The retailer appears to be trying to standardize at least some of the software that electronics makers such as LG, Samsung and Sony install on their devices to let consumers download movies, television shows and other content. Best Buy had already been using CinemaNow for online video downloads.

CinemaNow competes with Apple's iTunes and, to a lesser extent, Netflix's and Amazon's Unbox online download services.

Apple in particular represents a growing threat to Hollywood and retailers because it controls which movies and other software are funneled to its hardware, including computers, the Apple TV set-top box, iPods and iPhones. Cupertino (Calif.)-based Apple also has its own stores in which to sell products. As its devices grow in popularity, that king-making role is causing growing unease among Apple's rivals.

When the hardware is in place, customers can buy or rent movies and television shows from CinemaNow and watch the same piece of content on any device that offers the service. Sonic and Best Buy said they are working with the studios to offer more content for download on the same day that physical media is released to DVD rental services such as Netflix and Redbox.

Best Buy will be taking a stake in Sonic as part of the pact. CinemaNow makes its money with a one-time fee from device-makers who adds its service, and it takes a cut of every video purchase.

Although the book is based on extensive interviews with Paulson, Paulson is releasing a statement that disses the book, calling it a disappointment. The statement goes on:

"It contains numerous inaccuracies and fails to capture the essence of the credit bubble. The writing style is indicative of a gossip tabloid rather than respected financial journalism. Unfortunately, the opportunity to create a meaningful documentation of an important time in financial history was lost."

Now, it is not totally surprising that the subject of a book would be disappointed. That is the nature of biography writing. But Paulson's criticism seems to run deeper, and is even more surprising given that the book is largely laudatory to Paulson, describing how a "renegade" made financial history.

My main problem is that Paulson does not specify the "numerous inaccuracies." If he is serious about this criticism, he should detail the instances so the writer has a chance to defend his work. Providing further details would also help readers judge whether the alleged inaccuracies are minor mistakes or major lapses in reporting or judgement.

As for the gossip tabloid style, that claim seems to be a bit overstated. I have already read the first 100 pages of the book, and if that is any indication of the tone of the rest of the story, it does not read like a trashy tabloid, though there are a few parts where Zuckerman throws in unnecessary details about the personal problems of some characters to spice up the tale. For example, Zuckerman devotes a substantial amount of space chronicling the marital problems of one analyst who worked for Paulson, which didn't add much to the story.

It will be interesting to see how the publisher and the author react to Paulson's statement. They can't be entirely happy about it.

-- Spencer Ante also publishes the Creative Capital blog. Click here to see more.

"People want choice," Lees said, defending Windows Mobile against my assertion that the success of both Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry was due to the fact that they are vertically integrated products, controlled from top to bottom by a single company. "Part of what we bring is the ability to have a stylus, a keyboard, or a touchscreen."

The introduction of version 2.0 of Google's Android software on the Motorola/Verizon Droid this week raises the possibility that Lees may be philosophically correct, but he may be riding the wrong horse. The arrival of a much more mature Android means we are going to see a fair fight for the future of smartphones between the models of vertical integration and open platforms.

Although the Droid handset itself is a very nice piece of hardware, the real news here is Google's Android 2.0 software. This major overhaul of the operating system and basic applications has taken Android from an interesting wannabe to a top-tier contender in the mobile software market. And the inclusion of Google Maps Navigation, with its free real-time, turn-by-turn driving instructions turns the nav business on its head.

The coming of age of Android could be very bad news for the weaker competitors in the smartphone business. Droid is no iPhone killer--the idea is silly--but it is a viable competitor. At worst, Apple's penetration into the market will grow a bit more slowly.

For the story six years ago, I asked Garmin co-founder and CEO Min Kao about the competitive threat or business opportunity he saw from GPS-enabled wireless phones. Phones, he said, were the kind of "commodity market we want to avoid." Motorola and Nokia and other phone companies were just starting to embed GPS chipsets on phones in 2003, and and some phones could already give you turn-by-turn directions, though nothing as good as what you could get from a Garmin navigation system mounted on the dashboard of a car. Garmin was at the time starting to push the iQue 3600, a Palm OS-based PDA (remember those?) that had all the capabilities of one of its navigation systems. As you can see, it didn't sell terribly well and has long since been discontinued.

Fast forward four years to late 2007, when I wrote this story for BusinessWeek on how wireless phone companies were teaming with services like Networks in Motion and TeleNav to provide their own wireless navigation services on their phones.

Now Garmin is trying its hand at the smart phone business. The results, are, as Steve Wildstrom wrote recently, not terribly impressive. Meanwhile Garmin's biggest rival TomTom -- a company that was not on my radar screen until 2006 -- has turned Apple's iPhone into a powerful in-car navigation device.

Garmin was the up-and-coming navigation company in 2003, and it got that way very quickly. At that time it had been only three years since President Clinton had ordered a permanent end to the policy of Selective Availability on the Global Positioning System constellation of satellites. This policy, which had been in force since the launch of the system, required that civilian GPS signals be made deliberately inaccurate so that they couldn't be used against US forces on the battlefield. While the civilian signal was good enough for hiking and hunting, it wasn't accurate enough to provide turn-by-turn directions in a car.

As soon as that policy change made civilian signals more accurate, an industry sprung up around in-car navigation. Automakers started building sophisticated nav systems into dashboards, and that companies like Garmin and TomTom, Magellan, and others sought to compete in the aftermarket, and even jockeyed for the attention of Detroit. Garmin and TomTom are the two biggest players, and every holiday season compete like crazy in the retail business.

But the rate of creative destruction of business models in the navigation business has been nothing short of shocking, even for the fast-moving tech industry in general. Garmin and TomTom made paper maps all but obsolete with their devices. Wireless carrier-based services quickly rose after that to challenge them. And now, both are being challenged by Google and its free phone-based offering. This has all happened in less than a decade.

Earlier this month, market research firm iSuppli noted that sales of personal navigation devices -- those Garmin and TomTom dashboard devices -- had entered a period of "slowing growth," and that sales may actually decline this year, and remain flat after that. And in September, iSuppli projected that navigation-ready smart phones will surpass PNDs by 2014, a ratio of more than 2 to 1. ABI Research said earlier this year that GPS will be included in 9 out of 10 handsets within five years.

One reason for these relatively quick turns of fate is the relatively low barrier to entry in the navigation business. The civilian GPS signal is provided to the entire world free of charge, courtesy of the US taxpayer to the tune of about a billion dollars a year. GPS chipsets that can be built into phones, or frankly any other device for that matter, have been coming down price for years. If you want to build a better navigation device, there's not much to stop you. You'll also need a source of mapping data, and for that there is Navteq, now owned by Nokia, and TeleAtlas, now owned by TomTom.

There is certainly a compelling case to be made that if free is the default price for navigation on a smart phone, as it appears it will be with this new Google service, then this is bad news for the Garmins, TomToms, and TeleNavs of the world. The 7-dollar and change drop in Garmin's stock price over the last two days certainly reflects that.

But will the Google service be as good? Garmin and TomTom have a lot of practice in providing directions, and have honed their skills over the years, and build devices that are highly reliable and accurate, and which don't rely on a cellular data signal at all. That may turn out to be a key marketing point for the PND industry. When you're driving in the middle of nowhere and outside of the range of a cellular signal, the last thing you want to worry about is getting lost. Either way, I'll be interested to compare Google's service side-by-side with a dedicated PND and see which is better.

Zong, the mobile payments startup the specializes in selling virtual goods on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as well as online gaming sites like Gaia Online has today kicked it up a notch, with a service called Zong+.

The idea is to link your cell phone number to a credit or debit card, and then make payments buy giving your phone number. So if you want to buy a cool outfit for your avatar in the virtual world IMVU, you can do it more easily by just using your phone number and instead of seeing the charge on your wireless phone bill, see it on your debit card instead. The point, the company says is to make it easier for consumers to make the purchase.

I talked to Zong founder and CEO David Marcus and he told me that merchants like the new approach because it reduces their transactions fees, which in turn expands the markets that Zong can go after. Also, by making the transactions simple to executive, conversion rates go up: People who are looking at virtual goods, but not buying, tend to buy more readily.

It may sound like small potatoes, but Zong has processed payments for 10 million users. Compare that to the 50 million accounts on eBay's payment service PayPal. Additionally Zong and has relationships with more than 100 wireless carriers around the world.

And virtual goods is no market to disregard. As my colleague Rob Hof reported last year Gaia Online was doing up to $1 million a month in revenues selling virtual clothes and jewelry and accessories for its users' avatars at prices of a few pennies to a $10 apiece.

How's it work? After you link your card to your phone number Zong sends a unique PIN code to your phone via a text message for each transaction. That provides the security. If you try to buy something using someone else's phone number they see a text message with a PIN code that tells them someone is trying to use their account. And surprisingly, adding a phone number alongside a payment card number increases the security because the person trying to pay is offering two forms of authentication instead of one.

Personally I don't buy many virtual goods, and so I don't see myself using Zong yet. But give me chance to use my phone number to buy real-world goods from a merchant like Amazon without having to go through all the contortions of digging out my credit card, entering all the updated information and the little three-digit code on the back, and I just might spend more online generally. And why not make pay-by-phone-number available in traditional retail stores? I could walk into Best Buy, pick out a plasma screen TV, give my phone number and address to a sale associate, and walk out with a delivery appointment. I suspect something like this has got to be part of Zong's long-term plan.

Until now, Google licensed map data from a variety of sources including Tele Atlas, INEGI, MapLink, and Europa Technologies. But these days, if you look at a U.S. map on Google, the only copyright notice you are likely to see is Google's. In the course of driving the country collection pictures for Google Street View, Google has built up its own database of maps as well as the data needed for turn-by-turn driving instructions.

Google's possession of its own map data and its willingness to make it available free, though sometimes sprinkled with ads, could be very bad news for companies that have spent a fortune building and maintaining map information databases. Suddenly, two of last year's big deals, Nokia's $8.1 billion acquisition of Navteq and TomTom's $4.3 billion purchase of Tele Atlas, look like they may not have been among the swiftest of corporate M&A moves.

Sure, the warm reception that the new Android-based smartphone is receiving is a big win for all of the parties involved: Verizon Wireless, Motorola and Android-maker Google. (Personally, I was impressed by the phone, and thought it represented a nice package of features, design and functionality.)

And the stock market seemed to agree. Today, Verizon's stock was up nearly 3% and Motorola's stock was up 1%, while the Nasdaq tanked nearly 3%. Google fell about 1.5%. And Apple took a hit, falling 2.5%.

But I'd venture to say that Motorola was the big winner, if only because the company was in such desperate need of a win. After all, the cell phone biz is a hits-based business. A best-selling product can reverse a company's fortunes quickly, as Motorola has seen first with its popular StarTAC, and then with the Razr line of devices.

Since Motorola has bet the farm on Android, technologists and investors would have lost a whole lot more confidence in the company's ability to manage a turnaround if it blew this launch. There was so much at stake with Droid that they had to nail it, or come close to nailing it.

At today's unveiling at the W Hotel in New York City, Verizon Wireless Chief Marketing Officer John Stratton went out of his way to pump up the fallen icon. "This is a new Motorola," said Stratton. "We took a chance, some would say a big risk at this early stage in their turnaround. But I am delighted at the level and quality of work. We will continue to work with Motorola."

Motorola co-chief executive Sanjay Jha, who seemed nervous at first, grew more comfortable as the event wore on and the media got their hands on the devices. Next year, Jha said Motorola would release at least 20 Android-based handsets. The strategy, he said, is to offer more smartphones for the lower end of the market, as well as selling more devices around the world. "Android is evolving faster than any other platform," said Jha.

For now, though, Jha was all about the Droid, claiming it was the world's best current smartphone.

Stratton agreed wit Jha's assessment, arguing that the Droid could "compete head to head" with the Apple iPhone. But he acknowledged that consumers would be the ultimate judge. "The market will tell us how well we did," said Stratton.

- Spencer Ante also publishes the Creative Capital blog. Click here to read more.

In particular, that's likely to be Verizon's much-anticipated new Droid phone that was introduced this morning. Mobile expert Greg Sterling of Opus Research, who like me attended a pre-briefing yesterday at Google, notes that the service could give Verizon at least temporary bragging rights over the iPhone, advantages it has been touting in recent in-Steve-Jobs'-face ads on the Droid. "It's going to be a strong competitive differentiator in the short term," says Sterling, who's impressed by the navigation service.

In fact, the service offers bells and whistles beyond those of dedicated navigation devices, such as integration with Google's Street View, satellite imagery, and the ability to search destinations by name rather than address. For that reason, TomTom, Garmin, and the rest of the dedicated GPS navigation crew have even more reason to worry than Apple.

Google didn't rule out offering the service on the iPhone and said it's working with Apple but didn't provide a time frame or any promise that a similar service for the iPhone would be forthcoming. Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering for mobile and developer, said the software has "stringent" hardware requirements.

Anyway, here are the features of Maps Navigation, from Google's press information site (Google's blog post is also up now):

The increased developer hustle and bustle around Android comes as no surprise: In November, Verizon Wireless is expected to launch its first Android phone from Motorola, and the carrier has already started a major marketing blitz around the device. Android-based phones from other makers, like HTC, are selling well. About 20 Android-based devices are expected to come out this year, and 30 more in 2010, according to analysts. As more Android phones get into users' hands, more people will start using these devices to download apps from the Android Market, which currently features more than 10,000 applications. Naturally, developers want to get in on the game.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Android Market catches up to the Apple App Store, which currently offers more than 85,000 apps, in the number of applications it carries in the next year or two. Consider: By 2012, Android should become the world's second-largest mobile operating system, according to consultant Gartner. At that point, more people will be buying Android-based phones each year than the iPhones. And users of Android devices download as many applications -- about 10 -- each month as iPhone owners do. Since developers always want to make apps for the largest possible pool of users, Android Market's applications count should skyrocket.

According to Oct. 27 report from Wattpad, the maker of the world's most popular software for ebook reading on mobile phones, the "US replaced Indonesia as the leading country in mobile ebook consumption in [the third] quarter."

What gives? Apparently, ebook reading is super-popular on the Apple iPhone, and neither Indonesia nor Vietnam offer the device, according to Wattpad. "In the non-iPhone market, Indonesia and Vietnam together contribute to more than two third of the market," according to the report. Currently, iPhone owners consume 42.1% of all mobile ebooks served up via Wattpad, which tracks ebook usage in 160 countries. And 78% of all iPhone ebook usage comes from North America.

But the big obstacle was the need to get a new number from Google Voice; you couldn't use an existing number, such as your cell phone's, to use the services. On Oct. 27, Google is announcing that you now will be able to use your existing cell phone number with some of Google Voice's services: online voicemail, automated text transcripts, and custom voicemail greetings.

Technically, your cell number isn't getting ported to Google Voice, but the upshot is that you won't have to ask friends and colleagues to call a new number. For me, at least, that was one reason I haven't yet dived into Google Voice. And you will still need to get a new Google Voice number to use all the services, such as call screening and recording.

Google's blog post, along with a video, provides more details:

We were heartened by the strong response to our call. More than 200 companies were submitted over the Web. We also received dozens more entries submitted by several groups we reached out to such as the National Venture Capital Association, the Kauffman Foundation, YouNoodle and Endeavour.

The response was so great that we needed additional time to work through the list. Consequently, we have a new publication date for the project. Instead of closing the project on Oct. 21 as originally planned, we have pushed up the publication date until Nov. 11 to coincide with our Future of Technology report.

So please be a bit more patient. We are excited to share the results and accompanying stories with all of you.

"This is a decision that is exclusively in Apple's court," said Seidenberg. "We obviously would be interested in any point in the future they thought it would make sense for them to have us as a partner. And so we'll leave it with them on that score."

This statement jibes with my feeling that Verizon's embrace of the Google Android operating system is just as much a negotiating tactic as a hedge against the iPhone.

Without the iPhone, a game-changing device that has set the wireless world on fire, Verizon is pursuing a sort of spread-your-bets strategy in which they offer a whole range of new devices, including, most importantly, a series of Blackberry handsets.

For example, Verizon this week is launching the Storm 2, an updated version of the first touchscreen Blackberry, which is getting much better reviews than the first one. And the Motorola Droid, a super-thin phone that uses Google’s Android operating system, will be unveiled on Wednesday morning in a big press event in New York City at the W Hotel.

"We have expanded our base of other devices," explained Seidenberg. "So our view is to broaden the base of choice for customers and hopefully along the way, Apple as well as others will decide to jump on the bandwagon."

- Spencer Ante also publishes the Creative Capital blog. Click here to see more.