like

After I expressed my disappointment with Ping yesterday, a helpful reader pointed me to Like.fm as an example of the promise of social music.

Here's how it works. First, download and install the free plug-in for iTunes. (There's also a WinAmp version for you holdouts.) Whenever you play a song from iTunes, Like.fm posts the title and artist on a public Web page. Other users can then click on the "play" button on that page and if a video of the song exists on YouTube, it'll start playing. If you link Like.fm … Read more

I followed Apple's music event keynote live on my MacBook and as CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated the upcoming Ping social-networking service for iTunes 10, I had a strange sense of deja vu. Ping lets iTunes users connect to friends, share their now-playing lists publicly, and make recommendations. It's built into the iTunes desktop client software and accessible from mobile devices as well.

Where have I heard this before? Let's see, iLike was kind of a social network. The Rdio subscription service has a social-networking element. But I'm thinking earlier than that. MySpace? No, that was more … Read more

Google has snapped up Like.com, the start-up announced Friday, as Google puts its product-shopping search strategy on the front burner.

Techcrunch, which reported a deal was in progress earlier in the week, said the official deal could be for as much as $100 million. "We were the first to bring visual search to shopping, the first to build an automated cross-matching system for clothing, and more. We see joining Google as a way to supersize our vision and supercharge our passion," said Munjal Shah, co-founder and CEO, in a statement posted on Like.com's home page.… Read more

Microsoft on Tuesday introduced the latest update to its plucky come-from-behind search engine, Bing, offering specialized results for music, TV, movies, and games. (CNET's Ina Fried has the full details.)

On the music front, Bing now offers playable search results: users can play a full-length version of each song once, and 30-second samples after that. The feature is similar to what Google introduced in October, provided by partner iLike. (Google also had a partnership with Lala, but Apple acquired that company in December and discontinued its online music-streaming service in May.)

If you like the song, you can then … Read more

Vehicle registration data adds weight to the stereotype that men drive sports cars and trucks and women drive small, practical cars and crossovers.

A survey by TrueCar.com of more than 13 million cars over the last two years in the U.S. found gender differences in the types of cars that are registered to men and women. More cars are registered to men than women, with women making up only 36 percent of vehicles registrants even though the fairer sex represents 51 percent of the country's population. However, the data does not take into consideration the buying decision-maker … Read more

Each time you see a nice photo or interesting link on your friends' Facebook walls, you would probably click the "Like" button to give the person a virtual pat on the back. Wouldn't it be great to have such a button in real life?

That's exactly what the Facebook Like Button Stamp does. U.K.-based design studio Nation created the product, which is essentially a rubber stamp that lets you "Like" paper documents complete with the thumbs-up icon. It isn't in mass production, but the company seems to be assessing market interest … Read more

Oh, what's the big deal?

People appreciated those Facebook privacy settings that they had to spend hours working out. For 50 percent of those people, it was so much fun they even changed their settings at some point. Soon, they got bored of them and just wanted them simpler. So Facebook came along and made them simpler.

What's the big deal?

We at Facebook are convinced that you should be forced to share as much as possible because it's good for you. It's like dragging your kid to elementary school. Except that you're the little … Read more

Now that the Facebook "Like" button is all over the darned Internet, it's turning out to be both a privacy nightmare (shocker) and a security risk, to boot. Look for tortured nautical analogies about halfway through the show. In bigger news, though, Steve Jobs takes the stage at All Things D (we dissect) and AT&T makes big changes to its data plan offerings (we debate).

When Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg recently announced a "Like" button that publishers could place on their Web pages, he predicted it would make the Web smarter and "more social."

What Zuckerberg didn't point out is that widespread use of the Like button allows Facebook to track people as they switch from CNN.com to Yelp.com to ESPN.com, all of which are sites that have said they will implement the feature.

Even if someone is not a Facebook user or is not logged in, Facebook's social plug-ins collect the address of the … Read more