Roundup: YouTube must pay songwriters, Queen Rania loves Twitter, and more

May 21, 2009 | Anthony Ha | Comments |

Here’s the latest action:

YouTube ordered to pay $1.6M to US songwriters — The fees are only temporary as YouTube and the ASCAP songwriters association go to court to reach a more long-term settlement.

Queen Rania of Jordan believes Twitter can change the world — TechCrunch has a full interview.

Project Playlist buys Total Music — However, Total Music still hasn’t resolved its lawsuits from Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group.

Air-filled battery could generate 10 times more power — The idea is still being examined by university researchers.

Google Street View threatened in Germany for privacy violations — A data protection official said Google would face “unspecified sanctions” if it does not comply with the country’s privacy laws.
Are you really who you say you are? — Equifax is developing a service to prove that you are.

Microsoft hit with $200M patent judgment – A Texas judge said XML tagging features in Microsoft Word infringed on a patent from Toronto-based company i4i.

Nvidia documents acknowledge ongoing laptop chip/package problem — Failure rates are not abnormal, but some laptops are still affected by the problem.

Survey: 26 percent admit to texting while driving — You people are so irresponsible.

Yahoo wants to buy a social network — That’s not a rumor, that’s straight from Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh.

Does Twitter hate advertising? — No.

Former MySpace execs get funding for new venture — The company hasn’t even announced its name yet, but there are a few details available.

Pandora gets a pay product and a desktop application with Pandora One — The music startup will charge $37-a-year for the service.

Gmail to get automatic message translation — What could go wrong?

Microsoft to debut Kumo search service at the All Things Digital conference — I’m sure it will be awesome.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.