Monthly Archives: April 2010

LaLa: Over and Out!

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Today, subscribers to the 5-year old service LaLa received this email message:

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.

I have been writing about LaLa since it’s Used CD trading times and through their dramatic change in business model. Like many other LaLa users, I have been wondering exactly how would Apple incorporate the LaLa service (basically streaming music from the “cloud” for free once and unlimited if you pay 10 cents per track) into their iTunes strategy since they purchased the Palo Alto-based company back in December.

The news today gives SOME idea of what those plans may be. Here are my two cents:

  • Not unexpected to see LaLa (as a separate entity) shutting down. No surprises there.
  • What is a surprise is that they are crediting users for all web song purchases. I assumed that there would be “something” ported over into whatever incarnation there may be on iTunes in connection with any account you may have there, to extend the experience. Now, although I am not losing money on this change, I have wasted time… If I wanted to purchase the same songs for streaming (assuming that they are offered in streaming format and that they are offered at the same price through iTunes or whatever Apple’s new service ends up being called), I am going to have to scroll through my 9,000+ library to figure out which ones are web songs that I care about and which are downloads (that I keep anyway).

Why did they do things this way? Perhaps developing the technology to bring “in-house” the collections of current LaLa wasn’t worth it, in Apple’s mind (with Apple’s new role as the IBM of the 21st Century, it could be the case). Porting over data from a “handful” of fanatic users like myself wasn’t worth their time… and they may be right, sadly.

While I don’t feel “betrayed” as I did when Last.FM sold out to its parent company CBS, I do have VERY mixed feelings about this move. I know Apple will come up with something in June and that something will likely have its home in the “cloud” as FastCompany accurately assesses: think “web-based iTunes or something”.

I keep thinking: the only way you can REALLY control the way things work for you is you do them yourself. But then, you will find yourself spending time and energy developing/hosting solutions to make things work your way. Is it worth it? Probably no. Does it dissapoint me when I things change on me overnight? Still does… anyway… End of rant! Happy Friday to you all!

Social Media and Community: not either or

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From luc legay

Maybe no more than a year or two ago, I used to think of Twitter and Facebook as ways to drive traffic to our “main” online communities: TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes. The hope was that we could reach out to people interested in what we had to offer in either community on these other growing social networks and try to get them to visit and sign up as members…

Time passed and we realized that was happening, but not to the extent that we were hoping. While some people would visit and sign up for our social networks, something else that was VERY interesting was going on. If we shared a link to an interesting discussion going on in, say, TuDiabetes and included the title of the discussion on our Diabetes Hands Foundation Facebook page, if the topic was interesting, the discussion didn’t depart the page. Fans (or “likers“, I guess, would be the new term) on the page would engage in discussion DIRECTLY on the page and not leave Facebook at all.

Think of it: the convenience! You simply have to monitor one site (or few sites, maybe), keeping an eye on your main feed, and relevant elements are presented to you, on which you can jump and participate commenting about them, liking them or sharing them with others. It’s simple… and it’s brilliant!

Something similar happens on Twitter, though perhaps not in a way that is as easy to visualize because Twitter is less structured.

So, next time you are wondering whether your community should live on a space separate from Facebook and Twitter or be a part of these growing spaces, don’t think either or: you may already have a community going on in two or all three places.

(Almost) 8 years blogging…

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What does it mean? Don’t know. Nearly 2,000 posts later and 3,000 days later, blogging just feels so normal… kinda like brushing my (slowing fading hair) or having a cup of coffee.

I’ve had my ups and downs: been through periods of posting 3-4 times a day (back in 2006) and times of posting 3-4 times a month (mid-2009) when I was deeper into Twitter… well THAT much hasn’t changed!

If you read this, do you have any favorite posts from the past 8 years?

How to add a Facebook "Like" button to your WordPress blog?

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A couple of months ago, my friend Danilo helped me migrate my blog to its new WordPress home. Besides posting, I’ve spent the past few weeks learning the ropes of the WP backend.

WordPress lets you choose themes for your blog and the theme Danilo picked (for which I thank him!) is called Thesis. If you are using Thesis like me, I recommend you follow these steps to add a Facebook “Like” button at the bottom of all your posts.

One small thing, though:

I HIGHLY recommend you install the Thesis OpenHook PlugIn recommended by the author. It will save you a lot of time and protect you from making dangerous mistakes mis-handling PHP files via FTP.

A small correction to the WordPress listing for the Thesis OpenHook plugin: it reads “Visit Design -> Thesis OpenHook and customize to your heart’s content!”

Actually, to customize things to your heart’s content, you’re supposed to click on the Appearance tab on the left of your WordPress backend and click on the Thesis OpenHook link.

Ah! If you find this post useful, please click to Like below! ;)

Update on 4/23/2010 (from Jim F. Munro’s blog post about this):

Jim posted a workaround on his blog showing how to display the “Like” buttons on all posts appearing on the home page of Thesis-themed WP blogs. As you can see, it works like a charm!

Facebook Listens!

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I am happy to report Facebook seems to quietly be listening to feedback about their changes, including changes they rolled out to pages earlier this week.

I noticed a few minutes ago that we CAN actually see ALL people who like our pages (see the red box in the screenshot to the left). This is good news, not only because it’s a useful feature BUT because it shows that Facebook listens.

Yay for them!!

I don't "like" the recent changes to Facebook Pages

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Today Facebook launched the change on “formerly known as fan pages” letting Facebook users LIKE the pages, as opposed to become fans of the page. According to Facebook:
“To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.”

To a certain extent, I thought this was a good thing (for those of us running a Facebook Page). But two things came along with this:
1) As a page administrator, you used to be able to click on a “See All” link near your fan box and see all the people who have become fans. This allowed you to choose among them to promote to Admins (if you were on a page you managed) or Add as a Friend (if you were on somebody else’s page), as shown below.

Now, you can only see all the people who “like” a page who are your friends…

2) Facebook argue that they are promoting consistency across Facebook. That is not entirely so. While it is true that you can “Like” other comments/photos/videos/etc. throughout the site, “liking” a Facebook page can lead to unexpected communications from pages (via the Facebook feed and in the form of page updates which end up in your email)… so it is misleading, because it’s not consistent with other types of like.

If you ask me, they’ve reduced the value of Pages to a certain extent by increasing the chances that anyone can “like” a page, but not making it clear that you are essentially following that group, not just a single conversation as is the case with liking others things on Facebook.

Can’t say I am too happy with the change… :(

Caetano Veloso in San Francisco

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Last night I had the amazing opportunity to witness legendary Brazilian musician and activist Caetano Veloso perform in San Francisco. He was accompanied by a trio of AMAZING musicians backing him on guitar, drums and bass/Fhender Rhodes piano.

He showered us with tracks from his entire musical career with an emphasis on his latest album (you can listen to all tracks here). Below is a sample from another live performance by Caetano from a couple of years ago, singing “Desde Que O Samba E Samba.” At age 67, it’s amazing how creative and alive he continues to be!

Live “Caetano Veloso” (HD) from JuicyLime on Vimeo.