A near crisis between Time Warner and Viacom was avoided in the last few hours of 2008. According to the Financial Times, Viacom, an American Media giant which owns such Television networks as CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, and Comedy Central had been demanding higher fees from TW, an American cable provider for their programming. Viacom initiated the scuffle in demanding that Time Warner pay more for the channels that Viacom provided, citing declining advertising revenues as the main reason for these cost increases. Viacom threatened to cut off the transmission of their channels to time warner, leaving Time Warner subscribers in the dark, and without the ability to watch shows like South Park, Survivor, and The Late Show. Time warner initially dismissed the rate increases, countering with a threat to educate consumers how to watch shows over the internet and therefore cheating Viacom out of even more ad revenue. But thankfully an agreement was reached in the final hours of 2008, and we can all have a sigh of relief knowing that Time Warner Subscribers will be able to watch the semi- entertaining shows provided by Viacom. _______________________________________________________________________________ E Commerce declined this year with the rest of the economy as expected this holiday season. According to arstechnia, an economic report released by comScore stated that total online spending in 2008 was roughly 25.54 billion dollars, down three percent from last year. Although the declines among online retailers were not as drastic as the declines in brick and morter stores, the results were suprising considering that many analysts thought that ecommerce was relatively immune to economic declines. _______________________________________________________________________________ Microsoft zunes worldwide stopped working just after midnight December 31, 2008. According to The Wall Street Journal, all first gen 30 GB zunes Suffered a catastrophic failure coming in to the new year, by which all Microsoft zunes locked up and would not function. Microsoft was quick to respond with a statement, advising consumers to let their Zunes battery drain and to wait for a day before trying to restart their MP3 Player. Later, Microsoft released a statement saying that the glitch was most likely caused by a time bug having to do with the fact that 2008 was indeed a leap year. Despite the poor economy, music sales continued to grow in 2008. According to arstechnia, music sales in 2008 grew a reasonable 10.5 percent, but down from a sales growth amount of around 14 percent last year. The NPD Survey that analyzes yearly sales numbers for the music industry also pointed out the fact that physical CD purchases in 2008 continued to decline, as the popularity of online music stores such as Apples Itunes increased. One interesting and rather suprising tidbit of information revealed in the NPD Survey was that the sale of Vinyl records increased by a staggering 89 percent. Seems as though baby boomers still like the sound of those old records, and want even more. _______________________________________________________________________________ The first commercial Space Port has the go ahead to be built in New Mexico. According to arstechnia, The group behind the Spaceport America Project got the go ahead from the New Mexico state government to build the historic spaceport after the group signed a 20 year lease with Virgin Galactic, a private company that gives people with several thousand extra dollars to spend a brief tour of orbital space. The new spaceport will serve as the origin and destination for future flights of Virgins new spaceship2. _______________________________________________________________________________ Toyota Motors may be on the way to developing a fully- solar powered automobile. According to Daily Tech, the Japanese auto maker is looking to add to Its line of efficient vehicles by adding a fully solar powered car to its lineup. The declining eco
