In an ambitious music campaign to raise money for Darfur, Amnesty International is relying on a new widget to promote viral sales of re-recorded John Lennon songs on sites like MySpace.com and across the blogosphere. The campaign, called Instant Karma, will promote an album of the same name with Lennon song tracks recorded by U2, REM, Green Day and a …

BT sent a lovely chap called Dave to my flat last week to install its Vision PVR/on-demand box. Apparently we can’t be trusted to plug them in ourselves, so customers have to pay a £60 installation charge — but considering the 160GB PVR box only costs £30, this isn’t such a bad deal. The box itself, built by Philips but …

CBS has purchased Last.fm, a social-networking site devoted to music. What it plans to do with the site, however, isn’t clear yet. With the $280 million deal, announced Wednesday, CBS has acquired a popular social-media technology: the music “scrobbling” engine developed by Last.fm that analyzes what its members listen to. Based on scrobbling results, Last.fm offers recommendations for members’ playlists, …