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How closely will competitors follow in this latest digital home pursuit?

Spending a couple million dollars doesn't guarantee commercial success.

Web 2.0 technologies offer more opportunities than just sharing information with friends and family on Facebook or uploading user-generated videos on YouTube. The tools that help enable conversations between people on the internet can also help corporations get closer to their customers.

For most businesses, data security is a mission-critical undertaking, and a summer of weather calamities drove home that point. "As the recent hurricanes reminded us, off-premise backup solutions can make the difference between being out of business for good and being on hiatus for a few months," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group.

Sometimes you walk away from a user group meeting concluding that the company didn't introduce much that was really new. You might get the usual product announcements or the dot-version releases and you may take a course that makes you a little smarter about the fine points of some esoteric feature that helps you to do your job.

This week bloggers speculate about the apparent lack of Google search results and Canadian sellers clash with eBay over the new media shipping policy. Plus, new Web shop and auction alternative offerings.

Online discovery service StumbleUpon has changed the way its users can access the service. The company announced a new partner program Tuesday and also unveiled a new Web-based toolbar that no longer requires users to register or download the specific StumbleUpon Toolbar, a task that may have turned some would-be users away in the past.

First came cash. Now, Microsoft is offering up prizes to try to get to you to use its Live Search product. The company announced the start of a new SearchPerks initiative Wednesday. The program awards frequent flyer-style points for Live searches that can then be redeemed for various gifts.

Wal-Mart will soon shut down the servers controlling reauthorization of purchased DRM-protected WMA music files, Ryan Halford, the company's computer buyer, indicated on a Wal-Mart blog. An e-mail sent to Wal-Mart Music customers, a copy of which was posted on the blog BoingBoing, indicates the shutdown will occur Oct. 9.

A decision expected on Thursday from a three-person government panel could lead to the closure of Apple's online music, movie and digital book store, iTunes. Or it could provide what many in the digital media industry have long wanted to see: Apple backing away from the line it drew in the sand on pricing.