In the same week that Apple was spotlighted for one billion songs sold on iTunes, BusinessWeek publishes It’s Dell vs. the Dell Way, which spotlights Dell as out of touch and out of favor with the stock market. The big problem of course is that Dell really had one idea and that idea has run its course.

For the past 22 years, Dell has laid waste to mighty rivals with one of the most groundbreaking business innovations of the past half-century: selling technology products directly to customers via the telephone, and later the Internet, instead of going through retail stores or resellers. But now the remaining competitors, such as Hewlett-Packard, have narrowed the gap in productivity and price. That leaves Dell in a tight spot. Rollins and Michael S. Dell, founder and now chairman, must either come up with another breakthrough innovation or face a future of slugging it out on near-equal footing with rivals.

HP and to a lesser extent Gateway have caught up to Dell and consumers are changing their minds now about buying products sight unseen. Apple has been pushing the Apple Stores for years now and giving customers the chance to experience technology is all the fashion these days. Even Sony has their own stores now to sell everything from laptops to wide screen televisions. But I think more than any other technology, the cell phone and the iPod have given consumers this idea that all technology needs to be catered to their individual persona.

Consumers’ buying habits are a reflection of a broader shift in the technology world. People are mesmerized by new digital gear with unique features and style. Commodity technologies, such as plain-vanilla PCs, are passé. That’s a difficult development for Dell. It spends less on research and development ($463 million) than Apple Computer ($534 million), despite being four times Apple’s size.

Somehow Dell changing their biege PC desktops to grey and silver is not enough. If consumers wanted these colors I’m sure Apple would have sold an iMac in these colors already. Clearly that has not happened, and Dell really has no clue what makes for a cool home PC, because if they did their gamer machines would at least have an AMD cpu in them by now.

But the real danger for Dell isn’t Apple’s iMac, it is going to be Levono. I hate to root for a non-US company, but the simple truth is that Levono is going to take the US market by storm and seriously drive some needed competition. HP and Dell will find themselves competing against a new company with enough product lines to match them in multiple segments. The Thinkpad has been a high end laptop for years, but recent announcements show that Levono wants to corner the laptop market on the lower end as well. This will spell big trouble for Dell and HP.

The AllStar game this year was lacking. For some reason the big name players did not bring their game. Allen Iverson, T-Mac, among others did not impress, and while Vince Carter’s missed dunks were hilarious, the game just dragged on mostly. Last years game was better and seemed more team oriented than this year’s game. It did however signal the changing of the guard from old-time players like A.I., Shaq, and T-Mac to the new stars like Lebron, Wade, and Marion. The East coming out with four Pistons, made up of Chauncey, Rasheed, Richard Hamilton, and Ben Wallace did impact the game and although Chauncey tried a couple of unneeded three-pointers, he did manage to impress and get props for being one of the best guards in today’s league.

It was strange to see Shaq and four Pistons playing together on the same team, but the best combination of front court power was when Lebron and Wallaces played together, they had length, speed, defense, and offense. It was an incredible combination. Surprisingly Lebron showed some defensive skills and his winning of the MVP award was definitely justified. He has a great game and it will only improve with time. Best offensive play goes to Lebron too, but a very close second would have to be Kobe’s fade away three point shot. Say whatever you want about Kobe, he is still one of the top five players in the game right now. I’ll even give Tony Parker some slack for his driving to paint score; he did drive through three defenders and somehow hoisted up the ball for a score. My favorite hustle play though goes to Wade for his tip in in the final minutes to put the East back up. Hey, we’re both from South Chicago, so I have to love Wade’s game, regardless.

As for the West, as usual they never integrated Yao into the game. Timmie was his usual dependable self and managed to get his shots in. Nash tried to integrate everyone, but timings were a little off for the other players, and some great passes became turnovers.

Now as to who I think are definite AllStars this year…. well my pick for number one player is Shawn Marion. I love his energy on the court and his attitude. You always see Marion having an effect on the game on both ends and he doesn’t quit at all. Definitely agree with Barkley that Marion is the most underrated player in the NBA right now. As to the best guards, my vote goes to Chauncey for his strength and Motown moves and to Nash for his incredible passing and vision of the game. For superstar talent, Lebron and Wade are developing each year more and more and they are definitely the face of the new NBA.

But not to leave out the great players that still dominate at the end of games, props would have to go to Jermaine O’Neal who is having a tough year with injuries, Rasheed Wallace who is having his best year ever and who is even better than Timmie, Carmelo Anthony who did not make the AllStar selection but who is flourishing this year, and of course Detroit’s Prince, who is an astute student of the game and the Piston’s best kept secret.

So now that the AllStar break is over, it’s time to get down to playing some real team basketball and hopefully some competitive games.

Another side project that I started last month was MovieComment.com.  I kept telling my friends that I was eventually going to start a film review site last year, but I never quite did it.  After a couple hours searching for a proper domain name, the deleted domain MovieComment.com came up and I registered it and put up a simple blog based site.

The idea is get other writers on board and contribute, so if you want to write about your favorite movie, go ahead and contact me to see about writing for MovieComment.

Other than that, I saw on the internet that they are making an Ironman movie.  I just hope to God, they don’t mess it up and have it be as crappy as Fantastic Four.