Money makes people crazy. When it comes to media conglomerates, the lust is insatiable. NBC Universal plans to pull its television catalog off iTunes by the end of the year. The marriage, initially, was lovestruck, with NBC crediting iTunes sales for boosting ratings of "The Office." But now, the grounds for divorce ostensibly include disagreements over piracy controls and pricing; Apple now says NBC wanted to charge $4.99 an episode. Some may speculate, rather, that the decision is fueled by NBC's desire to stock its own online-video site, Hulu, with shows. But the real reason for NBC's withdrawal is probably much less sinister.

Sony is closing its Connect digital music store early next year. Why? Apparently no one was interested in a proprietary audio format that only plays on the manufacturer's devices. Apple, it seems, is the only merchant that can get away with that. [Gizmodo]

Next week's special Apple press event will be disappointing to Beatles fans — a group that included CEO Steve Jobs. Silicon Alley Insider reports that, despite an homage to the Beatles on the invitation, which reads "The beat goes on," a long-awaited announcement that the Beatles library will be available on iTunes won't be part of the September 5 event. Instead, it will feature, yes, yet more iPods. Are they still making those tired old things?

From cartoonist Hugh MacLeod, a concise explanation of why Apple CEO Steve Jobs keeps pushing his company deeper into the music business, and why rock star Bono has joined tech private-equity firm Elevation Partners.

Broadcast network NBC has inked promotional deals with almost every major Internet player to distribute the pilot episodes for its new fall lineup. Almost, that is, because it appears to be shunning Google's YouTube online-video site, as well as the News Corp.-owned MySpace. According to The Hollywood Reporter, episodes of new shows "Chuck," "Life," and "Journeyman" will be available for download on Amazon beginning September 10. If you'd prefer to download using Apple's iTunes software, sign up for the Apple Students group on social network Facebook. Members of that group get a one-week headstart on downloading the pilots. Prefer to stream your entertainment? Beginning in mid-September, you can catch "Life" on AOL, "Journeyman" on MSN, and "Chuck" on Yahoo. But it's the omissions that are really interesting.

The internet phone provider Vonage is hanging on for dear life, somehow fending off a Titanic-like doom. Hauled into court by Verizon, Vonage was found guilty of patent infringements. Although fined $58 million penalty and forced to abandon any infringing technology, the VOIP Internet-telephone service provider overturned a ruling that would have barred it from conducting business altogether. Not that it's conducting business in a particularly admirable manner.

Every year, we at Beloit College publish a "mindset list" to identify the worldviews of the year's entering college freshmen. The "class of 2029" refers to students entering college this fall, in 2025. Most of these students are 18, which means they were born in 2007. For them, Anna Nicole Smith, Steve Irwin, Ray Charles, James Brown, Saddam Hussein, and Robin Williams's career have always been dead.

After persistent rumors of a Googlephone — Google's supposed answer to Apple's iPhone — failed to pan out in the U.S., the true Googlephone believers are looking abroad. Rediff, an Indian news and information portal, reports that Google will launch a "Gphone" in India in two weeks. Unlikely, unless, like Valleywag, you believe that Google's strategy is to turn every phone into a Googlephone.

Sony's recent announcement that its PlayStation 3 console will soon act as a digital video recorder in Europe is little surprise to anyone following the industry. It's long been believed that the PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 could act as DVRs. The real question is how this move will affect a soon-to-be crowded DVR marketplace. TiVo, the best-known DVR brand, has struggled financially as cable and satellite distributors released their own recorders. Although its future may be a bit brighter thanks to a recent licensing deal with Comcast and the potential of a renewed DirecTV contract, there's more competition for TiVo than ever — and from the unlikeliest of places.

We knew Microsoft had a Herculean — nay, Sisyphean — task when it rolled out its Zune MP3 player last year. It didn't help matters when Microsoft "designers" chose putrid brown as a launch color. Despite Microsoft's pledge of continued support of the product, it looks like it — or a major retailer left with unsold stock — is dumping Zunes on the cheap. Woot, the deal-a-day online retail site, is currently selling white Zunes for $150 apiece, a 50% discount over the retail price. While the site doesn't list available stock, hot items are known to sell out quickly. This obviously doesn't describe Zune, though.

Mark Jarvis, the first chief marketing officer of computer maker Dell, perfected his art at Oracle: Deny, deny, deny, and when denials fail, spin, spin, spin. He boldly slashes at the branding and advertising strategies of Dell's past while outlining, with Oracular swagger, his new strategy for Dell. He says, of his own job, "It's not rocket science, funnily enough" — in a Wall Street Journal interview (subscription required). Unfortunately for Jarvis, the Journal ran a companion piece that paints a different picture: Jarvis's marketing rhetoric doesn't conform to the reality of Dell's production woes.

"You can't be too thin. Or too powerful." The Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness calls the new Apple slogan for its iMac computers "insensitive." [Gadget Lab]

The New York Times, which has been slow to adapt its user technology to these newfangled "Mac" computers (not that any of us really wanted to use the PC-only Times Reader, but, you know, principles), learned yesterday that perhaps Macs are a good thing in one way.

Wal-Mart cut a deal with Universal Music Group and EMI to sell digital songs without digital rights management software, or DRM. They're also rolling back prices to 94 cents a track. The end result for Apple? Increased iPod sales, we bet, since the MP3-format tracks are compatible with its music player. [PaidContent]

Apple's CEO and founder will be inducted into the California Hall of Fame as an "innovator, entrepreneur and creative genius" along with other notable locals — Jackie Robinson, Robert Mondavi, Elizabeth Taylor, Tiger Woods, John Steinbeck, Jonas Salk, and others — by the Governator and his wife, Maria Shriver. [The California Museum]

AT&T, at long last, has recognized the silliness of giving iPhone customers with unlimited data plans a bit-by-bit bill on their usage. Sick of wasting 500,000 sheets of paper each iPhone billing cycle, AT&T is taking measures to stop the wanton murder of trees. Advice to Apple fans: sign up for paperless billing. [Muhammed.Saleem]

DVD rental site Netflix is in the news for hiring human customer-service reps in a move away from automated support. But that's surely the least significant of Netflix's recruiting plans. A tipster whispers that Netflix is trying to hire away Apple engineers to work on a set-top box for movie downloads. Not surprising, after Netflix's alliance with TiVo fell apart, and the DVR maker turned to Amazon.com instead as a partner for movie downloads. And Netflix's hiring of ReplayTV founder Anthony Wood, who's thought by many to be the original creator of the digital video recorder, kept Netflix set-top box rumors alive this spring. But if Wood is now staffing up his team by poaching Apple engineers, that tells us Netflix is getting serious. Heard more? Drop us a line.

Purchase an iPhone and experiencing problems? Have no fear, Mahalo is here! Jason Calacanis's blowhard-powered search engine has handcrafted a results page specifically for your "iPhone problems." Mahalo claims to build "organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results" that "only include great links" with the best at the top using trusted "guides to make judgment calls based on what's in the best interest of our users." Certainly, a site that curates only the most authoritative links, according to Calacanis, can provide the answers to your questions about the most highly covered device in tech history. Well, no, it can't. But it does answer the question of why Mahalo is sure to fail.

Apple is staffing up for its first Australian store, a location in central Sydney. [Reg Hardware]

Granted, I have no taste in music, either. But at least I have the good sense to hang my head in shame and not trumpet this fact, as Arrington's just done on TechCrunch, the tech blog he edits, in the course of writing about Apple's new My iTunes feature, which lets you broadcast your iTunes purchases on the Web. For the record, Arrington is into Gnarls Barkley, OutKast, Green Day, R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers ... and the Pussycat Dolls. (I always wondered about Arrington.) I mean, for me, one of the best things about ripping my music library to iTunes was no longer having a rack of CDs on the wall for houseguests to peruse and mock. This new iTunes widget essentially restores that previous state of affairs, letting even perfect strangers lambaste your musical taste. Speaking of, after the jump, a detailed analysis of Arrington's musical misdeeds from Idolator editor Maura Johnston.