RealNetworks Inc., owner of the Rhapsody online music service, acquired a unit of Sony Corp. for $9 million to gain technology for delivering music, videos and games to mobile devices in Europe, Bloomberg News reported.

The company cut its earnings forecasts for this quarter and the full year because of the purchase, while raising its sales prediction. Salzburg, Austria-based Sony NetServices provides services to mobile-phone carriers in eight European countries, Seattle-based RealNetworks said in a statement today.

The purchase is part of a strategy by RealNetworks Chief Executive Officer Robert Glaser to bolster revenue by expanding outside of the U.S. The company bought South Korea’s WiderThan Co. last year to add software for selling music and ring tones.

Second-quarter results will range from a loss of 2 cents a share to breakeven, RealNetworks said today. The company had predicted earlier this month that net income would be as much as 1 cent a share. Full-year net income will be 21 cents to 24 cents, down from a May 2 forecast of 24 cents to 27 cents.

It's time again for Cheryl the Pig Lady and the Bee Lady from Lakebay.

The Tacoma Farmers Market opens its 17th season in downtown Tacoma on Thursday with 88 vendors offering products and produce ranging from lettuce and lotions to honey and jewelry, from candles and clothing to freshly shucked oysters and newly picked flowers.

Eight food-court vendors will sell prepared items ranging from soup and burritos to pad thai and homemade donuts.

The event – free to the public – runs along Broadway between South 9th Street and South 11th Street. Stalls open at 9 a.m. and close at 2 p.m.

The Broadway Market will continue each Thursday for 23 weeks, closing October 18. For more information visit www.tacomafarmersmarket.com.

The last major piece of Boeing's first 787 Dreamliner arrived in Everett today aboard one of Boeing's enlarged 747 Dreamlifter aircraft.

The assembly arrived from South Carolina at almost 2 a.m. at Paine Field. The assembly was the middle of the fuselage barrel for the new jetliner. Part of the composite tube was made in Japan, another part in Italy and a third in South Carolina and then married together in a new plant in Charleston.

The fuselage section will be joined with the forward fuselage produced in Kansas, the rear fuselage, wings and wing box and tail assembly in Boeing's final assembly plant in Everett. Rollout date: 7/8/07.

The big piece of the fuselage arrived just a day after the wings arrived in Everett from Japan.

Now that most of the big pieces are in Everett, Boeing expects to begin putting them all together for the first time next week. When the assembly line gets up to speed the final assembly time from start to finish is expected to be as little as three days. That's because most of the modular pieces will come "stuffed" with wiring and piping, electric motors and ductwork that are installed on the final assembly line on other airliners. Boeing's job is just hooking all those wires and ducts together and joining the big pieces.

Here's a picture of the unloading process. Boeing, which seemingly hasn't lost an opportunity to beat the drums for the 787, dropped the ball on this section of the fuselage. It came wrapped in black plastic for its middle-of-the-night unloading. A more visible orange might have been more photogenic.

Enumclaw Regional Hospital has officially become a part of the Franciscan Health System, making it the fourth hospital in the Tacoma-based organization.

Terms and conditions of the affiliation were unanimously approved by ERH directors in February and endorsed by the Enumclaw Regional Hospital Association in March. The Washington State Office of the Attorney General completed its review of the agreement in late April, clearing the way for this week's announcement that the deal was complete.

Enumclaw Regional Hospital joins St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood and St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way. St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor will open in 2009.

The Enumclaw facility has served Enumclaw, Buckley, Black Diamond, Carbonado, South Prairie, Orting and nearby communities since 1949. Licensed for 38 beds, it is designated as a Critical Access Hospital in a federal program for small hospitals in rural areas. The hospital is a non-profit organization and will retain its name as a member of the Franciscan Health System.

Franciscan will build a 90,000-square-foot replacement hospital in Enumclaw that will nearly double the size of the existing hospital. The $40 million facility will be constructed within four years.

Online retailer Amazon.com today said it plans to launch a digital music store later this year featuring songs without copy protection restrictions.

The store will feature millions of songs from 12,000 labels able to be played on a range of devices including iPods, Microsoft’s Zune players and personal computers, according to the Associated Press. Files will be offered in the standard MP3 format.

EMI Music is the latest to license its music catalog to the store.
Amazon did not say how much songs would cost or the terms on which it would offer music — per song, per album, by subscription or some combination of those plans. It also did not specify a date for the launch of the store.

Former Sea-Tac Airport Director Gina Marie Lindsey, the incoming director of Los Angeles International Airport, had not even been confirmed in her new job by the Los Angeles City Council, when a judge dropped a big challenge in her lap.

A judge for the federal Department of Transportation late Tuesday ruled illegal the LAX Airports commission's imposition of sharply higher fees for airlines using some of the airport's terminals.

Those airlines, prominently among them SeaTac-based Alaska Airlines, had challenged the new fees before the DOT. The new fees were costing the airlines, including Southwest, US Airways, Frontier, Air Tran Airways and Midwest Airlines, millions of dollars in extra costs for use of terminals 1 and 3 at LAX. Some of those airlines had raised ticket prices to LAX by as much as $10 to help pay those costs.

The airlines argued that the fee increases were discriminatory because the airport commission did not impose them equally on all LAX airline tenants. Airlines with long-term leases didn't see increases.

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A maritime air inventory released last month detailed the pollution coming from ships, trucks and trains doing business in our region's ports.

Today the maritime industry meets in Seattle for the Faster Freight, Cleaner Air conference to discuss strategies for reducing the pollution.

The seminar will "address the growing demands for rail and trucking associated with port growth by focusing on the regional infrastructure needs."

"The one-day summit will also highlight the innovative programs, policies and technologies now being implemented in region and provide a venue for ports in the Pacific Northwest to interact with technology providers, elected officials, environmental organizations and the community to develop together plans to improve efficiency and reduce the air quality impacts of the goods movement industry," according to the conference organizers.

I'll report back this afternoon.