Also announced was touch.salesforce.com, designed to bring mobile apps into the social enterprise with HTML5, optimized for touch devices for all Salesforce and Force.com apps.

Salesforce also announced Heroku for Java, Chatter Connect and Database.com, which the comp;any says, “will deliver the most open, flexible and social enterprise platform in the industry.

“Our social enterprise vision fundamentally changes how companies collaborate, share and manage information,” said Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff. “By creating social customer profiles, employee social networks, customer social networks and product social networks, companies can delight their customers in entirely new ways.”

Here’s how Salesforce describes each product:

Chatter Now: Chatter Now will deliver real-time collaboration by enabling users to see when their colleagues are online, instantly chat with them in context and share their screen without leaving Chatter.

Database.com Data Residency Option: The new Database.com Data Residency Option will be for companies that want to take full advantage of the cloud, but have requirements, policies or perceptions that may prevent them from gaining the strategic benefits that cloud computing has to offer. With Database.com Data Residency Option, companies will have the option of keeping readable versions of sensitive data where they want, allowing them to take full use of salesforce.com’s trusted cloud computing model.

Also worth noting, Salesforce has Metallica headlining the Dreamforce Global Gala:

There is probably not a person reading this that isn’t at least somewhat familiar with Metallica’s history of music downloading issues. Their beef with Napster pretty much cracked the whip on the entire illegal download litigation circus that has been raging for nearly a decade.

The band’s upcoming album "Death Magnetic" was leaked recently, and Lars (presumably speaking for the band as usual) has no problem with it. "It’s 2008 and it’s part of how it is these days, so it’s fine. We’re happy," he says.

Metallica was heavily criticized over their battle with Napster for being hypocritical in the first place, given that members (including Lars) used to talk about trading copies of tapes of other artists back when they were first starting the band. Brushing the piracy of their latest album off so lightheartedly could be construed as an attempt to bolster the band’s reputation, after having lost the respect of so many of their fans (after all, Metallica used to be all about "fighting the establishment" didn’t they? Well, that and Pharaohs, and alcohol).

Anyhow, they seem to be trying pretty hard to gain back some respect. They’ve even been offering some of their new tracks on MySpace as part of their new "embracement of the Internet." They’ve even promised a return to a more classic Metallica style with the upcoming album (another issue that has alienated some of the bands’ fans, but that’s another story).

If Metallica wants to be "cool" again, then good for them. They seem to be content leaving the outrage over leaked music to former tour-mate Axl Rose for now. I doubt Metallica’s label is quite as content. It would still be interesting to see if this Metallica leak affects first-week sales of the album.

Metal’s legendary lineup found itself in the center of a tempest recently. Their management demanded the removal of reviews from blogs by writers who had been invited to a private listening session of some of the band’s new works, in its early stages.

But wait! That wasn’t Metallica making behind the scenes threats over the positive reviews its unfinished tracks received. Ho ho! It’s management’s fault, Metallica said on their site:

While we occasionally enjoy reading the various comments, rumors, speculation, reviews, gossip and all the good that the internet brings, rarely do we feel the desire/need to respond to the “blogosphere” . . . hey, everyone is entitled to have their thoughts and opinions, right?

However, once we re-surfaced on Tuesday after a few weeks on tour in Europe, we were informed that someone at Q Prime (our managers) had made the error of asking a few publications to take down reviews of the rough mixes from the new record that were posted on their sites.

Our response was “WHY?!!! Why take down mostly positive reviews of the new material and prevent people from getting psyched about the next record. . . that makes no sense to us!”

Well, Lars, James, Kirk, and whoever isn’t Cliff on bass these days, your managers, get this, work for you. If they felt a need to be hard-asses with some bloggers, knowing there would be pushback, we’re pretty sure they were inclined to be that way because somehow that expectation was communicated to them.

So pretty please, with sugar on top, thanks for the apology, but the fans want something to cleanse the aural palette and awful memories of Load and Reload. Maybe if those rough tracks are as good as advertised, Metallica is on the right track.

Let’s hope that includes their relationships with their fans writing for music blogs, too.

Another tenet that may seem overly obvious: When you invite music journalists to a private listening party to promote a forthcoming album and don’t forge a nondisclosure agreement with them, it’s unreasonable, unfair, and heavy-handed to bully said music journalists into removing subsequent music reviews from their blogs.

Perhaps it was because these were London-based, i.e., not American-based, bloggers, that Metallica’s management felt entitled to do so. Even if so, it’s a bit of insult to injury that a blogger felt his career was on the line if he didn’t remove the review.

At some point, says BlindedByTheHype, the redacted review by The Quietus was still available in Google’s cache. Alas, even that brings back an ominous message: Sorry. The existence of this page is a fragment of your overactive imagination.

The Quietus editor Luke Turner tells Blinded that the writer of the review, who had posted anonymously, was not asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement but was still told by Metallica’s management, via third party, to remove a fairly glowing review, hailing the album as a return to form. The Quietus was the last among many to remove their post, and did so, says Turner, "to protect the professional interests of the writer concerned."

Management argued the songs previewed were early mixes and not ready for public scrutiny, which explains succinctly why music journalists were invited to a party to listen to it.

The Quietus didn’t completely roll over though. In lieu of the Metallica preview, they’ve republished an old interview with the band, with an intro that reads:

Seeing as we’re not allowed to tell you that Metallica’s new album sounds like . . . And Justice For All, we’re not supposed to mention that one of the songs on the album may or may not be called Flamingo and we’re certainly 100% most definitely not supposed to suggest that the new record might possibly be good, we thought we’d treat you to an interview with the group back when they released . . . And Justice For All. Which the new album may or may not sound like. We really couldn’t comment.

Most criticisms of the band in past decades were somewhat intellectual, debatable, and forgivable—whether the band sold out by making a video for MTV, whether the Black album was a testament to that sellout, whether Metallica was within its rights and true to its fellow artists to go after Napster or just being greedy and unfriendly to fans, whether the band’s new embracing of Internet downloads was a change of heart or change in business strategy or both—but stepping on someone’s freedom of speech, well, that could be over the line.

That may be because Trent Reznor and Radiohead were able to prove the concept that downloads are good for business.

"We want to be as free a players as possible," Lars Ulrich told Rolling Stone. "We’ve been observing Radiohead and Trent Reznor and in twenty-seven years or however long it takes for the next record, we’ll be looking forward to everything in terms of possibilities with the Internet."

Fans were less than sympathetic when the band took a stand for art (and for art money) by suing Napster. Fans generally felt Metallica had enough money already and that their unrequited love for the band’s brand of metal shouldn’t be repaid by quashing their ability to share it with others.

The "we love you and want to share you and want to buy concert tickets and t-shirts" argument didn’t fly with the band at the turn of the century, but it only took a few years and a clear demonstration of profitability by Reznor and Radiohead, who both freed their most recent works online, to convince them.

Metallica isn’t alone in its fear of what the Internet means for intellectual property. While Elton John was suggesting the whole thing be shut down (we’re guessing via that giant wireless router as seen on South Park), photographers, artists, writers, and publishers have fretted about losing control of their work. Viacom sued YouTube, publishers sued Google, and the RIAA sued everybody else.

There’s not really an easy solution yet, but models are being created regularly to solidify and understand the value of free on the Internet. 
 

A Metallica pack is currently the game’s best selling music download, followed by three song packs from The Police, Queens of the Stone Age, David Bowie and a collection of Black Sabbath covers. Best selling singles are Foreigner’s "Juke Box Hero", followed by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s "Fortunate Son," Weezer’s "Buddy Holly" and The Knack’s "My Sharona."

MTV says that more music will be available for download every week through 2008 through a variety of song packs, albums and individual tracks ranging in price from $.99 to $2.99 per track.

"Our goal with Rock Band was to create an entirely new way for people to interact with the music they love," stated Van Toffler, president, MTVN Music Group/Logo/Films.

"The incredible response to the downloadable content we’ve released to date motivates us even more to establish this platform as a way for people to discover new, up and coming artists through the game – in addition to delivering great game play experiences set to the
music of mega- artists."