Squawk Box Sept 12 – RIM, Yammer, and music players

It’s Friday, and because we’ve been talking DEMO all week, we discussed a few of the top news stories from the past 5 days instead.

Yesterday RIM announced deals with Slacker Music, Ticketmaster, MySpace, TiVo, and Microsoft. These “lifestyle apps” are apparently designed to ward off the threat from Apple. Is it enough?

We also discussed the choice of Yammer as the top prize at TechCrunch 50. Is the idea of “Twitter inside enterprise” a good idea?

It’s been a big week in music players. New iPods announced with colors and music discovery. At the same time, out comes a new Zune from Microsoft, with what by all accounts is a better music discovery system. We ask, did Microsoft get the upper hand?

On the Calliflower Conference Call: Bill Volk, Kevin Restivo, James Body, and Dan Rockwell.

Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.