Although World Cup tweeting caused record high volume and infrastructure demands on Twitter, the most-discussed topic on Twitter this year was actually the Gulf oil spill, said the San Francisco-based company tonight.

Last year Jackson's death spurred a boost in Sony's sales. But that's over, and the trend line is pointing down yet again.

With group-buying Web sites, getting more people to join in on a deal gets you a better deal.

While an iPad in the wild--held up by Stephen Colbert--got a lot of ink, here's a video from last night's Grammy Awards, which went all "Avatar" during a tribute to the late Michael Jackson--when a panoply of belt-it-out singers performed one of his posthumous songs with a 3-D twist. In fact, much of the audience was wearing 3-D glasses--including Beyoncé, pictured here--to properly experience the performance of "Earth Song" and its accompanying film, which was supposed to be part of Jackson's "This Is It" tour.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt did one of his patented throat-clearers in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal today and it pretty much begs for translation. Well, BoomTown shall not tarry from the task of decoding the extra-long rumination from the head of Google, who was responding to the recent spate of aggressive attacks by traditional media publishers. They have blamed the search giant for everything from their current business woes to the destruction of journalism to Tiger Woods's dicey marital troubles. Okay, not that! But the rest for sure.

Want to get Michael Jackson's new single? You will be able to get it on iTunes this month, contrary to earlier reports. But there's a catch: You're going to have to buy some of the late singer's other songs, too.

After Michael Jackson died, fans flooded iTunes to snap up his music. And contrary to an earlier report, "This Is It," the singer's final work, will also be sold by Apple this month.

The good news: Two of music's biggest acts helped slow the industry's sales slump last quarter. The bad news: It's still slumping. And the Fab Four and MJ are probably out of tricks.