The Silicon Valley Watcher has an interesting post today entitled “Incremental Is Not Innovative:  Where Is The Next Big Thing?”  The post’s author, Tom Foremski, alleges that at present “there is a lot of money flowing into companies that only offer incremental improvements over what is already available.”  According to Jeff Nolan, an ex-VC writing on SandHill.com, “the situation may leave the technology industry in another downward spiral if none of the ‘incremental’ ventures hit it big and no other genuine innovation appears soon.”

The Sidney Morning Herald reports that “Australia’s biggest musical acts are crying poor in a new documentary that seeks to discourage people from obtaining music illegally and change the public’s perception that they live a high life of riches and glamour. 

[…]  Most of the artists point to the internet as being a hugely positive force in getting their music to as many people as possible, but there is an underlying fear that, financially, the entire industry is in dire straits.  Figures released by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) show that physical CD sales dropped 12 per cent last year to $420 million. Legal music downloads were up 43 per cent to $40 million, but the strong growth has not been enough to make up for the rapidly declining CD sales.  ‘The internet has been a godsend and a nightmare for the music industry,’ [musician] Jimmy Barnes says.”

CNetNews.com writes that “Sanford Wallace, the so-called spam king, has often been accused of sending annoying messages that are typically ignored by the recipient. Perhaps he considered a series of court orders as something he could blow off.  If he did, he was wrong. MySpace has won a legal judgment against Wallace after he failed numerous times to turn over documents or even to show up for court, according to records obtained by CNET News.com.  In March of last year, MySpace filed suit against Wallace alleging he launched a phishing scam to fraudulently access MySpace profiles. Wallace was also accused of spamming thousands of MySpace users with unwanted advertisements and luring them to his Web sites.”

The O’Reilly digitalmedia blog today has a useful list of things to remember when you distribute software online.

According to FT.com, “Yahoo is to outsource part of its instant messaging service as the internet company, which is under threat from a Microsoft takeover, focuses on core businesses.  The handling of Yahoo’s Messenger, which allows PC-to-phone and phone-to-PC voice calls, is being taken over by Jajah, a Silicon Valley voice-over-internet-protocol (Voip) specialist.  Yahoo’s instant messaging (IM) service has 93m users worldwide, including 27m in the US, according to comScore, a research firm.  The company added PC-to-PC calling to Messenger three years ago in response to the growing popularity of the Skype Voip service.”