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Posts Tagged ‘Lala’

Weekly Poll: Why Is Apple Building a Massive, $1 Billion Data Center

In last week’s poll, we asked if one company will come to dominate cloud computing. We had 115 responses.

Today we posted about the massive data center that Apple is building in Maiden, NC. We know so little about what Apple plans to do with the 500,000 square foot data center. So, we want to ask you: Why is Apple building a massive, $ billion data center?

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Why is Apple building a massive, $1 billion data center?(answers)

Speculation runs the gamut.

Is it to give Apple the ability to deliver its own content?

From Dan Rayburn:

“…it does indicate that over time, third party CDNs like Akamai and Limelight could very well lose a large portion of Apple’s business. While it’s way to early to speculate what kind of content Apple will deliver and in what volume, this strategy is nearly identical to what we’ve seen Microsoft do over the years.”

People point to Apple’s Lala acqusition as a case in point that Apple wants to offer iTunes in the cloud.

Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com gives this scenario:

“What is of value is the personal music storage service which was an often overlooked component of Lala’s business. As Apple did with the original iPods, Lala realized that any music solution must include music already possessed by the user. The Lala setup process provides software to store a personal music library online and then play it from any web browser alongside web songs they vend. This technology plus the engineering and management team is the true value of Lala to Apple.”

Will One Company Come To Dominate Cloud Computing?

We asked that question last week. We had 115 people respond. About 45 percent of you said, no, there is too much diversity in the market for it to be dominated by one company:

So, what do you think? Why is Apple building this massive data center?

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Talkcast 10pm tonight: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the Googlephone

Filed under: TUAW Business, Podcasts

We had a fun show last week, as we had a crowd of several TUAW team members; we were also joined (about halfway through) by our friend and frequent guest Ross Rubin of Engadget and NPD. The hour passed by with us mulling Apple’s Lala acquisition and what the company might choose to do with this newly bought expertise. You can download the shows direct from Talkshoe or subscribe on iTunes.

Tonight, we’re back live at 10 pm ET with the usual gang of ruffians, and at least two stories to talk about: the impending arrival of the Googlephone, and the unfortunate display problems and shipping delays for the 27″ iMacs. Of course, we’re happy to be detoured and derailed by your comments, questions and pontifications… but we won’t know about any of those unless you call in and join us.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the “TalkShoe Web” button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantange of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8.

If you’ve got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the TalkShoe ‘ShoePhone’ VoIP client or with the free Gizmo (now a Google product) or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you soon!

Photo:

TUAWTalkcast 10pm tonight: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the Googlephone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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More on Apple, LaLa and the future of iTunes

Filed under: Apple Corporate, iTS, Rumors, Internet, Internet Tools, iTunes

There’s an interesting article at The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) today (subscription required) suggesting that Apple’s recent acquisition of LaLa could mean a web-streaming model for a future version of iTunes. The speculation began last week, and today more information has emerged.

Quoting a source “…who has been briefed on Apple’s plans,” the WSJ reports that LaLa executives have been given key roles at Apple, and that members of the existing iTunes team will report to them. The article also reiterates the $85 million price tag, which TechCrunch recently disputed.

While a streaming model makes sense for both Apple and consumers — Apple could sell music through search engines, etc. while customers could eliminate space-hogging libraries from their computers — such a move would be a radical departure for Apple, which has insisted that customers want to “own” a physical copy of their music.

Lala’s service scanned your hard drive for songs you own to stream at will (think a web-based version of Apple’s Home Sharing). Songs you don’t own could be streamed for $0.10 each with a download “upgrade” available. All of this would require huge amounts of storage and bandwidth from Apple. Perhaps that’s what the new North Carolina server facility is for.

As for Apple, mum’s the word. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans,” said Apple spokesman Steve Dowling.

[Via Mac Rumors]

TUAWMore on Apple, LaLa and the future of iTunes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple buys music streamer Lala, but what’s it getting?

Last week’s rumors have become this weekend’s facts, as various sources are confirming a possible deal we discussed on Friday: Apple has purchased the music streaming service Lala. Right now, Apple’s iTunes dominates the US music download sales, and does very well in many overseas markets, but the company has so far refused to experiment with any delivery model other than downloads. That will almost inevitably change, but the purchase of Lala isn’t necessarily a sign that “inevitably” means “soon.”

The case for this meaning that Apple is ready to start streaming was made by an unnamed source in a Reuters report, who told the news service that, “Apple recognizes that the model is going to evolve into a streaming one and this could probably propel iTunes to the next level.” As our original report noted, Apple has also been rumored to be testing a streaming service for video content; adding music to the menu seems like an obvious choice.

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It’s Almost Here: Exclusive Video Of Lala’s Upcoming iPhone App

Last March I wrote a preview post showing off Lala’s upcoming iPhone app, which gives users the ability to stream their entire music collection from the cloud, without having to worry about syncing their files. At the time Lala wasn’t ready to give a release date for the app, but our impression was that it was due out fairly soon. Obviously that wasn’t the case. But now we’ve gotten our hands on the latest version of Lala for the iPhone, which was just submitted to Apple for approval. And it’s safe to say that it was worth the wait.

For those that haven’t used Lala before, here’s a quick overview of the service: Lala revolves around the concept of the ‘web song’ — you’re allowed to listen to any song you want totally free exactly once. If you like it, you can then pay 10 cents for the right to stream it as many times as you’d like from then on. This means that you can ‘purchase’ and entire album for around a dollar. You can also use Lala’s Music Mover tool to upload your entire library of MP3s to the cloud free of charge. This is all built on top of a very slick interface, but so far it has come with one downside: because all of the songs are streamed, users didn’t have a way to access them when they weren’t at a computer. Lala’s iPhone app changes that.

The app will be familiar to anyone who has used the iPhone’s native iPod app. The big difference is that all of your songs are streamed from the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about syncing your songs. The app is also better for music discovery than the normal music app, because you don’t have to wait for songs to download — you can instantly add an album to your music library in one click. And it’s significantly cheaper.

Of course, streaming has its own problems. Normally if you’re disconnected from a streaming music service, your music goes dead. Fortunately the Lala app uses caching to store hundreds of songs from your library, which it has waiting in case your connection dies. Lala wouldn’t say exactly how many songs are saved, but they say that the app uses some intelligence to determine what gets cached (e.g. it will generally save songs you’ve most recently added to your library).

So what was the reason for the delay? Lala CEO Geoff Ralston says that “basically everything” had issues, from dealing with licensing from content owners to tweaking the app itself. Suffice to say, it works very well now, and is sure to be a hit among Lala users. It has good timing too: Lala just launched as one of the partners powering Google’s music search service, which is sure to drive a lot of traffic to the site.

Other music streaming apps coming for the iPhone include Spotify, though that isn’t out in the US.

Check out a video walkthrough of the app below.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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iTunes Connects With Facebook And Twitter

Apple’s Rock and Roll event is full swing, and they’ve just announced that you’ll be able to share albums you’re interested in over Facebook and Twitter. This isn’t exactly a unique feature — we’ve seen music sites like Lala and plenty of others tap into Facebook Connect and Twitter for some time. But this is Apple, which has been notoriously slow moving when it comes to integrating parters into their own applications. And, of course, iTunes is now the biggest music retailer in the world, with over 100 million accounts and 8.5 billion songs downloaded, which means that even if a small fraction of iTunes users take advantage of the new sharing functionality, that will still represent a lot of sharing.

Note that this version of iTunes apparently does not have the social playlist features that had been rumored in the weeks leading up to today’s event.

Image via GDGT

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Poll: What 3 Web Apps or Services Excite You Most?

One year ago today we first asked that question, so now is a good time to ask it again. What 3 web apps or services do you find the most exciting right now? Note that ‘exciting’ is the keyword, so they won’t necessarily be your 3 favorite or most used web apps or services. For example Facebook would make many peoples list of 3 favorite sites, but does it get you all tingly with excitement these days? So, what we want to know is: what 3 apps get your juices flowing right now.

We did an informal poll at the ReadWriteWeb office (actually a Skype room) and our picks are below. We’d love to know yours as well, so please leave a comment telling us the 3 web apps or services that excite you the most.

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RWW Team:

Richard MacManus: Pachube (connecting environments), Peoplebrowsr desktop (Twitter app), Wolfram Alpha (computational knowledge engine)

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Know Thy Congressman (a bookmarklet that displays political and biographical information), Apture (adds multimedia to websites), Blip.fm (online music)

Frederic Lardinois: Lala (music), Gmail, and Seesmic Web (lifestreaming)

Dana Oshiro: Geo: foursquare (explore your city), Hype Machine (online music), Boxee (social media center)

Jolie O’Dell: Twitter, Gmail, PixelPipe (media gateway)

You:

Tell us in the comments!

Cat pic: Tabbymom was B and V Cats

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