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LiveJournal kills free basic account offer

LiveJournal account features
If you go to sign up for a new LiveJournal account, you may notice something missing. The company behind the blogging service/social network has removed the Basic account option, while leaving the Plus and Paid options in place. For $2 a month you get the ability to post more picturs, receive more notifications, and store more media online than you could with a free Plus account. And you don't have to put up with advertising.

The Basic option used to be ad-free as well, but users didn't get advanced search options, additional storage space and many other features that came with Plus and Paid accounts. In other words, LiveJournal wasn't really making any money off of Basic account holders. You know, unless you count the fact that Basic account holders were adding value to the service by creating a community of active users that was so popular that some people were even willing to pay for advanced features.

When LiveJournal management announced the change earlier this month, LiveJournal users didn't exactly keep their concerns private. As of this writing, there are 68 pages filled with comments, most from users who are critical of the change. But since the new policy affects new users more than existing users, it will probably take a while to determine what impact the change will have.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Napster to launch web-only music service

NapsterNapster has redesigned its subscription music service and the company is launching favor of a web-based service.

Napster 4.0 lets you listen to your music collection on any internet-connected computer. The advantage to web-based software is obvious. Suddenly Napster is compatible with every Mac, Linux, and PC machine on the market, without requiring you to download and install any software. You'll still need a Windows PC running the desktop client if you want to download songs, burn them to CD, or transfer them to a portable device.

The web-based service also includes a recommendation tool, playlists managers, and music discovery features.

Google opens up FeedBurner MyBrand to all users

google feedburner mybrandHot on the heals of Google snapping up Feedburner, features that were once free paid only are starting to be opened up to all users. For instance, Google opened up Feedburner stats, a once $5/ month subscription.

Google's second free slot in FeedBurner went to the MyBrand premium service. This once $3-$14/month service that runs all feeds through publishers own domains is now open to all users. The MyBrand service allows for content publishers to obtain a transparent branded experience when their content is accessed online. All of FeedBurners services can still be utilized, but everything will run through the publishers domain (feeds.domainnamehere.com). Publishers will be able to do this by changing the CNAME in their DNS records.

The FeedBurner MyBrand service is free and accessible through FeedBurner accounts. Activation instructions can also be found upon login as well.

[via GoogleSystem]

Steve Jobs puts damper on iTunes subscription rumor

iTunesApple CEO Steve Jobs tells Reuters he has no plans to offer a subscription option for iTunes customers, despite claims that Apple was working on just such a system.

To be honest, the rumor seemed a bit unlikely, coming from an unknown company. And it's not like Apple would really need to involve a third party if it wanted to implement a subscription model.

Jobs says the subscription model has failed for most other companies that have implemented it. Apple, on the other hand has sold more than 2.5 billion songs over the past four years through the iTunes store.

Subscription service allows the record labels to collect money on an ongoing basis and provides users with a large music library. But Jobs says there's not much consumer demand for subscription based services where, if you stop paying, you lose all of your music.

Apple considering subscription option for iTunes?

iTunesTake this with a spoonful of salt. No, make that a bucket.

INTENT MediaWorks CEO Les Ottolenghi tells CNNMoney that his digital distribution company has been meeting with Apple, and that Apple is seriously considering offering iTunes customers the option of paying a monthly subscription rather than just buying music by the song or album.

Of course, given how close to the vest Apple likes to play big announcements, we wouldn't put too much stock in this guy's prediction that Apple will make an announcement within the next six months.

Not to mention the fact that iTunes is still the 800lb gorilla of online music and video stores. While subscription based stores like Napster and Rhapsody have struggled to make money, iTunes has done a pretty good job of selling music and giving customers reasons to buy iPods.

That said, Apple didn't necessarily need to partner with EMI to make DRM-free music available either. It's possible that the company is looking into the future and trying to meet the demand it expects to rise for various services like unencrypted music files, and perhaps even subscriptions.

[via iLounge]

MSDN Library is now a free download!

MSDNMicrosoft has released the MSDN library as three ISO images you can download and burn. Previously this was only available to developers who subscribed to the MSDN service. The May 2006 edition is out right now, and Rob Caron has said that future editions will also be available as they are released. Microsoft doesn't look like they will charge $1.50 for this one (which remains to be seen), and it isn't a beta either. They will have considerably less demand for this than for Office 2007 I suppose. This is great news for developers everywhere who would benefit from the library on their PC. Microsoft, thanks for making my job easier. For once.

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