APPLE'S PING GETS MUCH NEEDED UPDATE

Apple announced Ping with a lot of fanfare and promise, but when users flocked to the new music social network they found it seriously lacking.  In order for a user to share their songs with others (you know being social) you had to find it in the iTunes store.  This was cumbersome and most people just stopped using it causing activity on Ping to come to a standstill.

Apple has released an update to iTunes which they hope will remedy this situation.  Ping will now interact with your iTunes library so you can share with your friends directly from there.  You can right click any song and use the drop down menu to share any song you are listening to or have in your library.  [TechCrunch]

FACEBOOK BLOCKING PING

Apple's new music social network, Ping, is being blocked by Facebook.  Apple wanted to use Connect, Facebook's friend finding API, to help bring in the user's friends.  Connect is generally open access, however if anyone wants to hit a large number times, they have to sign an agreement to protect Facebook users data and limit network impact.  Since iTunes is so massive, it is no surprise Facebook wanted the agreement in place.  Apparently, negotiations broke down, possibly due to what Steve Jobs referred to as "onerous terms" and Apple decided to use the API anyway, which is par for the course for Apple.  Facebook took exception to this and blocked access.  Apple has had to scramble to clean up the Facebook references.

Facebook and Apple are still negotiating so it is possible that Connect will re-appear in Ping at some point in the future.

[Picture courtesy of Engadget]