Dear Robert S.,

The Lala service will be shut down on May 31st.

In appreciation of your support over the last five years, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store. If you purchased and downloaded mp3 songs from Lala, those songs will continue to play as part of your local music library.

Remaining wallet balances and unredeemed gift cards will be converted to iTunes Store credit (or can be refunded upon request). Gift cards can be redeemed on Lala until May 31st.

Click here or visit Lala.com/support for more information, or to view Lala’s Terms of Service.

Thank you.

Lala

Lala was / is such a fantastic website too. This is a shame. I really hope Applesoft does something outstanding with its technology.

I also changed the name of the site from :skyecade online to simply robertsinclaire.com. It’s been something I’ve been toying with for a while now. All the original URLs will still work, however, so feel free to keep plugging in skyecade.net if that’s what you prefer.

Lastly, I added a “Subscribe Via Email” section to the side bar for people who would like all my wonderful posts sent directly to their inbox. Never again will you miss out on the pure awesomeness which is :skyecade online robertsinclaire.com. Just pop in your email address, hit “Subscribe”, and wait by your inbox. Oh yeah!

Okay, off to jury duty……again.

International Space Station infected by a Virus. – That’s just sad. Really, really sad.

Google launches Chrome – I wanted to wait until I had some alone time with this browser before I wrote about it. It’s very sleek and super fast, especially if you use a lot of Google’s services (which I do). There is a darkside however. For you security consciousness people out there, you may want to check out Steve Gibson’s security podcast, aptly named Security Now. I’ll be sticking with Firefox for the time being.

Ubiquity, yet another reason not to ditch Firefox. – As you all know, another reason why Firefox is so near and dear to our hearts is because of all the great extensions available for it. Ubiquity is just another fine example of what a great extension can do for you. It has sped up my surfing by 28.37%, no kidding. Install it, check out the tutorial, and take it for a spin.

Google to Acquire Valve? – Say What? I’ll believe it when I see it. If you don’t know who Valve is, don’t bother clicking the link. If you don’t know who Google is, get off my site.

Amazon buys Shelfari. – Old news, I know, but I’m still excited. One of the reasons I stuck with Shelfari over Goodreads was the fact that Amazon was an investor in the company. Now that they own it, let all the Amazon goodness ooze right down onto it. Oh, and check out my shelf. Sweet stuff there.

I’ve been using runningmap.com – This isn’t new either, but it’s new to me. I thought I’d throw this out there to my fellow runners. This is what I ran today.

His name is Robert P. Lindeman. Apparently, the case was leaning in his favor, at least until the opposing counsel sprung the following question:

“Was Lindeman Flea?”

At the time, the jury had no idea what this meant. It turns out that Dr. Lindeman had a blog, and on this blog he went by the name Flea. This obviously isn’t bad by itself, but what he was writing on his blog was a bit of a shocker. According the Boston Globe, Lindeman scoffed at the plaintiff’s case and the plaintiff’s lawyer. He wrote things like the jury was dozing. He even revealed what their defense strategy was.

Needless to say, the defense quickly settled the next day.

I don’t usually write about stories like this, but this one caught my attention. Probably because of a discussion I had a month ago with a friend of mine who was stating the reasons why NOT to blog. One of his arguments was that you can get busted for things that you don’t want other people to find out. He’s not the only one with this view either. But that’s no reason why NOT blog. Just don’t blog about stuff you shouldn’t be blogging about, e.g., the details of an on going court case that you happen to be a part of. If you’re going to blog about something, or comment about something, or post about something, or……almost any case where you add something to the almighty Internet, assume anyone can get a hold of that information. Because for all intents and purposes, they can.

Are you telling me that those devices couldn’t be mistaken for a bomb? Why not? Is it because of the funny little cartoon character on the front? The Vietcong use to stuff grenades into cute little teddy bears. A cute little teddy bear couldn’t hurt you, right?

Even if they did overreact, good! I’d rather have them overreact than not react at all. If we had overreacted to all the intelligence coming in to the country five years ago we could have possibly prevented 9/11.

Come on people, smarten up! We’re living in a dangerous world. Enough with the smug attitudes.

You can check out live coverage of the keynote, courtesy of uneasysilence.com. They also have a list of other websites offering live coverage of the event.

Though he may be despised by a good chunk of the digg community, he is still arguably one of the most respected business men in the internet world. This news will surely send ripples throughout cyberspace.

Regardless of my feelings towards his actions at Netscape, I still wish him well with his next endeavor. What ever that may be.

Then there’s Netscape.com. You might notice some similarities between this site and Digg’s. That’s because Netscape is a complete clone of Digg, through and through. That’s fine, shitty, but fine. I’ve seen this done plenty of times before. What I’m confused about, however, is what Netscape’s head honcho, Jason Calacanis, is proposing to do next. He is offering to pay the top posters of Newsvine, Digg, Reddit, and Flickr if they post a minimum of 150 stories per month to Netscape. They would receive $12,000 a year and be dubbed Netscape Navigators. Clever, huh? But that’s not what I’m confused about either. Business is business after all.

What baffles me is this; if you are going to hire professional posters (pseudo-editors if you will) to add content to your site, then why clone Digg at all? The whole point of Digg and the web 2.0 movement is to rely almost soley on user interaction and participation. A read/write web instead of the static web of old. Why not clone Wired, or Slashdot, or CNN.com for that matter? Or better yet, come up with something original.

Leo Laporte of TWiT.tv threw in his two cents, saying that Jason has once again “whipped up a nice publicity stunt”, and a distasteful one at that. He further states that the success of Digg, and the other above mentioned sites, isn’t limited to any one set of users, but rather by user participation as a whole. I tend to agree.

Here’s where the gloves come off. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg.com, said the Netscape situation was Bullshit on Friday in his weekly podcast. Jason retorted by saying, “This is a serious discussion and I’m saddened that Kevin has reduced it to personal attacks.” Of course Kevin retaliated with this post on his blog, ending it with:

“ps – have a beer and relax, it’s just diggnation ”

I had to chuckle. This is geek gossip at its best folks!

In a related story, Netscape got hacked today. Visitors to the site were greeted with a pop-up message saying”Hi to all you diggers out there“.
You can’t make this stuff up.

ISPs would not be allowed to “block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair or degrade” access to content or to prevent users from attaching devices of their choosing to the network. They would also be barred from making special deals with content providers to ensure speedier delivery or improved quality of service.”

This is a huge step towards internet neutrality.

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