links for 2009-08-03

Tinchy Stryder has claimed that he removed Calvin Harris from Twitter before the Scottish dance star deleted him.

As Facebook continues its major push toward greater user openness (a la Twitter) this year, two product priorities are leading the way. First, Facebook’s new privacy controls will make it easier for Facebook users to share content publicly with everyone. Second, Facebook’s new real time search engine is designed to make it easier to find content your friends – or any Facebook users – have shared.

Steve Jobs is the anti-Internet. The Internet is utilitarian, it works, but it's ugly. Jobs's stuff is so beautiful that when taken to its logical conclusion, and he's almost there now, it's so dazzling, so beautiful that you fail to see that it is also useless.

When the Rock Band Network — essentially an App Store for musicians who want to upload and sell Rock Band-playable versions of their songs — opens for business later this year, it has the potential to transform the music industry by giving musicians large and small a distribution platform on one of the few online services that’s managed to successfully monetize music downloads. If, that is, the Network can make their songs easy to find and enjoyable to play.