WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rogue Amoeba Software’s military capabilities took a large step forward on Saturday with the commissioning of the Rogue Amoeba Air Force. Software Engineer Mike Ash was promoted to the rank of General and named Chief of the RAAF in an elaborate ceremony.

In a speech given during the ceremony, General Ash stated, “I am proud to inaugurate a new day for Rogue Amoeba’s military forces. We shall toil ceaselessly to create a proud new tradition in the RAAF, and we shall not rest until the world is free from tyranny and united under the banner of Ammo.”

The Air Force was created with an initial acquisition of a German-built Schleicher ASW-20C glider. It will be used in reconnaissance and advanced training roles. Although Schleicher made no provisions to fit weapons, RAAF technicians are studying modifications to expand the capabilities of the ASW-20C.

Chief of the Air Force General Ash demonstrates his latest acquisition to Chief of Armed Forces General Ammo

Rogue Amoeba CEO and Dictator for Life Paul Kafasis also spoke at the commissioning ceremony. In his speech, he said, “With this expansion of our forces, we have become an unstoppable power. I have every confidence that General Ash will use his resources to their utmost and that he shall give no quarter to our enemies!”

Chief of the Army General Alex Lagutin is already working on combined arms doctrine. While he could not be present on Saturday, his office issued a statement in which he proclaimed, “The addition of an air branch brings new possibilities to our operations. My staff is already working on plans for coordinating our actions to achieve swift victory!”

Chief Technology Officer Quentin Carnicelli has been secretly working on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle technology for several months. He presented a brief summary of his department’s accomplishments during the ceremony, which include remote video and the ability to take off from and land in short unimproved fields. He expressed his hopes that his UAVs would compliment the new Air Force, allowing Rogue Amoeba to field an unbeatable combination of both manned and robotic aircraft.

The Rogue Amoeba UAV project at its secret base

Software Engineer Jeff Johnson also made a brief speech during Saturday’s ceremony in which he stated, “With this action, we shall soon liberate the peoples of the world and bring hope to the common man!” Software Engineer Guy English expressed his hope for a further expansion of Rogue Amoeba’s capabilities when he said, “Now all we need is a Navy and our dominance shall be complete.” General Ammo would neither confirm nor deny plans to commission a Navy when asked.

General Ash later declared that training missions in the RAAF aircraft had already begun, and that missions against the enemy would begin shortly. In his closing remarks, he said, “Our enemies shall tremble in fear at the merest thought of what we are capable of! If you are one of the unfortunates still living in occupied territory, be assured that your liberation is at hand, and keep watching the skis!”

Several years back, I signed up for a service called Lala.com. At the time, Lala was a CD trading service that enabled members to send and receive physical CDs, and it seemed like a good way to get new music. I soon discovered that trading involved sending just the CD and not the associated liner notes and other artwork, and never wound up using the service. While it appears that Lala still offers this service, their focus is now as an online music store in the vein of iTunes or Amazon.

You probably haven’t heard much, if anything, about Lala. That’s a shame, because their store is really quite impressive. Lala’s store has 6 million tracks, in line with iTunes’ 8 million and Amazon’s 5 million tracks. Further, Lala’s tracks are provided as DRM free MP3s encoded at 256 kbps, the same as Amazon’s MP3 store. Prices are 89 cents for full songs, below iTunes’ prices and equal to Amazon’s. In terms of quality, availability, and price, they’re on par with the market leaders.

If Lala merely matched iTunes and Amazon, however, there’d be little upon which to remark and they’d have little real hope of competing with iTunes’ massive lead. Lala adds three very impressive features, however, which may enable it to compete for dominance.

Feature #1: Full Previews

While other stores offer 30-second previews, on Lala you can listen to any track once in its entirety, free of charge. That’s right - you can hear the entire track, for free. After that first listen, you’ll need to purchase the song to hear any of it, but how many times do you need to preview a song? I’ve never found iTunes’ 30-second previews terribly useful. At best, they enable you to be sure you’re buying the right track.

Feature #2: Web Songs

While most stores either sell individual dowloads or subscription access to all their audio, Lala’s store introduces a new concept called a “web song”. You can purchase any song on their site for just 10 cents, and have it be accessible on their web site for unlimited playback. You can log in to your account from anywhere, meaning these songs are accessible from any computer. You can buy a web song once you’ve used up your free preview (see above), and Lala even provides 50 free web songs when you sign up.

I think this web song concept is great. Purchasing single full songs for around a dollar is relatively inexpensive, but ten cents is so close to zero that I’ll never have any hesitation in pulling the trigger. Best of all, you can turn any web song into a full download for the difference in price, 79 cents. That means that if you like, you can preview a full song once for free, then purchase the web version for 10 cents, and finally purchase the full download for 79 cents. You’ll pay a total of 89 cents for your song and you’ll have two different chances to bail out if you realize you don’t want it.

Feature #3: Online Audio Storage & Playback

The third major feature Lala offers is online audio storage and playback. Using their downloadable software, Lala will match existing files you have with their own library and make them accessible in your web library. Further, any and all MP3 files that Lala can’t match the software will be automatically uploaded from your computer to your account on Lala. Once these files are in your web library, you can access them anywhere via a web browser, just like with the aforementioned web songs.

You can see their player above. It looks a lot like a web-based iTunes. It’s nothing incredible, but it’s certainly decent, and the ability to access your music anywhere is very handy. Some readers may remember the ill-fated My.MP3.com service, which offered much the same functionality. However, while that feature lead to lawsuits against MP3.com culminating in their eventual demise, Lala has the record labels onboard already.

Competing In The Future

I’m not sure what will happen with Lala in the future, but these new features certainly have distinct value over existing offerings. With free full previews, dirt-cheap web songs, and inexpensive full songs that are free of DRM, I’m finding myself more interested in online music purchases than ever before. I’m not sure if Lala can survive in the long run or not; they’ve certainly got an uphill battle against entrenched competitors. Either way, it will be interesting to see if these innovative new features survive, in Lala or in other stores.

Today brings another minor update, this time to our audio editor Fission. We released Fission 1.6 a few weeks back, which brought some big new updates, including directly saving iPhone ringtones, as well as the ability to insert silence. Fission 1.6.1 brings with it two important bug fixes, to prevent rare crashes. This is of course a free update, so download it now.

As well, we’re once again opening our job board today. At this time, we’re in need of a remote support technician. This job requires multiple years with Mac OS X and previous experience doing support work on the Mac, but no programming or other engineering knowledge is needed.

For more information on the job and how to apply, please see our Jobs page.

Update: Thanks to all who applied! This position is now filled.

It may be a minor update to the version number, but version 1.1.1 of our internet radio player and recorder Radioshift features a big change behind the scenes. We’ve been hard at work improving the MP3 playback engine in Radioshift, which plays thousands of streams from the Radio Guide and the internet at large. This engine is now even more robust, with better error handling and reporting, and playback of many more streams, including streams from iTunes own Radio section.

We’ve also updated the MP3 recording engine found in Radioshift, along with fixing many minor bugs and appearance issues. This is a free update for all licensed owners of Radioshift, so just click to download. And if you haven’t tried out our internet radio tool, you can check out Radioshift now with a free trial.

Today, we’ve unveiled a major overhaul to our website. If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, pop over to http://www.rogueamoeba.com and check it out. If you’re on our site, then you’re seeing it right now - hooray!

This is approximately the fourth iteration of the Rogue Amoeba web site, from our opening day site back in 2002, to our first multiple-products design, to the site we’ve had for several years now. That design was functional, but we really wanted to give it a visual overhaul, and fix some smaller design aspects of it as well.

To that end, we worked with Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits. He and I chatted multiple times about what functionality was most important to us, namely providing useful information on our products, and then getting you to our downloads and our store as easily as possible. We also discussed where we wanted to have major improvements and where we needed new ideas. Dan took all that, digested it, and came back to us with something great. After that, he worked with us to refine it as we put it together, and fill in missing pieces with needed additional work.

Dan’s done great work, and we couldn’t be more pleased. He was quick and responsive, and he produced what we needed, never backing off from a challenge. If you need top-quality web design work, check out SimpleBits.

We hope you like the new site. There are bound to be some issues with this update, such as bad links or missing images, so if you spot something, please let us know with a comment on this post!