South Beach: Whopper and a beer

A new Burger King restaurant model will open in Miami Beach's South Beach in mid-February. The Whopper Bar will feature the usual BK fare plus Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors beers served in special designed aluminum bottles to keep them extra cold.

A Whopper combo with a beer will cost roughly $2 more than the same combo with a soda; Sorry, no free refills.

Don't expect a Whopper Bar to come to your neighborhood any time soon. Regular Burger Kings across the nation will not be retro-fitted with this high-end features.

If you find your self in Germany, Burger Kings have been selling beer for years; In Singapore and Venezuela, Whopper Bars have already opened.

Should the South Beach Whopper Bar become a success, could NYC be next? -- Maybe.

— USA Today Story

NY cafes crack down on free wi-fi

Many coffee shops are losing money because customers spend too long online, so they are covering sockets, banning laptops and charging for internet access.

As big chains like Starbucks offer free wi-fi, smaller business are struggling to survive.

Jonathan Blake's Video Report from BBC.

Obama Gas

Gas station owner has gone all out for Obama!

Great News: iTunes will not be shuttered

From CNN:

Apple defeats music rate hike

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It looks like Apple won't be closing the iTunes store because of a dispute with music publishers over royalties on downloaded songs.

The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C., today declined a request by the National Music Publishers Association to increase royalties from 9 cents to 15 cents on songs purchased from online music stores like iTunes.

Apple adamantly opposed the proposed 66% increase and threatened to shutter iTunes if it was approved. In a statement submitted to the board last year, iTunes vice president Eddy Cue said Apple didn't want to raise its 99 cents a song price or absorb the higher royalty costs itself.

Cue's statement was first reported by Fortune on Tuesday.

PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that Apple only makes about 10 cents a song in profit.

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said the company was happy with the ruling. "We're pleased with the CRB's decision to keep royalty rates stable," he said.

The Copyright Royalty Board is a three-judge panel that oversees statutory licenses granted under federal copyright law. That includes royalty rates for music sales. The current case followed the expiration last year of a 1997 decision that had governed sales of so-called physical music products like CDs for a decade.

Thursday's decision will set royalty rates for the next five years.This is the board's first ruling on the digital sale of music.

— Full CNN Story