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Thursday, April 3, 2008

Pizza.com being sold for a hot and spicy $3 million

Chris Clark is lucky guy with a lot of patience.

The software consultant from Maryland bought the name pizza.com for $20 in 1994, when the Web was new and uncharted territory.

Now he’s selling it at auction, and will probably fetch somewhere in the vicinity of $3 million.

Some guys have all the luck, especially if they bought a generic name like business.com or fund.com. Those also brought big bucks.

Anybody want to sit at their computers tonight and type in generic names? Who knows, maybe there’s still one out there unclaimed.

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Apple now No. 1 music seller

Apple today is proudly proclaiming it has surpassed Wal-Mart as the No. 1 music seller in the country, based on figures from market researcher NPD Group.

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Apple says its iTunes store surpassed the world’s biggest retailer in music sales in January and February. Of course Apple, being Apple, isn’t providing specific details, talking about what March sales looked like or, well, saying much else. NPD music analyst Russ Crupnick confirms that Apple’s now No. 1, but NPD doesn’t release specific data either.

Apple’s dominance in music sales isn’t exactly unexpected given the rise of digital music, but couldn’t come at a more pivotal time for the company.

Big record labels - which are growing tired of Apple’s bossy ways when it comes to revenue sharing and pricing - are teaming up with News Corp.’s MySpace to launch a new online music store designed to give iTunes some more competition.

Apple’s news will likely make the labels think carefully how they proceed.

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