Google has just launched a new homepage for its blog search that bears a strong resemblance to Techmeme, Memeorandum and their “memetracker” counterparts. The site displays a listing of the top stories from across a variety of topics including business, politics, technology, and entertainment.

Memetrackers identify emerging trends on the web, especially across blogs. They are often the best way to learn about breaking news stories, as they can automatically monitor hundreds (or more) news sources at once. Major news outlets and user-submitted content sites like Digg often trail memetrackers by days.

From “Spider-Man 3″ to “No Country for Old Men,” Netflix Inc. is making another 2,500 movies, TV shows and concerts available for instant viewing through a deal with Starz Entertainment LLC.

The world’s largest online movie rental service and Starz, a subsidiary of conglomerate Liberty Media Corp., were planning to announce Wednesday that Starz titles were being added to the “Watch Instantly” feature of Netflix’s Web site.

The new content will beef up the more than 12,000 movies and TV shows Netflix already makes instantly watchable over the Internet through its streaming service. While this is just a fraction of the 100,000 titles Netflix has available on DVDs, Netflix says it continues to grow both numbers and eventually hopes to close the gap between them.

Five Hollywood studios have agreed to help pay for a $1 billion-plus rollout of digital technology on about 20,000 movie screens in North America, a precursor to showing movies in 3-D.

Digital Cinema Implementation Partners, a consortium of major theater chains, announced the deal Wednesday. The rollout in the U.S. and Canada, covering about half of all screens, is planned to start early next year.

To help offset the costs - about $70,000 per screen - the studios plan to pay the consortium slightly under $1,000 per movie per screen, roughly the same amount it costs them to print and ship a celluloid film copy.

Adding digital equipment is the critical first step in the technological upgrade to being able to show 3-D movies.

More than 20 3-D movies are set to hit theaters through 2010, but only 873 locations in the U.S. and Canada, with 1,264 3-D screens, are available now, according to The Walt Disney Co., a signatory to the digital rollout.

Disney plans to release five 3-D movies next year, including a Jonas Brothers concert movie in February.

The digital expansion will help convert more screens to show 3-D movies, which have packed theaters and commanded higher ticket prices than their 2-D counterparts.

“It should ultimately improve the grosses,” said Chuck Viane, president of domestic distribution for Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. “People will just fall in love with the medium.”

Viane expected 1,500 to 2,000 locations, many with multiple screens, would be able to show 3-D movies by the end of 2009.

Microsoft is working on a new operating system, “Windows Cloud,” aimed at developers working on cloud-computing applications, and expected to launch at the end of the month, according to CEO Steve Ballmer.

Speaking at a software conference in London, Ballmer said the new OS will be rolled out at Microsoft’s annual developers conference in Los Angeles, where the official details and name will be announced, according to International Data Group.

During a meeting with financial analysts in July, Ballmer talked about competitors and their focus on operating systems, and teased about Microsoft embracing the idea of cloud computing. He said he would talk more about computation, storage and management at the Professional Developers Conference.

“If you go talk to some of our erstwhile competitors, they’ll tell you, ‘Hey, we’re actually building — we won’t call it an operating system, but we’re building a new thick client, it’s called the browser, and we’re just going to keep pouring more and more of essentially operating-system capabilities into the browser,’” Ballmer said.

He added that companies believe in a world of balanced computation, but the question isn’t what is going to happen, but how it is going to happen — and who is going to win.

On Thursday, the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to vote on a request by the National Music Publishers Association to increase the royalties paid to its members for online music sales. Artists are currently paid a royalty of nine cents and want the CRB to increase it to 15 cents.

The move is opposed by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Digital Media Association, a trade group of online music retailers that includes AOL, Apple, MusicNet, Napster, RealNetworks and Yahoo.

The CRB’s decision will be the first to address the sale of digital music and will establish royalty rates for publishers and artists for the next five years.

Apple said Wednesday that it was dropping a controversial non-disclosure agreement that software developers who wanted to create applications for the iPhone mobile telephone had been forced to sign.

The non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, prevented software developers seeking to take part in the iPhone Developer Program from discussing their work, even with colleagues.

Apple’s move to drop the NDA came just days after Internet search giant Google jumped into the mobile telephone market with a handset powered by Google’s open-source Android software.

The ability of outside developers to freely write applications for the phone, the T-Mobile G1, which Google developed with telecom carrier T-Mobile, is seen as a major selling point by Google and its partners.

Technology company RealNetworks and major film studios on Tuesday squared off in a legal battle over a new product allowing consumers to make computer copies of DVDs that the studios claim is illegal.

RealDVD, a software product from RealNetworks subsidiary RealNetworks Home Entertainment Inc, allows users to create a copy of a DVD for their computer’s internal or portable hard drive.

RealNetworks said RealDVD gives consumers the ability to do with movie or TV show DVDs what they already do with music CDs, and RealDVD eliminates the hassle of searching for a missing DVD or dealing with a scratched and unplayable disc.

The company also said its product allows customers to view DVDs while traveling with a computer.

But the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood’s major film and TV studios, disagreed and its member companies sued RealNetworks seeking a temporary restraining order to stop it from selling RealDVD software.