likes

Did Apple pay $80 million or $17 million for Lala?

Two prominent technology writers are reporting vastly different stories about what Apple paid for music service Lala.

Peter Kafka, from The Wall Street Journal-owned blog All Things Digital, cited anonymous sources in a Monday report who said Apple plunked down $80 million for Lala. In a story published Tuesday, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch cited his own sources who disputed that price and said Lala was acquired for $17 million.

I wish I knew who was right, but my reporting came up with nothing solid. I will say that from the second I heard Kafka's number I was skeptical. After … Read more

Sources: Apple wants technology from struggling Lala

Update 6:21 p.m. PST: The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple and Lala have struck a deal.

Apple acquired Lala on Friday, unlikely offering much for the streaming-music service.

Sources with knowledge of the discussion told me Apple is interested in bringing some of Lala's engineers onboard. According to the sources, Apple is impressed by Lala's technology. The 4-year-old Lala scans users' hard drives and creates a duplicate music library that they can access from Web-enabled devices. The company also sells songs for a dime each.

I posted a story on … Read more

Woman to live-stream birth of her child

This is the moment when a live stream will become a love stream.

A 23-year-old teacher from Minnesota named Lynsee, who is withholding her last name to preserve her anonymity, has decided not to withhold your fascination with every moment of the birth of her first child.

She has chosen to broadcast what some would describe as the most personal moment of their lives. Yes, you can watch her first born emerge into this vibrant but confused world. Live on MomsLikeMe.com.

Some will feel this is media exposure gone beyond the bounds of filmic exposition. But Lynsee, who has … Read more

An unofficial way to 'dislike' things on Facebook

Facebook's "like" feature has been around since February, but the massive social network never provided users with a way to quickly voice their opinions going the other way. French developer Thomas Moquet took matters into his own hands by creating a cute (albeit useless) Firefox extension that adds a dislike button to Facebook, letting users who have it installed mark things they don't like.

In order to make the tool work, Moquet had to use his own servers, which keep track of every item that's disliked as well as who clicked it. Any other Facebook … Read more

Google brings online music to the masses

How far we've come in such a short time. When I began this blog in 2007, finding a particular song online was an exercise in frustration. You could subscribe to an all-you-can-eat service like Rhapsody, but cheapskates and occasional music listeners either had to dig deep, engage with a questionably legal file-trading service, or settle for 30-second previews from iTunes or one of its Web-based competitors.

Since then, as readers of this blog know, dozens of sites offering free streaming music have emerged, from the dead-simple like Songerize and its successor Songite (enter a song title to play it … Read more

Music search is Google's newest tune

LOS ANGELES--Already the far-and-away leader in search, Google wants to be a big player in music discovery, too.

The search giant teamed up with News Corp.'s MySpace and streaming service Lala for the Wednesday debut of the new Google music search feature at the historic Capitol Records building in Hollywood. With the new music search, which had been internally code-named "OneBox" when news of the project broke earlier this month, search queries pertaining to something like a song, artist, lyrics, or album will bring up links to streaming songs from iLike and MySpace, as well as links … Read more

Microsoft's MSN in talks with MySpace about music tie-up

Microsoft's MSN is in preliminary talks with MySpace about using the social-networking site's music service, MySpace Music, to help power music offerings on the giant portal.

While sources at both companies cautioned that the talks are still early, Microsoft, which has its own music site that it programs with original and partnered content, execs are interested in goosing it.

That's because MSN Music consistently ranks substantially lower than other big online music properties in terms of traffic, while MySpace Music is always near the top.

Sources said Microsoft execs don't think they can do as good … Read more

Portal Shirt lets you simulate teleportation

Update at 4:21 p.m. PDT: As some of our readers pointed out, this shirt first appeared on ThinkGeek as an April Fools' joke. Our bad. We'd still like to see a shirt like this one day, though.

Like huh? Unlike the Wi-Fi Detector and Dynamic Life T-shirts, which could be considered moderately useful, the Interactive Portal Shirt from ThinkGeek simply doesn't seem viable. Mounted in front of the apparel is a wireless 5.8GHz pinhole camera and TFT (thin film transistor) LCD display. The shooter projects what you see to the person wearing the other shirt … Read more

Source: iLike to debut downloads on Facebook app

I don't have it confirmed yet, but it appears iLike is preparing to integrate its new music download store into its popular Facebook application sometime soon.

According to one music industry source, Facebook users may be able to start buying downloads from iLike's Facebook app as soon as this week. Seattle-based iLike and its new parent company MySpace aren't wasting anytime testing Facebook.

On Wednesday, MySpace announced that it had aquired iLike for an undisclosed amount of money. The news that the two sides were close to the deal had leaked days ago, so it wasn't … Read more