro blogging world has only around 300,000 followers.

So Lily has top spot but who is bubbling under? Well the surprise package is singer songwriter Imogen Heap, who shot up over the summer while tweeting about her new album Ellipse. Unlike a lot of celebs she quite often follows back - and at the time of looking was logging 35,000 other tweeters as opposed to the 56 people that Lily Allen follows.

The other one to watch is a BBC presenter who has a Twitter following that Moyles can only dream about.

Richard P Bacon's rise to the top of Twitter tree hasn't been as meteoric as say Wossy, but he is steadily on his way to becoming the most popular Briton on twitter.

Self proclaimed minor celebrity Bacon hosts Radio Five Live's late night programme where for the last nine months he has mercilessly plugged Twitter and his own feed. To his credit Bacon was one of the first BBC radio presenters to realise that Tweeting is a fantastic way of interacting with an audience. So he will often use his feed to ask his listeners questions, plug the guests on the show and encourage fellow tweeters to express their opinions.

Bacon recently passed the one million followers mark, which ironically means that he now has more followers than listeners to his show. He is also well clear of other BBC celebs like Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross.

There's an interesting question mark over who actually owns Bacon's Twitter feed. In amassing over a million followers Bacon has become very influential on Twitter and is a gatekeeper to a huge and very receptive audience. Now just suppose he were to leave the BBC, he could be in a position to endorse brands etc on his feed for which he could potentially charge an awful lot of money. There has been a lot of noise recently about how much a Twitter follower is worth and so far no one has come up with a convincing formula. However an audience that large, that engaged and that accessible is a an ad person's dream.

Yet we shouldn't forget that the main reason why Bacon'sTwitter feed is so popular is that he has plugged it so relentlessly on his show. Also that Twitter is a privately owned company which will one day make its owners a lot of money. Further I have never ever heard Bacon say that 'along with Twitter other micro blogging services are available.' Isn't that BBC policy?

So do we the licence payers really own that feed, or does it belong to Richard Bacon? And what would happen to the BBC endorsing Twitter if suddenly the micro blogging service started peppering its pages with contextual advertising? If Twitter continues to grow these are questions that will soon need an answer.

One of the big hits of 2009 as far as blogging is concerned has been Posterous. The easy peasy platform has won over both hardcore bloggers and newbies with its mix of a genius bookmarklet - that makes grabbing content from any web page a cinch - and the option of creating a post by email.

There are however several areas where Posterous is lagging behind its rivals and one of these was the ability to customise a blog layout. Up until last week every Posterous blog had the same layout and colour scheme. Well now Posterous users can add their banners, choose from different types of layout, adopt a theme and even create their own themes via HTML and CSS.

There are several other areas where Posterous needs to innovate to get ahead of its rivals, but for me at least it remains my favourite blogging platform.

Incidentally Posterous' rivals haven't been standing still. Typepad, which has been around for donkeys, recently added Posterous type features (the bookmarklet and posting by email) and we'll look at this and see how it compares with Posterous and its rival Tumblr later this week.

So there's no Beatles on iTunes and the Fab Four have so far resisted the lure of Spotify, which makes we7's announcement this morning that it actually has some Beatles tunes on its site a bit of a coup. According to Music Ally streaming/download start up has hatched a deal with Sir Paul McCartney to include his live versions of a load of Beatles classic. So while there's no Strawberry Fields or any other John classics, we7 users can stream Hey Jude, Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday and even embed them on other sites too

"The Beatles are everywhere today with the release of their newly remastered work and the launch of Beatles Rock Band - but to date, their catalogue has not been made available through any legal online music services," says CEO Steve Purdham. "we7 listens to what our users want and as a result, we're giving them the chance to listen to the best line up of classic Beatles tracks sung by Sir Paul himself. You just need to hit the play button!"