We had doubts that Apple had actually overtaken Wal-Mart as the number one music retailer in the US, but it looks as though the rise of iTunes gift cards sales and new iPod owners made Apple succeed. Apple is not doing much to celebrate but is still going to offer “4 billion songs to 50 million customers”, but it says iTunes was the big dog January and February. Of course, there’s a lot of 2008 left, so Wal-Mart may surpass iTunes again.

Dell announced Tuesday their plans to purchase the business email services company MessageOne for $155 million in cash. MessageOne’s software, which is delivered to customers over the Internet, helps companies manage and archive e-mail, minimize outages and prevent data losses, said Dell in a statement. MessageOne was co-founded by Dell’s Michael Dell with his brother Adam Dell and is owned in part by Impact Venture Partners and Impact Entrepreneurs Fund. If there is a deal, Michael Dell, his wife Susan and their children’s trust will receive about $12 million. Adam Dell will get about $970,000 and his parents will receive about $450,000.

Via Reuters

Online video host, Brightcove, has decided to no longer let users submit videos. Brightcove is shutting down the submission of videos on Brightcove.tv today. From now on Brightcove will host only professional videos.

We actually have never viewed Brightcove as a place for internet users to host videos, but mainly for businesses. We think this is a good choice for Brightcove. This will help them focus on partnerships with companies. Brightcove really did not have a chance at hosting users videos, mostly due to YouTube.

NBC has just launched their download service, which is now in beta. The service allows free downloads of NBC shows up to seven days after they are shown on TV, at the moment Windows and IE only are supported. Sorry all you mac users you will have to wait. The download shows are delete automatically after 48 hours, and the plugin installation is a pain using Windows Media. In the future we hope for more platform and software support but it is a good start.

Adobe has launched a public beta of Buzzword. Previously, internet users could only access the online writing application with an invitation.

Buzzword is a pretty web application that looks unlike any other word processor we have ever used. It features support for images, tables, and page breaks. Users are able to create and store documents online, share them with other users, print or even download. If you have used Microsoft word you should have no problem learning buzzword.