Thought I would share a couple of recent posts on our sister blog sites that may be of interest to readers of this blog:

• Atlantic Records and Social Media Marketing
  Shares a great presentation by Atlantic Records’s Eric Snowden
• Metablock’s Artistmatic Music Analytics Dashboard in Beta
  Announces the beat of Metablocks new social media analtyics dashboard for music labels, marketers and artists
• Why You Probably Don’t Want to Build an iPhone App
  Looks at some of the dynamics behind the iPhone, Facebook and other new platform “gold rushes”
• Music Sales Continue Digital Trend
  Examines digital music sales trend numbers from Nielsen/Soundscan.

Here is a quick roundup of a couple of recent interesting widget news and trends:

• Mobile Widget become a Reality
  Nokia continues its push into turning its mobile phones into a widget platform as more vendors add support for its Web Runtime widgets! At the same time, Motorola is offering a $25,000 prize as part of its own mobile widget MOTODEV Challenge!
• TV Widgets are Coming
  At CES, Intel and Yahoo announce that they are revving up for the move to bring Internet widgets to TV. You can probably expect Internet widgets to make an appearance on new gaming consoles as well!
• Facebook Connect Widgets
  Since the release of Facebook Connect, entrepreneurs are building a new breed of widgets that leverage the service. Examples include commenting apps like those from Disqus and JS-Kit.
• Widget Politics
  Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s Governor, is taking to widgets and social media to get the state budget passed. His “Legislature’s Failure to Act” widget features how many days the state has gone without having a budget passed. The governor has also taken his message to Twitter, with updates on the budget crisis and promoting his widget!