Internet services

The number-crunchers at Apple aren't counting just profits these days. Less than two months after it announced three billion applications had been downloaded from its App Store, the computer giant boasted Thursday that its iTunes Store has sold its 10 billionth song.

The lucky music fan who won Apple's download contest -- which for months enticed iTunes users with a $10,000 gift card -- was identified as Louie Sulcer, who, perhaps appropriately, comes from a place called Woodstock (albeit in Virginia, not New York.) Apple didn't release his age or occupation.

Salesforce.com on Thursday announced a private beta program for an enterprise collaboration platform. Dubbed Salesforce Chatter, 100 companies around the world are testing the platform that offers anywhere, anytime access to Chatter's real-time feeds via BlackBerry or iPhone smartphones.

Chatter aims to help companies understand everything going on in their organization and avoid missing critical information. Chatter is taking direct aim at legacy software such as SharePoint and Lotus Notes with a design that looks and feels like popular consumer social-networking sites.

Palm may be complaining about an iTunes Store lockout, but music fans in Mexico are enjoying new access to Apple's popular digital-media store. On Tuesday Apple officially launched the iTunes Store in Mexico with a large selection of Mexican and international music from every major record label and hundreds of independent labels.

At launch, iTunes.com/mexico offers a catalog of millions of songs from popular Mexican artists such as Paulina Rubio, Vicente Fernández, and Zoé and a wide range of international artists, including Shakira, Lady Gaga, and Green Day.

Days before a deadline abruptly imposed by China, computer makers are scrambling to comply with an order to supply Web-filtering software with PCs and worrying what it might do to their reputations.

Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Inc. and Taiwan's Acer Inc. -- the top three global producers -- are asking regulators for details of the order that takes effect July 1 to provide the "Green Dam Youth Escort" software with every laptop and desktop PC sold in China.

A report from the Pew Research Center indicates that the adoption of broadband services in the United States appears to have been largely unaffected by the economic downturn.

The research firm reports that 63 percent of the adult American respondents it surveyed in April had broadband Internet connections at home, versus just 55 percent 12 months earlier. Only seven percent of American Internet users said they still use dial-up connections -- down from 14 percent two years ago.

Microsoft's new "decision engine" Bing may help users get through clutter on the Internet to make better decisions, but officials in China have made it clear that the software behemoth has failed at one decision: to make snippets of sexually explicit material available in search results.

Bing includes a small video-preview feature called smart motion preview, which plays videos when a user navigates over it. The feature, while convenient for some, has landed Microsoft in hot water with some child-advocacy groups, including Virginia-based Enough is Enough.

A House committee is reopening its investigation of Internet services that let computer users distribute music and movies online amid reports the same software was exploited to gain unauthorized access to government and private data.

When Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, California, for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dormitory room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.

That staggering growth rate -- doubling in size in just eight months -- suggests that Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web's dominant social ecosystem and an essential personal and business networking tool in much of the wired world.

iTunes movies in high-definition. That's the word from Apple, which announced Thursday that customers of the popular online iTunes Store can now rent or buy movies in HD for a Mac, a PC, or a TV set with Apple TV.

The HD movies include such new releases as Quantum of Solace and Twilight. Prices are $19.99 for a download purchase and $4.99 as a rental within 30 days from release.

HD Evolution on iTunes

Each HD movie also comes in a standard-definition version for watching on an iPhone or an iPod with video. iTunes 8.1 or later is needed for downloading.

From Edge: