News: Music Streaming

Apple Kills Lala Music Service

"Apple closed down the cloud-based Lala music service Friday for reasons unknown, after acquiring it in December. Lala members can still access their online collections, but only until May 31, when Apple will take the service offline completely.
...
The second option, which seems incredibly likely, is that Apple plans to launch a cloud-based music service based on Lala’s technology at some point after May 31.

The key: Lala’s song-identification-and-upload technologies (also discontinued as of today) allowed users to mirror their local music — including an iTunes library — onto cloud-based Lala accounts.

By purchasing Lala, Apple acquired technology that would enable it to bounce everyone’s iTunes libraries to online servers, so iTunes users would be able to access their collections from a variety of Apple’s devices: laptops, desktops, Apple TV set-top boxes, iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches.

As of today, Apple doesn’t let you transfer songs from iTunes to your iPhone OS device without one of its proprietary USB cables. Once it launches a cloud-based music service, those cables (or a Wi-Fi or 3G connection) would only be necessary for caching purposes, because all these devices would access the same web-based music collection.

While Apple’s hardware has embraced the cloud since .mac (now Mobile Me), its iTunes software lags far behind. Today’s news, while unfortunate for Lala users, represents good news for iTunes users, because it’s a sign that iTunes too could be headed for the cloud, obviating their need to manage music collections manually between multiple devices."

Facebook != privacy

Note the EFF's notes on how to opt out of facebooks "open privacy" stuff:

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/how-opt-out-facebook-s-instant-personalization

Talk like Newt

"Since winning control of Congress, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.) has constantly complained about "destructive" and "negative" coverage from the "liberal elite media." ... In fact, the new speaker of the House--who once described his goal as "reshaping the entire nation through the news media" New York Times, 12/14/94)--has given a great deal of thought to the media and how to manipulate them. One Newtonian axiom is "fights make news" (Boston Globe, 11/20/94). Another skill he has taught to Republican candidates through his political organization, GOPAC, is how to create a "shield issue" to deflect criticism. ... But the clearest expression of Gingrich's philosophy of media came in a GOPAC memo entitled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Distributed to GOP candidates across the country, the memo's list of words for Democrats and words for Republicans was endorsed by Gingrich in a cover letter: "The words in that paper are tested language from a recent series of focus groups where we actually tested ideas and language." Next time you hear Gingrich complain about media focusing on the negative, refer back to these lists." see: FAIR Feb 1995

RE: Language: A Key Mechanism of Control Newt Gingrich's 1996 GOPAC memo

"As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

Social Media

Yep, that's just about right....




And on that topic, there's also: