Then, last week, the announcement that Apple was acquiring Lala, a streaming music service, hit the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Peter Kafka posts that the sale went down for $80 million.

With iTunes dominating the music downloads business in the U.S., it was likely just a matter of time before the tech giant decided to spend some of its reported $32 billion in cash on something to get them into the streaming market.  Reuters is reporting that “Apple recognizes the model is going to evolve into a streaming one and this could probably propel iTunes to the next level.”

In a way, Apple is to music technology what Microsoft has been to desktops.  Apple dominates the hardware and most of the software market in portable music.  If they owned most of the major recording studios, the analogy might be complete.

The question for Apple, however, is “Why Lala?”

The streaming service has made a lot of inroads into the market, for sure; especially given their recent deal with Google for music search collaboration. On the other hand, Lala uses a Flash-based interface and Apple has been publicly averse to using that in their own technology.

It may be that Apple is really after the back-end that Lala offers, including that Google deal and streaming licenses.  This was alluded to in the NYT article, which also points out that Lala actively sought Apple and not the other way around.  It seems plausible.

Since the quiet release of iTunes Preview was launched last month, it seems that Apple is moving towards a more Web-based music option and away from the iTunes desktop.

There comes a point in life when you own one too many keys, and may get mistaken for a weighed-down, off-duty custodian minus the mop. The same is growing true of virtual online keys – the dozens of account handles, logins and passwords we repeat, recycle, tweak, and ultimately confuse and forget.

Thankfully, Vois and Facebook have linked together to sync up and streamline their accounts. Facebook members can now use the Facebook Connect utility to hook up with Vois.com (Virtual Outsourcing is Social), the world’s freshest freelance professional marketplace, without cycling through yet another registration process.

What this means is that Facebook members don’t have to create a separate account for Vois, a publicly-traded, social commerce Web company that combines the power of social networking with an online marketplace for on-demand services.

Instead, Web-savvy professionals can connect using existing Facebook profile information, friends and privacy preferences, and log into Vois.com without wasting extra keystrokes. To make this happen, Facebook members simply click the “Facebook Connect” prompt displayed on the Vois website. Whammy, it’s that easy.

Once connected, Facebook members can then share information and actions on Vois with their friends on Facebook via Facebook-fed stories and status updates.

“Facebook Connect integration was a natural fit for Vois, as Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities, which is ideally the cornerstone of Vois.com’s social commerce network,” said Gary J. Schultheis, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vois. “With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real information with them to Vois, including the basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups and more.”

The convergence of Vois and Facebook is about more than convenience and a few saved keystrokes; it’s about leveraging the well-built content and connections from one popular networking platform and using it to get a step ahead in another.

If you’ve got used electronics to get rid of—maybe an old MP3 player or a laptop you don’t really need—you can go to SellingBin and sell them. The site model is interesting, for sure, though how how well it works is still up for debate.

The company has a client list of recyclers, used electronics peddlers, and the like that peruse the site’s back-end. When you go there to list your MP3 player, let’s say, you’ll enter pertinent information about it, including an evaluation form detailing what condition it’s in and whether anything no longer works.

Buyers interesting in that type of item will then be able to see it and post a bid to buy it. Shipping and payment information are sent to you and you send the item off to the buyer. More often than not, you aren’t paid until the item is received. It generally takes about 48 hours to begin receiving offers for your item.

Most of the items to be sold, of course, should have some kind of market. Your 1990s cam-corder is probably not sellable to anyone, but your 2002 iPod probably is. Further, it doesn’t look like you’re going to get rich off the site by hitting the yard sales and posting your finds on SellingBin to profit. The buyers are almost all professionals and generally pay pretty low-ball prices for the stuff they’re interested in.

If you have a garage full of non-collectible electronics, though, this might be the way to unload some of it. Gadget freaks who’re constantly upgrading and aren’t interested in wasting time trying eBay might also find SellingBin to be a good way to unload their stuff.

If you’re a buyer looking for access to large quantities of used electronics, you can ask to become a partner with SellingBin to gain access to the back-end for purchasing.

Well, Digizal tries to be different than that—and mostly succeeds at it.

Instead of listing every app on the planet and every brand new one that comes out, whether useful or made by some guy in WhoKnowsWhere-aland, Digizal tries to be a little more selective about it. They’ve also got a nicely-built site that’s easy to understand and use.

If you’re looking for a Mac, a PC, or a smart phone app, it’ll be easy to locate here. You can search through categories of apps, by platform, or just look at what are the most-looked-at apps or the latest releases.

There are some really cool finds here if you’re looking for them and all of the searches ultimately lead you to the app’s main website or portal.

The founders of Digizal came up with the name as a takeoff of “digital” and suggest that it could be used in phrases like “digi my nizi” and “di-di-di-digizal.” The site’s mascot and Chief Nap Officer is Mongo, which is  pretty cute.

The site is fun, useful, and easy to look at. Signup is optional and only required if you’re interested in submitting a new app to be listed.

Digizal is definitely worth looking at and even using to find your needed apps. Whether you need the latest Twitter tool or are looking for iPhone games, you’ll probably find something at Digizal. Nicely done.

FilesOverMiles.com hopes to change that and offers a great service to facilitate it. It utilizes the built-in P2P in Adobe Flash 10 and merely acts as a conduit between browsers, so no server is really needed.

In fact, speeds are limited only by the network itself, since there’s no server as an intermediary, so the number of FilesOverMiles users doesn’t equate with the transfer speeds at all. That’s awesome. It uses 128 bit AES encryption, works in any browser that supports Adobe Flash Player 10, and also includes UDP hole punching.

To test this with large files, I had a friend of mine at the other end (he’s two states away on the map) and transferred a large MP3 from an online radio show/podcast. One limit we immediately ran into was the RAM buffer. The file to be sent can’t be larger than the available RAM on the sender’s system, which in my case was about 300mb at the time.

I closed some apps (I’m one of those “more the merrier” app hounds) and freed up over a gig and the transfer went fine. The file we traded was about 700mb in total size. The receiver, I later found out, can only receive files that are half the size of their total available RAM—another limitation of Adobe FP 10.

The sending and setup itself is very easy. Going to FilesOverMiles, I just browsed to the file I wanted to send from my browser. FilesOverMiles then gives you a URL that you send to your friend (we used Twitter dms to communicate this, since we were on the phone at the time). We were both using Windows systems at the time.

He navigated to the linked URL from Twitter and the file began to transfer almost immediately. Right away, I noticed the system getting bogged down because of the transfer, as would be expected if it’s using up that much RAM. So while FilesOverMiles is live and pretty fast, it’s also not likely you’re going to be able to do much of anything else while it’s working.

We tried it again from Linux to a Mac and it worked like a charm. Linux, on my end, is much less tasking on resources and I was better able to do other things while the transfer took place.

Overall, this is a great tool for quick one-off transfers. FTP and server storage space might be more convenient in many cases, for for fast one-to-one transfers without any fuss, this is a great tool.

Currently, FilesOverMiles (in beta) has trouble with many firewalls and with occasional file drops. Most of this will be resolved when the BitTorrent-style stream is implemented. Users who try the site can enter suggestions through a link at the bottom right on the front page of the site.

For what it’s designed to do, though, Comindwork is a very good app. It’s relatively easy to use, powerful, and has every feature you can imagine for project collaboration and management. Gantt charts, blogs, collaborative tools, file sharing, and so forth are all there.

Comingwork enjoys the advantage of having been built from the ground up with nearly all of its current features in mind during the process. This means the designers didn’t have to cobble together extras later on. That, in my experience, is the number one killer of the very large application.

Too often, very large apps become top-heavy and unwieldy with their over-abundance of features that are hidden in esoteric menu trees that no one but the software’s managers understand. Because Comindwork doesn’t suffer from this, it’s definitely a step above the other large-scale PM apps.

The real shining features of Comindwork, besides it’s robust nature, are its collaborative and blogging tools. These allow for easy communication and great flexibility in how that communication takes place. A nice touch is the ability to ad file attachments to tasks and project updates. So memos and such don’t need to be cut-and-pasted from their original.

Overall, if you’re a large operation that needs Web-based tools for the management of very complex projects, Comindwork is definitely worth trying. For smaller shops and freelancers, this tool is definitely well above anything you’d use and most of its functions will lay dormant for you.

The app is free to try with pricing ranging from $1/day to $20/user per month. Larger-scale versions can be purchased for local install on your own servers as well.

Vyoopoint makes this much simpler by allowing not only easy uploading and sharing, but also threaded commentary, marked updates, and more.

The site works very simply and extremely well. It’s designed with real-world experience backing the concept. Uploading designs is simple and then comments and updated designs are tracked through a storyboard-like format. In this way, the comments and input are presented and matched with the design to which they refer.

As updates are made (new design graphics uploaded), comments are cleared for the new upload, but kept attached to the old design in the earlier sequence of the storyboard. This is a great, visual, and easily-understood way to present a visual concept to your clients and makes for very easy interaction.

The site is simple to use and requires little technical knowledge to use. It’s entire Web-based, so there’s no apps or downloads. The presentation screens are extremely clean and free of “tools” that tend to distract from the design at hand.

You can even build graphics to act as if they were a website, so they appear in a browser as they would when online. This makes Web design much easier for the client to understand on-screen.

Presentations can be totally private or made public for anyone browsing through to view. Comments are likewise able to be toggled public or private.

Vyoopoint integrates very well with Basecamp, for those who use that app, and in both directions. So Basecamp info can be sent to Vyoopoint and back again. Vyoopoint even accepts swf, mov, etc.

The site is free to try and well worth the trouble. Many designers will find this to be a great way to present to clients and even co-workers without the clutter of design tools or screen captures.

Listhings.com is extremely simple. In fact, if you go there now, you’ll be presented with a blank page with a yellow sticky in the center prompting you to enter something. It remembers you via cookies, so you don’t have to create a login or anything.

Notes are created by clicking the “Add” button at the top right and the note style, color, etc. can be changed easily. They’re “grabbable,” so you can move them around the screen and they size themselves dynamically to what you’ve entered.

In fact, the site can be summed up like this: browse to it, make stickies, move them around.

That’s pretty much the whole website. You won’t find a more focused, simple, and easily-understood site than this.

Listhings has use for some people, surely, and could be poised to become popularly useful.

The question I have is where their income stream will be (I envision “popup” notes appearing as adverts) and why the reminder apps already available on my phone, notebook, or pen and paper need to be replaced in this way. Which brings up the inability to print individual notes from the site—a limiting factor in my mind.

I can see how this site could be greatly useful for some and I find it extremely refreshing that someone decided to not go to the trouble of making something overcomplicated when it definitely doesn’t need to be.

This is a great example of a good app with excellent execution and no wasted “extras.”

Crrncy.com is here to save you all that trouble. Best of all, it’s a totally free, web app, so you don’t have to do anything to use it. Just put in a dollar (or pound or whatever) figure and ask for a conversion into another currency.

It’s simple enough that it will run from the browser in most smart phones too, so you can see if that cabby is ripping you off in Sidney.

The site converts Euros, Pounds, Dollars, and Kroner. Data is updated daily from the European Central Bank (ECB), so exchanges are up to date.

If you’re into line editing, you can request a specific conversion directly through your browser’s location bar. So if you point your browser to “http://usd.crrncy.com/80”, it will convert that to the other three currencies directly on the page load. I can envision a lot of little app uses for this feature.

The site’s creator is Erik Martinsson, a student at the IT University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He plans to ad more currencies per user requests, so if you’re looking for Dinar or something, let him know.

It’s an awesome, free site and very useful.

The site has been online for quite a while (since 2004) and has undergone several revisions to perfect it in that time. Currently, I think it’s probably reached a pinnacle, in its way, and hasn’t lost its focus. One of the most evidently useful aspects of this site, as I’ve mentioned, is its focus and lack of extraneous stuff that gets in the way.

This means that the site is so simple, very little training is needed to get your office or staff on board using it. It’s intuitive with its drag/drop and simple editing entry. Anyone with the authority, such as management or shift leads, can “lock” a schedule for a period (a week, two weeks, a month, etc.) and have a text message sent to each staffer on that schedule so they’ll know when their shifts are.

The app is entirely browser based, so no downloads, plugins, or other installs are necessary. This means no IT department involvement and a minimum of fuss. Staffers can log in from home, at work, or wherever to look at or adjust schedules. Only those given the ability to make changes can make permanent changes, of course.

Staffers who can’t make changes, but are on the schedule, can make suggestions or ask for specific time off or shift trades with other staffers. This is one of the collaborative features that makes Findmyshift so useful.

Managers will find it useful as well not only for helping to automate the collaboration and setting of shifts, but also for the reports that can be generated. By plugging in a few numbers (cost/hour of operation or staff salary costs), you can even get cost:benefit reports and so forth.

Vacations, holidays, overtime approvals, etc. can all be done through Findmyshift. Very useful for the shift-based working environment. The pricing is reasonable too and is based on how far ahead you’d like to have access. To send text messages (versus emails) to staffers is also at a cost, but that too is reasonable.

You can try the app for free for two weeks to see if it works for you. Bundles come in 1, 3, 6, and 12 month scheduling blocks at tiered pricing to match. A one year subscription ($138.60USD) also comes with custom branding if you’d like the app to match your corporate site.