Wow… this could be used PC World - Red Hat Inc. said Tuesday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the business of MetaMatrix Inc., a provider of data management and integration software. This is worth your time also how Can New Satellite Radio Merger Analysis Be ‘Independent’ When The NAB Paid For It Research firm, The Carmel Group, has come out with a new report that supposedly tries to show why having XM and Sirius merge would be bad for consumers. The group also put out a similar report back when DirecTV and EchoStar tried to merge — and some credit that report with killing off that merger. What the report apparently tries to highlight is that as Sirius and XM competed with each other, they continually tried to one-up each other with new features and services — thus suggesting that competition between the two was strong. Now, obviously, we feel that competition like this does drive innovation, but it brushes aside the fact that competition also comes from terrestrial radio, iPods and other forms of entertainment. The folks over at Orbitcast point out that they could just as easily create a report highlighting how terrestrial radio has changed as it competes with satellite radio as well. Still, the silliest thing about this “research” is that the press is reporting that this is an “independent” report — despite being funded by the NAB. We’ve already covered some of the dirty tricks the NAB is pulling in trying to prevent the merger, but to call a report that they funded “independent” isn’t exactly realistic. The group is squarely against the merger, though the stronger they come out against the merger, the weaker their argument is. If they really believe that satellite radio doesn’t compete with terrestrial radio (who the NAB represents), then why are they so concerned about the merger? If it would really lead to higher prices for consumers and less service, wouldn’t that be a good thing for terrestrial radio? It would mean that more people would stick with good old fashioned terrestrial radio rather than bailing for satellite radio.Did you know that Satellite means an urban or suburban community located near a big city. We could also look at these things no, YouTube Isn’t Exploiting Vloggers An article in BusinessWeek goes over how hard it is for people to make money using YouTube and other video-sharing sites. It’s got a weird tone, as if it’s some great tragedy that vloggers have a hard time earning a living from making web videos, and even carries a whiff of the implication that YouTube and its ilk are exploiting these hard-working digerati. The piece goes through some of the revenue-sharing plans from YouTube, Revver and other sites, and says that many vloggers and video producers would rather run everything through their own site so they can grab all the revenues. But this exploitation angle largely ignores the benefits that using a video-sharing site brings. It notes the aggregation aspect, as well as their ability to get large ad deals, but it ignores the most obvious benefit: they pay the bandwidth bill. By using something like YouTube, producers don’t have to pay to host and serve their videos, while the various platforms also allow videos to be more easily shared and embedded in web pages, something that helps them become more popular. While the biggest video producers might be able to make more money by trying to hang on to their own traffic, directly selling their own ads and paying for their own bandwidth, it’s rather unlikely that most of them will be able to thrive on their own. Furthermore, perhaps they’re missing the point by focusing so much on ads, rather than by viewing their videos as promotional materials (with the ability to generate some ad revenues on the side) for other paid products or services. wow… this is such a great idea