frogs

Update 6:21 p.m. PST: The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple and Lala have struck a deal.

Apple acquired Lala on Friday, unlikely offering much for the streaming-music service.

Sources with knowledge of the discussion told me Apple is interested in bringing some of Lala's engineers onboard. According to the sources, Apple is impressed by Lala's technology. The 4-year-old Lala scans users' hard drives and creates a duplicate music library that they can access from Web-enabled devices. The company also sells songs for a dime each.

I posted a story on … Read more

Tagged Frog allows users to organize documents, images, links, and more using tags. Although we like the idea behind the program, its interface left us scratching our heads.

Aesthetically, the interface is pleasing, with a sleek and simple design. And we like the idea behind the program--how many times have we wished for a way to search for a document using a keyword? Despite Tagged Frog's potential usefulness, however, it's not particularly intuitive. Users are able to drag and drop items that they'd like to tag, which is nice, and the tagging process is simple enough. The … Read more

Facebook most's popular music application comes from iLike, and soon the company will try to turn that social-networking cachet into song sales.

Seattle-based iLike, a social music service, is expected to launch a music download store in coming days, perhaps as soon as Thursday, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. Last month, CNET News reported that iLike was in talks with the top four recording companies about securing licenses for downloads.

The new store will debut as a beta version and will feature songs from at least three of the four top major recording companies, according … Read more

CNET News reporter Greg Sandoval joins the podcast to talk about his multipart series on the once-promising music start-up SpiralFrog, which folded last year as a result of factors including inexperienced and divided leadership, wild spending, and strategic missteps. He talks about what lessons the saga might hold for other start-ups.

That, plus other headlines of the day on Tuesday's CNET News Daily Podcast.

Today's stories:

Chevy Volt to pull 230 mpg in city

Apple adds antiglare to 15-inch MacBook Pro

PayPal targets students, parents with debit cards

MLB beefs up Roku's rotation

Inside the short, troubled life of a music start-up… Read more

Below are several e-mail exchanges that were obtained by CNET News during a review of SpiralFrog's rapid rise and fall. For the complete series about SpiralFrog's collapse, please go here and here.

The first chain focuses on Amir Khan, one of SpiralFrog's financial backers, and his skepticism about SpiralFrog's marketing strategy in the summer of 2008. The second thread is a debate between Vesa Suomalainen, SpiralFrog's former chief technology officer, and Joe Mohen, the company's founder and chairman that occurred last fall.

It should be noted that the e-mail exchanges were originally forwarded to … Read more

Ever since ad-supported music service SpiralFrog shut its doors in March, former users have complained about receiving a glut of spam.

"SpiralFrog seems to have sold their members' e-mail (addresses) to spammers," a CNET reader commented in response to a May story about some of the company's struggles. "I signed up for the service with a unique e-mail address. As soon as the service shut down, I started getting massive amounts of spam sent to that address. Anyone else have this problem? Pretty slimy."

It's still unclear how many spammers obtained a list of … Read more

In July 2008, two months before start-up SpiralFrog's aspirations were shredded by the souring economy and a series of management gaffes, the long knives were already drawn in the music service's executive suite.

In a private meeting, CEO Mel Schrieberg was stripped of most of his power after SpiralFrog's board grew tired of his heavy spending on salaries and ineffective marketing strategies. Even worse for Schrieberg, the man intent on driving him out was an old friend and one of his main allies at the company, founder Joe Mohen.

"The board wants him removed now," … Read more

Three years ago this month, the Financial Times and The New York Times chronicled the emergence of an untried but promising new digital-music service: SpiralFrog.

The start-up would offer music free of charge to consumers and attempt to hand the bill to advertisers. Since then, we've seen a dozen companies make names for themselves by offering their own twist on the ad-supported music model, including MySpace Music, Imeem, and Pandora. But regardless of how anyone has tweaked it, not a single service in the still-nascent sector has proven that it knows how to offer consumers a compelling free-music service … Read more

The dot-com era had eToys, Webvan, and Pets.com. The digital-entertainment boom has SpiralFrog.

The day SpiralFrog likely reserved a corner in the pantheon of the Web's most noteworthy busts came on July 14, 2008. At 2 a.m. that day, an agitated Amir Khan, an executive at hedge fund 3V Capital Management, SpiralFrog's main financial backer, e-mailed several fellow board members at the pioneering ad-supported music service.

Khan was frustrated by SpiralFrog's marketing efforts. In one case, the start-up spent $300,000 to host a video from pop singer Alicia Keys that managers claimed would draw … Read more