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By the Times staff and wire services
Published January 17, 2008

Guest's musical message rocks Macworld expo

Amid iPod upgrades, movie deals and Apple TV price cuts, there was a tinge of politics at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco -- but it didn't come from Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs. It was his musical guest, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Randy Newman. Newman and his piano were rolled out on a moving stage and he quickly launched into his song, A Few Words in Defense of Our Country. "I'd like to say a few words in defense of our country, whose people aren't bad, nor are they mean / Now the leaders we have, while they're the worst that we've had, are hardly the worst this poor world has seen," Newman sang. His performance briefly injected a serious tone to an otherwise upbeat presentation by Jobs, and the audience of Mac faithful applauded -- though not quite as loudly as they had for the unveiling of Apple's new online movie rental service.

Cross words for Facebook game

The companies that make Scrabble are trying to shut down Scrabulous, an online version of the game that is one of the most popular applications on the social-networking site Facebook. Hasbro Inc., which owns the U.S. and Canadian rights to the crossword game, and Mattel Inc., which owns the rights elsewhere, say the Facebook game infringes their copyrights and trademarks. Scrabulous listed more than 600,000 daily active users on Facebook as of Wednesday and is one of the 10 most-used applications on the site. People can also play at Scrabulous.com. While there are authorized Scrabble games online, Scrabulous has gained popularity because it's free, easy to play with friends and easy to access on Facebook.

Starbucks juices Coke-Pepsi rivalry

Starbucks Corp., the world's largest chain of coffee shops, agreed to distribute PepsiCo Inc.'s Naked Juice line of smoothies and juices at about 7,000 U.S. stores, replacing Coca-Cola Co.'s Odwalla juices that were sold there. Naked Juice flavors that will be available at the cafes include Green Machine, Mighty Mango and Protein Zone, the Seattle-based company said Wednesday. Starbucks is offering juices and smoothies to give consumers choices beyond coffee, espresso-based drinks and frozen Frappuccinos that contain as many as 400 calories.

Film receipts grow fast in China, too

The box office take in China surged 27 percent to $460-million in 2007, with robot battle movie Transformers the biggest hit of the year, a film official said Wednesday. That compared with a total box office take of $362-million 2006, said Zhang Pimin, deputy secretary-general of China's Film Bureau. Zhang said Chinese-language movies accounted for 54 percent of the Chinese box office in 2007, with foreign films at 46 percent. China added 108 movie theaters with a total of 493 screens in 2007, boosting the total number of screens to more than 3,500, he said. Transformers, the biggest hit in China, was released in July and made $39-million according to distributor UIP. Zhang said the biggest Chinese-language hits in 2007 included the big-budget historical epic The Warlords and Assembly, a war movie.

[Last modified January 17, 2008, 01:24:52]