• 90+ were killed in the season’s
  first tropical storm
• 73+ were killed in landside-ridden Guatemala alone source

• 
  Never discuss this again On Fox News today, this doctor discusses how women’s sexual desires go down as a result of taking birth control pills. The awkward silence at the end, just a second or so, feels like 20 minutes.
• 
  playing politicsThe Obama/Joe Sestak thing is kind of annoying because it happens often enough that calling people out for it is lame, but you expect more from Obama. At least this “Meet The Press” panel does.
• 
  Not a man from NantucketJames Carville sounds like the angriest human being alive in claiming that the entire federal government would’ve helped if the oil spill happened in Nantucket. We’re trying not to rhyme.

• 25,260 users plan to actually quit tomorrow source

• Pretty interesting to look at it this way, right? Time’s Joe Klein was on “The Chris Matthews Show” throwing out this theory. Simply put, A strong deregulatory vibe during the Bush administration may have tied Obama’s hands, making him look weak despite the effort he may in fact be putting in a lot of energy behind the scenes. Still a political problem, though, no matter how you look at it. In other news, BP fully admits that the well could be leaking until AUGUST. That’s right, AUGUST. source

• 90% of the people in the audience for
  “Sex and the City 2” were women
• shrek the only force more powerful
  than those women source

• It was the first truly social music service. While Lala took a little while to get its footing, when it finally did, it was nothing short of magical. With Apple’s purchase of the service back in December, we knew this day was coming, but May 31st will still be a sad day for a lot of music fans like us. Here are some reasons we’ll miss Lala but will remain hopeful about its future as part of iTunes.

A quick history of Lala

• 2006 Lala launches as an easy way to trade CDs, similar to Netflix in some ways.
• 2007 Lala adds a free, on-demand way of listening to music. It doesn’t work at all.
• 2008 The company finally nails its most popular form, a 10¢ cloud music model.
• 2009 The company runs out of cash and sells itself to Apple for around $20 million.
• 2010 Apple shuts down the site, possibly to launch a similar iTunes version. NO! *sob*

What Lala had that nobody else did

• Simple, cheap options With songs available for a mere ten cents a piece and completely free to listen to once, it created a low barrier of entry that encouraged new listening habits.
• Easy sharing You could put a Lala embed on your site and share music with other people, legally and free; a number of sites took advantage of this model, from the AV Club to Pitchfork.
• Cloud-based freedom You could put your entire library on the site and listen anywhere. Sadly, Lala never got a chance to do what would’ve really made it a big hit – put it on the iPhone.

Why Lala got away with it

• We said, ‘consumers shouldn’t have to worry about where their files are, they should be able to play their music.’ It’s actually a huge benefit for the labels, because once Lala knows the music that you listen to, it makes perfect sense to say, ‘hey, Wilco has a new album coming out.’
• Lala CEO Bill Nguyen • About the benefits of the cloud music service to record companies. They were able to sell the model to them on the idea that they could provide information that might encourage future purchases. One thing that Nguyen noted is that when people were billed by the service, they bought one out of every five songs, most of which they found through discovery. On Lala, people weren’t simply listening to their collections. They were trying to find new songs. The model worked for eMusic already, but they broadened it.  source

So, what’s next, anyway?

• Well, it could be the next iTunes. Or not. With the service’s recent acquisition by Apple, it’s entirely possible that they’ll take this model and completely make it theirs. Or they might ditch certain parts of it and focus exclusively on the cloud service. Lala was out of money by the end, so they couldn’t see the idea through. But Apple, as you might know, has a ton of money and clout to pull this idea off. Or they could stick with their walled garden approach. We’ll see.

Let’s remember how great it was, guys.

• Post on Twitter about how much you’ll miss the little music locker that could, and we’ll reflect it here. Might as well, right? The tags #riplala or “lala.com” will work just fine. source

• We like the idea, we like the sentiment, but could we, you know, possibly have like Spoon or Kanye or Radiohead or someone else sing it? Heck, we’d even be fine if Nickelback sung it. Nothing against “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but it’s seriously the un-hippest song ever. These gals seriously sound like a bunch of lefty bizarro hippies.

• Hey, it’s like we’re looking at us. Except not as good. Time’s new Newsfeed blog has a similar news+short approach to us, except with one major difference. (OK, two; it has a budget.) It’s super-cluttered. The headlines are too bold. There are too many images. The bar on the left gets in the way. And it doesn’t do anything interesting with the idea. There are other sites that do way more interesting things with this idea. The Atlantic Wire, for example. source