Seattle – iLike.com on Wednesday introduced its social music discovery service for Apple's iTunes. The iLike Sidebar for iTunes helps users explore the libraries of their friends, while the iLike website gives users a profile of their music listening habits, and provides personalized recommendations of free MP3 downloads from GarageBand.com, the company's other website. Seattle-based iLike said it anticipates supporting other media players in the future. http://tinyurl.com/y2oocy http://www.garageband.com http://www.ilike.com 

Cupertino, Calif. - Apple has confirmed that a malicious Windows-based code has shipped on a number of its Video iPods. The RavMonE.exe worm is not rated a serious threat, but can lower the security settings on Windows computers. Apple said the problem affects less than 1% of video iPods shipped after Sept. 12, 2006, and it has so far seen less than 25 reports concerning the problem. The company added that iPod nano and shuffle [...].

San Francisco, CA – Apple Computer does not fear competition from Microsoft's new Zune music player, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in an interview in this week’s edition of Newsweek. He refers to demonstrations that he has seen of Zune’s interface which he viewed as complicated and not user friendly enough. Jobs especially thinks this when it comes to sharing music wirelessly between Zune users, a feature that has been mentioned as one of Zune’s main competitive advantages over the [...].

Washington – Washington-based start-up Qloud (pronounced "cloud") on Wednesday announced the launch of a public beta test of its "people-powered music search service" and plug-in for Apple's iTunes music player. The search service is powered by tags generated by users on individual songs in their iTunes music libraries. Tags can be provided by music preference, demographics, and category — such as "workout," allowing users to search, for example, for the songs most tagged "workout" [...].

Arlington, Va. – PBS announced on Tuesday that it has added episodes of popular PBS prime-time and children's programming to Apple's iTunes Store. Episodes of "Antiques Roadshow," "Nova," "Now," "Scientific American Frontiers," "Arthur," "Cyberchase" and "Fetch" will be available for $1.99 each.http://tinyurl.com/pahnk http://www.pns.org

From Digital Music Forum West 2006: Soundflavor, a developer of digital music search and recommendation technologies, introduced on Wednesday a free companion application for Apple's iTunes that makes recommendations from a user's own music library – and from outside music stores – when they play a song or playlist. DMW sat down with Steve Skrzyniarz, Co-Founder and CEO of Soundflavor, and asked him five quick questions.

DMW: What is your business model?Skrzyniarz: We have several. We license our software (search technology [...].

Oslo, Norway - Representatives from Apple Computer met with consumer regulators in Norway on Monday, to discuss several Nordic countries' legal objections to Apple's iTunes Store, the Associated Press reported. Objections from consumer groups from Finland, Norway and Sweden criticize Apple's tying songs downloaded from its iTunes Store to its iTunes player; Apple's contention that British law applies to iTunes in their countries; and contract terms that allow Apple to change terms of the [...].