Simon & Schuster

The United States has defeated China in a wide-ranging ruling at the World Trade Organization that could provide massive market opportunities for American makers of everything from CDs and DVDs to music downloads and books.

The verdict Wednesday finds definitively against China for forcing American media producers to route their business in China through Chinese state-owned companies. It could also set a larger precedent for others such as U.S. automakers claiming to be hampered by cumbersome distribution rules in the communist country.

With new competition emerging in the digital marketplace, Amazon.com on Wednesday slashed the price of its Kindle device by $60. The popular e-book reader now retails for $299.

Amazon didn't issue an official statement, but the price listed on its Web site is 17 percent lower than the original retail price. The reduction may be a combined response to the economic recession and the fact that new players are coming to the e-book market.

Microsoft announced Wednesday that the 2008 version of SQL Server, its data-management and business-intelligence platform, has been released to manufacturing.

The company said new capabilities have been added, such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis. Microsoft is also touting its support for aggregation, summarization, search engines, dashboards, transactions across distributed data sources, and long-running transactions.

Applications in Development

Amazon and Simon & Schuster have inked a deal to bring 5,000 new titles to the Kindle e-book reader this year. Amazon's Kindle is a portable e-book reader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a high-resolution electronic paper.

Simon & Schuster's latest e-book initiative will more than double the number of the publisher's titles currently available on Kindle. Kindle customers will be able to discover, buy and read popular books such as Stephen R. Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.