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"Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s release Wednesday of its Outlook Social Connector beta is another indication of how social networking has infiltrated not only the online world, but also enterprise software. The Outlook Social Connector, a new feature in Office 2010, blends social networking updates into the business functionality of the software. With Outlook Social Connector, a user can view an e-mail message and social networking activities from the same sender in the same window pane. For now, though, it doesn't allow posting updates back onto LinkedIn or other social-networking sites directly from the inbox."

"RealNetworks Inc. said it will pay $4.5 million and drop its appeal of a court order barring sales of its DVD-copying software to settle a lawsuit by Walt Disney Co. and other Hollywood movie studios claiming the technology violates copyright-protection laws. RealNetworks also will refund about 2,700 customers who bought RealDVD, a $30 software program that allows users to save one backup copy of a movie to a computer hard drive."

RealNetworks has agreed to kill its DVD-copying software and pay $4.5 million in settling a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by Hollywood studios. As part of the settlement announced Wednesday, the provider of online entertainment services also agreed to drop its appeal of a San Francisco federal court ruling that barred RealNetworks from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of the studios' copyrighted content. The 2008 lawsuit filed by Viacom and the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that RealDVD illegally circumvented the anti-piracy technology embedded in DVDs. The DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses Hollywood-sanctioned copyright-protection technology, joined the suit later, claiming RealNetworks was also in violation of its DVD CCA license.

Big Daddy did the heavy lifting, but it wasn't enough to pull the industry out of its ongoing slump. Videogame software sales dropped 15% and hardware sales fell 20% in February, according to the latest report from market research firm NPD Group.

In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) removed an online ratings summary of the content in Dead or Alive: Paradise for PSP from its website today in response to inquiries as to the appropriateness of the summary.

Video game software sales across the world's three largest markets--the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom--fell 8 percent in 2009, according to a joint report issued Wednesday by a consortium of industry analyst firms.

The Toronto-based startup Thoora promises to gauge how well individual news stories are doing by analyzing and calibrating real-time data from blogs, mainstream news sources and Twitter. Thoora's software uses more than 100 attributes to determine not only the most popular content but also the highest quality, using measures such grammar and spelling and the authority of sites that link to the content.

Google has been awarded a patent that describes a software method for selectively restricting the availability of content on the basis of access privileges and geographical location. On the surface, it may look like this patent covers techniques for censoring politically sensitive content in specific countries-a practice that Google has recently spoken out against in its ongoing feud with China. A closer look at the patent's claims, however, shows that it has little to do with censorship and may actually relate to the company's controversial book scanning initiative.

Yet another Sony strategy to link hardware and software. Describes the problems that plague Sony's execution of such.

Blog post about a media center that may forever change the way we consume media. "Boxee is a media center for the age of broadband and social networking. It doesn't just play media stored on your computer; it indexes hundreds (possibly thousands) of streaming videos from, amongst others: ABC, NBC, Comedy Central, and (thanks to a little browser-based trickery) Hulu. It's also a platform for widgets and apps that can pull in additional content from services like Pandora, Netflix, and MLB.TV. Plus, like any piece of software worth its digital weight in bytes, Boxee integrates with social networks like Twitter and Facebook for sharing what your watching with others."

"It looks like 99 cents could become the new $1.99 for TV shows on iTunes. A new report puts Apple in talks with CBS about discounting at least a portion of the network's TV shows sold on iTunes to 99 cents, down from the standard $1.99 price point. If true, the move would confirm a previous Financial Times report which asserted that Apple's content partners are considering cutting iTunes TV shows in half when the iPad is officially released come this March."

"DataSphere is a Software as a Service (SaaS) Web technology and hyperlocal ad sales company focused on generating online profits for media companies. "

Google teams up with Sony and others to push television beyond the TV set and computer. Google TV aims to be on google operating systems by summer 2010, and challenges Apple.