Reader Round

If you have to work today ... I'm sorry

* Okay ... this is a personal appeal.  If you, or someone you know has a subscription (either print or online) to The Next American City ... please let me know.  GW's library, which I still have access to has full text via ProQuest, but ProQuest has not updated their database since last spring.  Needless to say, I don't have the money to pay $50 for the online subscription.  But if you do happen to come across a copy, and it is Issue 21 - check out the following articles:

- The Bell Tolls for Municipal Wireless: This seems like a great article about Philly's attempts to make the city the first full WiFi city in the country.

- New York's Other Banking Crisis

- Two Tales of a City: About Baltimore.

* Lifehacker had this a billion years ago - from a CEO - 12 steps to success - check it out.

* Also via Lifehacker - a service called LifeTango which helps to organize your goals - here.

* I don't know what pisses me off more - having to download a PDF or having it embedded in the web page and causing my browser to freeze.  Well a company called Issuu wants to stop annoying you - and has a neat little code you can embed in your website that makes PDFs, DOCs, and presentations all very pretty and friendly.  Check it out via TechCrunch, here.

* Speaking of Net Neutrality the other day ... apparently Australia is not a fan.  Via Wired, here, the Australian government would like to block approximately 1300 sites - such as those that show child pornography, excessive violence, how-to guides for crime, and terrorism stuff.  Yes, the Aussies are blocking sites that we can all agree are bad - but I'm sorry - its boils down to the same thing as burning books - it just shouldn't happen.  If we are concerned about what our kids can see (which is the strongest argument in this type of thing), we should put in place more strict age controls on our computers and websites.

* Did Google make a mistake in buying YouTube?  Is Hulu where it is at?  Gigaom is reporting, here,  from the FT that major music labels may be in talks with Hulu to host their premium content.  This comes just on the heels of Warner Music's fight with YouTube, causing them pull their content.  It will be interesting to see where that goes...

* One of the funniest articles on The Onion ever: Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business.  It is beyond funny because it is so true ... I am always amazed that RadioShack is still open, the one in DCUSA always seems to be loaded with people.  Here is a quote from the article:

"Have you even been inside of a RadioShack recently?" [the CEO] asked. "Just walking into the place makes you feel vaguely depressed and alienated. Maybe our customers are at the mall anyway and don't feel like driving to Best Buy? I suppose that's possible, but still, it's just...weird."

* Corrupt was shocked that Bush signed a law supporting the Gays ... I'm not.  W, I'm proud.  Here.

* USB 3.0 will be making an appearance at CES.  I'm stoked.  Are you?  Here.  In case you haven't heard, USB 3.0 is the nwe USB standard that is of course still backwards compatible with 2.0 and 1.1 - but is super fast.

* Social Search ... could it happen?  Yes.  Do we need two partners we actually use?  Yes.  Will that happen? Probably not.  As this TechCrunch article points out - the two logical partners in a social search operation are Google and Facebook.  Now, FB has already partnered with Microsoft for Live Search (which sucks and no one uses), but imagine if FB and Google go together.  Imagine when you googled something, you'd see all results in relation to things your friends did - reviews they have written, if they worked there, etc.  TechCrunch reviewed a Google and FB plugin, called SideStripe - which basically does this for them - its really cool.  Check it out!

* Lifehacker: Prius as an emergency generator ... interesting idea.  Here.

Finally, I'd like to close with this from H:

iTunes ... eh?

I started using Lala about 2 months ago - October 21st to be precise - and have been in love with it since.  I can't recall if I had read about it somewhere, or if one of my friends had invited me - but needless to say I started using it.  I got a few of my friends to start using it as well.

Lala is basically a web based iTunes ... except you can listen to every song in their catalog once for free to get a full preview (something I really think iTunes should let you do).  After which you can purchase the 'web-song' to listen only on Lala for just $0.10, or you can pay $0.89 and get a DRM-free MP3.  If you have already bought the web version, you get a $0.10 discount on the MP3.  You also get 50 free websong credits to start, and 10 additional credits for each friend you get to join!

It is generally an awesome experience, and is very easy to use.  To put icing on the cake you can download the Lala MusicMover to your home computer ... this allows you to then upload any DRM-free music you might have on your computer to Lala's servers - completely free I might add.  So basically you can access your music library, from anywhere.  Now you'd think that Apple would incorporate a service like this into MobileMe, but of course not.  That would make too much sense.

I think Lala really has the right idea ... a great web based system that can hold all your home music ... and I am on it all the time at work so I frequently buy web-songs and DRM-free MP3s (which I then also download to my home computer).  

The reason I decided to write about it today was because of a great TechCrunch rundown last week - check it out.  

You can also try out Lala by clicking here or by navigating to lala.com, but I'd prefer you click the link so I can get 10 additional free websongs :).

On the iTunes note ... my friend Danny e-mailed me a Lifehacker article about a program called Mojo.  I have not tried it but it certainly seems interesting.  You can download the DRM-free portions of your friends iTunes libraries - over the internet.  So its like Napster 2.0!!!  Yay.  Mojo is free and can be downloaded for both Mac and PC here.  The premium version allows you to actually subscribe to someones playlist - which is kind of cool.