Apple ended up paying around $80 million for the company, according to multiple sources. That’s less than half what investors valued the company at in 2008, but it’s more than the $35 million the company raised throughout its life. Which means that some investors could get their money back and more.

But not all of Lala’s investors. Warner Music Group (WMG), for one, ended up getting back about half the $20 million it put into Lala, I’ve confirmed with people familiar the company.

That’s consistent with the $11 million write-down Warner took on its stake back in March. But it’s also confusing. Most venture deals include a clause that gives investors the right to get their money back–often with a premium–before anyone else gets paid following a sale. So any price of $35 million or more should have paid back the music label in full.

I’ve asked Warner for comment, but haven’t heard back. I’ve also reached out to co-investors Bain Capital Ventures and Ignition Capital. Apple (AAPL) spokesman Steve Dowling offered up his now-standard line on the deal: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans.”

Warner executives can at least say that they did better on Lala than they did with Imeem, a rival digital music service. Warner lost all of the $15 million it put into that one, which is being acquired by News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace.

And the Warner guys can also tell themselves that employees from a company they once backed are now working at Apple, which can’t hurt.

Meanwhile, the Lala team, which should begin reporting to Apple today, gets credit for selling the company at any kind of premium at all. It’s not a home run, but it’s much better than it could have been.

The start-up has gone through multiple iterations, and its most recent was a streaming music service that sold access to songs for 10 cents apiece. But despite a recent promotional deal with Google (GOOG), the company appeared unlikely to succeed on its own.

Silicon Valley chatter is that founder Bill Nguyen, who spent six months in Hawaii this year trying to launch another start-up, and CEO Geoff Ralston had become weary of the same problems that have bedeviled other music start-ups. So they were looking to land Lala at a larger entity.

One thing that helped the company extract a decent price is that it had $10 million cash on hand, say sources who’ve seen the company’s books. That  meant it didn’t have to sell immediately.

But Lala’s real asset was its technology team: In the end, Apple bought the company to get its hands on its engineers, who had built a slick streaming service as well as an iPhone app, which Apple has yet to approve.

If you’re feeling glass-half-empty, you can note that Lala’s $80 million price tag is a big comedown from the $200 million investors thought the company was worth a couple of years ago. But if you’re feeling more generous, you can conclude that any kind of return is worth noting.

The last big exit for a digital music company happened way back in the spring of 2007, when CBS (CBS) paid $280 million for Last.fm. But no one has gotten anything close to that for digital music since then. Imeem is being sold for spare parts, and News Corp. also bought iLike at a steep discount. Spiralfrog filed for Chapter 11 after burning through its cash.

But people are still trying. Pandora Media raised another $35 million this summer after a royalty deal helped breathe life into the Internet radio company.

Meanwhile, venture-backed MOG, whose investors also include some music labels, has just launched a streaming music service of its own. And Spotify, the European music service, has raised a pile of money and generated much more hype, though it has yet to land in the U.S.

Maybe one of them will get it right.

Quincy Smith, the high-profile CEO of CBS Interactive, is planning on leaving his job at the media giant in January to start an advisory firm in Silicon Valley, according to several sources.

But, in an interesting twist, Smith (pictured here) will remain an adviser to CBS (CBS) under a multiyear contract, sources added, making it his first client.

UPDATE: CBS confirmed the move BoomTown earlier reported, in a press release below.

Apparently, Smith will focus intently on video monetization, authentication and other digital issues for the company. CBS is calling it a “transition to a new role,” in its official statement.

CBS Interactive President Neil Ashe will take over Smith’s duties, but without the CEO title, which was a relatively new one for Smith.

CBS is television’s most popular network again this season and its interactive properties are among the top ten in aggregate in both traffic and video.

“I’m very pleased to extend our relationship with Quincy, who is one of the finest minds working in Interactive media today,” said Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corporation, in a statement. “Quincy helped put CBS Interactive on the map and we are now a Top 10 presence in premium content.”

Said Smith: “It’s a huge honor to count CBS as my first client. In three years, this company has grown its Interactive profile immeasurably, and yet there is so much more to be done. I love CBS and its people and I look forward to working closely with them to help CBS become the premier video content company, regardless of platform or screen.”

MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote in May about the possibility of Smith departing CBS, where he has worked since late 2006.

As Kafka wrote, Smith has long wanted to start a new media consultancy and has also wanted to return to Silicon Valley.

In fact, the man BoomTown has dubbed the “Energizer Bunny of the Web” was an early employee at Netscape Communications in the Web 1.0 heyday, tried his hand at venture capital and worked on tech deals for media banking firm Allen & Co.

At CBS during the Web 2.0 era, Smith has been aggressively guiding the company into a series of transactions, including the $280 million acquisition of Last.fm in 2007 and the $1.8 billion purchase of CNET last year.

Smith has also been involved with digital issues related to CBS’s strong television assets. He has championed–unlike other media giants–widely distributing CBS content online and keeping control of its advertising sales.

People close to Smith say he often talks of trying to emulate Dan Case, the late brother of AOL founder Steve Case and the former CEO of Hambrecht & Quist, one of the more influential among Silicon Valley investment banks during the first Web boom.

Sources said that the time has now come and that the move is expected to be announced very soon.

It is also likely that Smith’s top business development exec at CBS, Mike Marquez, will also leave to join him at the still unnamed firm.

BoomTown suggestion for a name: Q 3.0.

Here’s Smith in a cameo for a video spoof after he paid $5 million for Wallstrip, the funny business video site which has since been severely sidelined:

QUINCY SMITH SIGNS MULTI-YEAR ADVISORY AGREEMENT WITH CBS CORPORATION

CEO of CBS Interactive to Depart in January 2010 but Will Continue Working with Company on Video Content Monetization, Among Other Projects

CBS Corporation announced today that Quincy Smith, Chief Executive Officer of its CBS Interactive division, will transition to a new role with the company beginning January 2010 as he starts an independent advisory business. In this new role, Smith will advise CBS on strategies and opportunities for growth across the Company’s interactive businesses. Smith, who had led CBS Interactive since November 2006, will remain with CBS Corporation as the division’s CEO through the end of 2009. Neil Ashe will continue as President of the division.

Smith will continue to be closely involved in CBS’s initiatives related to next-generation monetization of video, including oversight of the Company’s effort to explore authentication as a new, additive method of distribution. He will also advise on partnering with technology companies to expand CBS’s interactive presence, as well as explore new growth opportunities related to content, services and applications.

“I’m very pleased to extend our relationship with Quincy, who is one of the finest minds working in Interactive media today,” said Leslie Moonves, President and CEO of CBS Corporation. “Quincy helped put CBS Interactive on the map and we are now a Top 10 presence in premium content. His entrepreneurial spirit and his passion for the business have helped this Company attract some of the most creative minds working in digital media. I know he will continue to be successful in all he’s yet to do, and we’re very happy to have Quincy working with us in this new role at CBS.”

“It’s a huge honor to count CBS as my first client,” said Smith. “In three years, this company has grown its Interactive profile immeasurably, and yet there is so much more to be done. I love CBS and its people and I look forward to working closely with them to help CBS become the premier video content company, regardless of platform or screen. I especially want to thank Leslie for his leadership and counsel, and for giving me this opportunity to continue working with CBS.”

Smith came to CBS Interactive in 2006, and in three years helped build a division that has become a top ten property in terms of worldwide visitors and video views. CBS’s acquisition of CNET in 2008 added industry-leading Web sites like CNET.com, GameSpot, TV.com, chow.com and BNET.com to a portfolio that had already included top ranking properties like cbs.com, cbssports.com and last.fm. Today, CBS Interactive sites span nearly every category of premium content on the Web, across news, sports and entertainment.

Previously, Smith was an executive with Allen & Company, where he was involved with multiple transactions and advised companies such as Comcast, Google and CBS. Prior to Allen & Company, Smith was a Founding Partner of The Barksdale Group, a venture capital firm. Previously, Smith spent five years at Netscape where he ran Investor Relations and Corporate Development and played a role in over 20 joint ventures, investments and acquisitions including Netscape’s ultimate sale to AOL. Prior to that, Smith was an investment banker for Morgan Stanley.

I’ve seen stories touting big traffic spikes at Time Warner’s (TWX) TMZ, which broke the story; Wikipedia, which apparently was flooded with Wikipedians squabbling over the details of Jackson’s demise; and Gawker, which lives for this sort of thing. At some point, the man-bites-dog story will be a site that doesn’t report a huge spike in Jackson traffic.

In any case, here’s the latest one I’ve seen: Yahoo (YHOO) boasting that Jackson’s demise has been its good fortune. Here are the data, per Yahoo PR:

Yahoo! News:
· Yahoo! News set a record in unique visitors with 16.4 million UV’s in a day. Our previous record was on election day when we had 15.1 million visitors.
· Yahoo! News had 4 million visitors come to the site between 3-4 pm, setting an hourly record.
· Yahoo! News recorded 175 million page views yesterday, our 4th highest day after the Inauguration and Hurricane Ike.

Front Page:
· On our front page, the story “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital” was the highest clicking story in our history. It generated a whopping 800,000 clicks within 10 minutes and news of his death saw 560,000 clicks in 10 minutes. Also, the news area on our front page experienced five times the amount of traffic it normally receives.

Yahoo! Music
· Yahoo! Music’s blog post on Michael Jackson has generated 21K comments in under a day.

UPDATE: Here’s some boasting from CBS’s (CBS) Web group. Happy to keep adding to this if anyone else wants to do a little chest-beating.

· Since the news broke, Last.fm saw a huge surge in users streaming music tracks by Jackson. On average, users were streaming 43,000 Jackson tracks per hour. The Michael Jackson artist page has received heavy traffic with more than 30 page impressions per second as fans log on to pay their respects to the pop icon. The traffic for the artist page continues to increase, and the site continues to see more than 45 times the normal traffic.

· TheInsider.com reported record traffic for June 25, with an increase that was close to double compared to the previous week. Prior to yesterday, the record for high traffic was held on May 5 when the site shared revealing photos of former Miss California Carrie Prejean.

· Within 12 hours of the announcement, CBS.com saw 100% aggregate growth over the same day last year as fans turn to CBS.com for breaking news about the tragedy, as well as to link to CBSNews.com and THE EARLY SHOW for their streaming coverage.

· CBSNews.com traffic tripled during the hour in which Jackson’s death was officially announced (3 p.m. PACIFIC/6 p.m. EASTERN) on June 25 as people turned to the site to learn more about the circumstances involving his death.

And yes, this is the third Michael Jackson post I’ve written today. Which gives me an opportunity to embed a third Michael Jackson video. This one is the intro to the “Jackson 5ive” animated series from the 1970s, procured by our eagle-eyed Beth Callaghan. Enjoy.

[Image credit: Library of Congress]

Absent from the new Sirius app are a number of the broadcaster’s more popular channels, among them Howard Stern’s, which Sirius often claims are responsible for driving more subscriptions than any other. Also missing: MLB Play-by-Play, NFL Play-by-Play and Sirius NASCAR Radio.

That the company calls this app “Sirius XM Premium Online” when it fails to include much of the broadcaster’s more popular content is ironic. That it expects subscribers to pay an additional $2.99/month to access it after a week-long free trial is silly (Note: If you are already a Sirius XM Internet subscriber or subscribe to the company’s Premium Online service, Sirius waives that fee). Without Stern and those other channels, there’s really no reason to. There are far too many other ways to listen free music on the iPhone that don’t require a monthly subscription fee–Pandora, for example. Or Last.fm. And NormSoft’s Pocket Tunes app has been streaming Stern for months now.

Surely, Sirius knows this. So why not include Stern et al? Did a rights issue prevent Sirius from doing so? Did it convince itself that Jimmy Buffett’s Radio Margaritaville and Oprah Radio were compelling enough reasons to download the app? Or perhaps the company is planning a standalone Stern app for which it will charge separately. Or maybe Stern is working on that himself.

And seriously, doesn’t Sirius XM pay Stern too much not to include him?

In any event, the app is an enormous disappointment. Which is too bad. Because Sirius really could have used the few additional subscribers Sirius XM Premium Online might have attracted. With the souring economy weighing heavily on the auto industry–-a mainstay of Sirius’s business–-and partner Chrysler navigating bankruptcy, the struggling company is bracing itself for nasty subscriber losses this year.

If this is all that Sirius XM has to offer on the iPhone, it would have been wiser to do what Netflix (NFLX) did with its Watch It Now online streaming service–provide it gratis to active subscribers as a loyalty bonus. Without Sirius XM’s top-tier content, there’s little to differentiate its iPhone app from Pandora and Last.fm. And Pandora and Last.fm are free.

UPDATE: A quick review of the Sirius Internet Radio FAQ reveals that it is indeed licensing restrictions that prevent Sirius XM from offering NFL, MLB and NASCAR via the Internet and presumably via the iPhone as well. Those same restrictions, however, do not seem to apply to Howard Stern’s channels, which all appear in the Sirius Internet Radio lineup.

UPDATE: Sirius XM has declined comment on the Stern issue beyond what was already said in this morning’s press release.

UPDATE: I’m told the trio will stick around for a few months to help out with the transition. But to what? First priority is finding a replacement for CEO Miller.

Miller announced the deal in a short blog post today.

Last.fm, which provides free, ad-supported music streamed over the Web, was the first major acquisition the broadcaster made after bringing on digital M&A pro Quincy Smith, who is making plans to set up shop on his own. CBS (CBS) sends out a steady flow of press releases touting the site’s growth–the most recent one I have, from last month, pegs its audience at 30 million monthly users, while Miller’s post says they’re up to 37.3 million–but turning online eyeballs and ears into dollars has been hard for every Web music start-up, and Last.fm is no exception.

The unit saw its headcount cut significantly during CBS’s reorg of its interactive group late last year, and last month the company combined Last.fm with the online stations from its CBS radio unit.

Here’s text of the post announcing the founders’ departure:

After two years running Last.fm within CBS we feel the time is right to begin the process of handing over the reins. This is the latest stage in a long journey for us founders, which began in a living room in East London in 2002, and took us to the headquarters of one of the biggest media companies in the world.

It’s been a privilege working with the incredible team here in our London office, and we’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved together. Last.fm’s users have more than doubled in the last 12 months (we are now at an all-time high of 37.3M monthly unique visitors), and we’re confident the site will continue to go from strength to strength. Being a part of CBS, and the recently formed CBSi music group, continues to open up many opportunities for Last.fm. Recent product releases such as the new visual radio, and the Last.fm on XBox announcement, are an indication of how much more Last.fm will achieve.

A huge “Thank You!” has to be said to all of you in front of your computers. With your contribution, enthusiasm and scrobbles you have helped to make Last.fm into what it is today: the best place for music online. Big up yourself for that, as we say here in East London.

That’s all folks, we are going to miss you!

CBS paid $1.8 billion for CNET last summer, and today it is dealing with the consequences: A re-org and layoffs.

CBS execs won’t release specifics on the firings and won’t say how many people were let go altogether. So news will be coming out in piecemeal fashion for some time.

The best that I can tell, though, the cuts came throughout the company’s interactive group, from its London-based last.fm radio service through CBS (CBS) headquarters in New York to CNET’s homebase in San Francisco.

Based on the fact that CBS Interactive boss Quincy Smith flew to the west coast to quarterback the re-org this morning–and the fact that CNET was much, much bigger than the CBS Interactive group–I’m assuming that more CNET employees were let go than anyone else.

Quincy, if I’m wrong, please let me know. And CBS Interactive/CNET employees can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com.

In the meantime, here’s the new structure of Smith’s group, via an internal memo that comes from him and Neil Ashe, his CNET counterpart:

Team,

As we come to the end of 2008, we have a lot to be proud of. CBS Interactive is the best online content network for information and entertainment. Our properties are expanding, advertisers are capitalizing on our properties and their scale, and we are positioned well to continue to grow. As we prepare for 2009 and beyond, we’d like to update you on this progress, announce some organizational changes and comment on the broader market environment and how it impacts CBS Interactive.

Progress

CBS Interactive is the 8th largest Internet network in the world. Our combined traffic is up nearly 30% since we closed the merger this summer. CNET, CBSSports.com, BNET, GameSpot, TV.com, CBS.com, last.fm, and CHOW have each had record traffic within the past three months. Our commitment to our users is paying off.

Advertisers have noticed. We have recently signed and announced deals across several of our properties with Microsoft, AT&T, Intel, Bertolli, EA, and GM. In these challenging economic times, marketers are consolidating their efforts with their best partners. Our properties, our audiences, our ideas and our insights will continue to differentiate us in the marketplace.

Finally, we have contributed to and benefited from the TV and Radio divisions of CBS. We’ve done nearly 1,500 purpose-driven promotions to our properties on Broadcast TV, Radio and local TV Stations; CHOW and GameSpot content is running on the CBS Outernet; and CNET ran a major consumer campaign in markets like New York and San Francisco through CBS Outdoor. CBS Interactive is also a key partner to CBS Television Network for major broadcast events. In just the last week, we featured complementary content for events including The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, the Grammy Nominations and the SEC Championship.

Moving forward, we have a lot to look forward to. Events like CES, The Grammys, and March Madness on Demand are all just around the corner. Each represent huge cross-platform opportunities where CBS Interactive will again help complete the experience with coverage on air, online, and on mobile for our audiences.

Organizational Promotions and Changes

As we enter 2009, we are making some changes to our organizational structure to capitalize on audience and advertiser overlaps. We are also making some changes to key functions so that we can realize the benefits of our position in the marketplace. These changes mark another significant milestone in our integration, as we fine-tune our organization to best take advantage of the power of our entire network.

Sports, Games and Music

We are combining our Sports, Games and Music properties into a single group led by Steve Snyder. Steve has tremendous product and leadership experience and an enthusiasm for each of these categories. In addition, Tom Jones will be moving over from CNET to head-up the sales efforts for this group. Within the group, our talented senior leaders including Jason Kint, Rich Calacci, Jaci Hays, Kevin Menard, Felix Miller, Doug Schmidt and others will report to Steve and to Tom.

Entertainment & Lifestyle

We are also moving our Lifestyle properties, CHOW and UrbanBaby, to the Entertainment group (TV.com, CBS.com, The CBS Audience Network and TheInsider.com) to capitalize on the similarities in audience and advertisers. This group will continue to be led by Anthony Soohoo with sales led by Ken Lagana. We’re excited to see the innovation that will come from this group in 2009.

Technology & News

Under the continued leadership of Joe Gillespie, our Technology & News division will bring CBSNews.com and CNET News.com into a single CBS Interactive News Group. Each site will maintain its own brand identity, while benefiting from shared resources in design, product and engineering to deliver deeper and more comprehensive coverage of major stories and events. Led by Mark Larkin, with Dan Farber as Editor-in-Chief, CBS News.com and CNET News.com will also have the opportunity to share content and collaborate on stories for the benefit of their unique audiences.

CBS Interactive Marketing

We are bringing together our key marketing functions into a new group called CBS Interactive Marketing led by Mickey Wilson. The group brings together expertise from across the organization so that we can capitalize on our biggest opportunities, and elevate the company to be a strategic marketing partner whose products, consumer insights, and ad innovations are critical to our clients’ long-term success. They will establish the company as the standard for premium content online, and define and evolve brand strategies to capture the biggest opportunities for audience and revenue growth through market planning, insights and execution.

CBS Interactive Business Development

We are also bringing together all of our business development activities. This group will be led by Mike Marquez. Mike and his team will be responsible for the development of all new partnerships, investments, and acquisitions. They will be charged with taking advantage of knowledge sharing across the whole company to ensure that we are the strategic partner of choice for the industry.

Market Conditions

As you know the general economic environment continues to be a challenge. We have always been very aggressive about managing our costs, and that requirement is even more critical now than it has ever been. We believe this new, more efficient organizational structure will produce better results for CBS Interactive, and also result in lower operating costs. It is always very difficult to make these kinds of reductions, but they come after a thorough review of how we are organized and how we operate, and what best serves our many users, advertisers and employees.

CBS Interactive is a special place because of you, and we thank each of you for what you have done, are doing, and will do to exceed the expectations of the tens of millions of people who come to our properties every day.

Today, we sit in a great position. People seek out our brands because we provide them with the information and entertainment they want and need, and marketers seek us out because of the powerful audiences we attract. We are positioned to grow in 2009 and beyond.

Best,
-q, NA

Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will take the CEO job at a music discovery site called Playlist, a move that had been speculated last week, after he did not end up taking another position as head of MySpace Music.

Van Natta’s arrival at Playlist was not the only news for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up–former AOL exec Bob Pittman’s Pilot Investment Group is also investing an undisclosed amount of money in Playlist. Pittman will also join its board.

Playlist has previously raised several million dollars, said sources, but the new funding is many times that, to total about $18 to $20 million.

The move to Playlist is an interesting one for Van Natta, who has looked at a number of jobs since leaving the high-profile social-networking site earlier this year.

He has talked to a wide range of companies, sources said, including Microsoft (MSFT) and a range of start-ups, as well as with MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS). (News Corp. also owns this site).

Those talks between Van Natta and MySpace to run its new music initiative did not pan out for a variety of reasons.

But he has long expressed a desire to become a CEO of a company, rather than just head to another executive job within a larger company, so the move to run a start-up is not a surprise.

In an interview this afternoon, Van Natta told me he got very intrigued by the possibilities at Project Playlist, which was the first iteration of the start-up and in which he is an investor, due to its viral growth.

And, indeed, Playlist has grown quickly to become one of the larger music communities on the Web, claiming that more than 38 million music fans monthly, sharing playlists via its Web site and also widely distributed embeddable widgets. The site has tens of millions of daily page views, according to surveys.

To get to those big-scale numbers, Playlist essentially has offered users a giant linking service for music, not unlike Google (GOOG) with all information, pointing users to promotional, free and sometimes illegal music and music video tracks all over the Web.

Those links to illegal music have resulted in a lawsuit aimed at Playlist from the music industry, sources said, a sadly typical experience of many online music services.

The usual tactic for the music giants: Sue first and shake down later.

Under Van Natta, I would guess, Playlist is likely to reach out to music companies and strike deals.

The company also needs to settle on its main business plan, which appears to me to have been less important than its explosive growth.

Playlist currently does have some small amount of advertising on the site, and seems to be making most of its scratch from sending leads to ringtone sellers.

Van Natta did not want to reveal specific strategies for Playlist going forward, only noting the opportunity is large.

“Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet,” said Van Natta. “And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge.”

That said, there have been a lot of music-aimed efforts like Playlist in the music space, with a lot of different business plans and varying degrees of success, ranging from the Apple (AAPL) behemoth iTunes site, which sells single songs, to the CBS (CBS) music service, Last.fm, which relies more on advertising revenues.

Other contenders in the space include the Rhapsody subscription service from RealNetworks (RNWK), music discovery service iLike and many others. MySpace has also waded deeply into the music space, and Facebook is also reportedly weighing its own service.

Van Natta was one of Facebook’s earliest and most prominent execs, serving in jobs like COO and also Chief Revenue Officer while there.

He came to Facebook in the fall of 2005, after a stint as VP of Worldwide Business and Corporate Development at Amazon, and was part of the founding team of A9, the Amazon search company.

“I am excited to be building a company again,” said Van Natta, who has taken many months off since he left Facebook in February.

Sometimes, the cleverest ideas and applications arise from these chance encounters, despite having only two days to come up with these applications.

Here are brief descriptions and a few screenshots of some of the nearly 40 applications developed or demo’d during iPhoneDevCamp 2. For a complete list, visit the iPhoneDevCamp 2 Web site.

Applications

• Converter: Karelia Software’s Dan Wood wrote this simple currency conversion application in 90 minutes.
• Fashion Season Collection: View photos and videos of haute couture fashion from the catwalk.
• Gifter: Demonstrates autofill in Web views in this gift-giving application.
• Heatmap Mobi: See what’s hot and what’s cold in your city.
• iRa: Easily the most impressive demo at iPhoneDevCamp, iRa takes mobile control and viewing of surveillance systems outside of the windowless, multi-monitor command center and puts them in the palm of your hand.

  

• Mapfoot: Find malls, stores and–most importantly–where you parked your car.
• My Emergency Info:Store and display emergency information.
• Quicktate: Stop listening and start reading your voicemail.
• Record-a-Call: Record and transcribe phone conversations.
• red:green: Have you iPhone voice your approval (green) or dismay (red) with this simple app.
• sStitch: A personal favorite, sStich provides citizens with the power to report disaster information. The developer showed how it was used to track a brush fire in San Diego.

  

• Substrate: Make pretty procedural wallpapers for your iPhone.

  

• Taxi!: With Safari, it can take over a dozen taps to find a nearby taxi company. With Taxi!, you’re only one tap away from hailing your next cab.

  

• Taxi Guide: With the Olympics just around the corner, you’ll need this app to help you browse Beijing hot spots and tell your taxi cab driver where to go … in Chinese, of course!

  

• WAn/WordPress Demo: Make your WordPress site look great on the iPhone.

Fun

• Free Kaleidoscope: An open source kaleidoscope application using OpenGL.
• Paddle Ball: Bounce the virtual ping-pong ball on your virtual paddle and don’t let it fall to the virtual ground!
• PushUp: Get in shape by having your iPhone count how many pushups you can do. Be sure to touch your nose to the screen to make it count!
• Tally Counter: A simple tally counter.

Development

• Gap: Open source development tool and framework for accessing features of the iPhone SDK from within HTML and JavaScript.
• TouchClipboard: Copy and paste clipboard frameworks for iPhone applications.
• GreasePocket: GreaseMonkey functionality on the iPhone.
• MagicTable: Build data-driven iPhone user interfaces with XML documents.
• REDACTEDDebugger: Debugging framework.
• TouchJSON / TouchSQL / TouchXML: Open source libraries and frameworks for handling RESTFUL JSON-based Web services, communicating to SQLite database and efficiently processing XML documents on the iPhone.

Music

• Harp: Multi-touch harp synthesizer with some unique user interface features.
• hum.itfor.us: A submission from a team in Colorado, hum.itfor.us allows songs to be identified by humming. It is similar in function to Midomi.
• iMusicMash: Retrieve lyrics and more information about songs in your iTunes Music Library by mashing them up with Last.fm and YouTube.

  

• MusicID: Identify music and retrieve additional information about songs.

Social and Gaming

• Bar Trivia: It’s trivia night, but this time with your friends over a Bonjour network.
• DudeZap: Send contacts from one iPhone to another.
• Fwerps: Feed and stroke your pet fwerp or it will become angry with you.
• Hot iPotato: Pass the iPotato to play an elimination game like musical chairs.
• iBoard: A Web-based micro-forum on the iPhone.
• irrSokoban: Move boxes around a maze into designated locations.
• LightBikes: Will you get to the MCP before your opponent gets to you?

  

• rspRoyale: A rock, paper, scissors game you can play with multiple iPhones.
• RPS: Another rock, paper, scissors game you can play with multiple iPhones.
• Tattle Talz: Find out if your friends are telling two truths or a lie on your iPhone.

  

• Wildcard: Free-form gaming surface (checkers, cards, chess, etc.) from the developer of Quicksilver.

  

On my recent trip to Seattle, I visited the offices of iLike in the Capitol Hill section of that lovely Pacific Northwest city to take a video gander at one of the more interesting start ups to emerge from the social-networking arena.

The music discovery site, unlike a lot of others in its sector, has been plugging away for several years with much less funding–about $16 million from the founding Partovi twin brothers, former AOL (TWX) wunderkind Bob Pittman and a big slug from Ticketmaster (IAC)–but with a lot more impact.

Like its competitors, such as Last.fm, it has forged its popularity by focusing on linking its users with one other and musical artists via what they like to listen to.

Kind of like that old shampoo cliché: She told two friends and she told two friends and so on and so on and so on.

It’s actually quite an infectious app and also Web site, with 30 million registered users, and it’s one of the few that is useful on social-networking sites like Facebook, hi5, Orkut and Bebo.

So useful, in fact, that Facebook has selected the service as one of only two “preferred” partners, a designation Facebook announced today at its second developers conference in San Francisco.

iLike was the brainchild of Ali and Hadi Partovi, longtime Web entrepreneurs who have also worked at big companies like Microsoft (MSFT), and whose interest in music and online delivery was the inspiration for the site.

To make money, iLike has a number of businesses.

First and foremost it is essentially a lead-generator for sites like Amazon (AMZN), iTunes, Ticketmaster, and more recently, the Rhapsody subscription music service, with which it just added a somewhat restricted full-song playback offering.

And iLike has just launched an ad platform for concert promoters.

The brand itself, although focused on music right now, obviously has extension possibilities (iLike movies? iLike TV? iLike tacky theme parks?).

Most observers of iLike assume it will sell to a larger entity eventually, such as Ticketmaster, for whom the site has become a major referrer.

But the Partovis–who have sold start ups before–insist they want to build the iLike brand.

Here’s a video interview with Hadi Partovi in which we talk about all this and more, along with a tour of iLike’s offices:

Walt Mossberg interviewed CBS CEO Les Moonves at the fifth edition of our D: All Things Digital conference last May, where he talked about the media giant’s Internet aims.

The 53-minute video is highly pertinent to today’s acquisition of CNET by CBS for $1.8 billion in cash.

As I previously wrote, Les Moonves is getting into the Internet in a big way, it seems, if you watch this onstage interview with the CBS CEO.

While it used to be that big old-media companies, including the powerful television networks, always seemed to display disdain for the online space, these days they are talking it up like they invented it.

At the conference, in fact, Moonves unveiled CBS’s acquisition of Last.fm, the Internet social music platform, and spoke a lot about getting the company’s content everywhere.

Here is Moonves:

Announcing the debut of Last.fm’s “unprecedented” on-demand music streaming platform, Jones–in a moment of Zuckerbergian grandiosity–proclaimed:

Today we’re redesigning the music economy.”

Which will no doubt come as a bit of a surprise to Apple, and Real, and Amazon and, above all, Imeem, which announced a similar ad-supported service last month.

To be fair, Last.fm’s free on-demand service seems a bit more compelling. Certainly, the CBS-owned site is the only one among the few to offer access to music from all four major labels and a host of independents to anyone willing to stare at an ad for while. And providing complete album streams on a “try before you buy” basis is truly a nice touch.

Still, Last.fm does have one significant limitation: You can listen to a track no more than three times unless you agree to pay for the subscription version of the service or purchase it from an affiliate. Will that be a deal-breaker for the average music fan or a good reason to buy your music through Last.fm, rather than iTunes? Hard to say. “The free-music-on-demand field has been a tough one, with many announcements but few real entries (consider, for example, the often-delayed Qtrax and vaporous Mashboxx),” notes the Los Angeles Times’s Jon Healey. “With CBS’ backing, Last.fm might be able to search longer for a workable formula than the typical start-up. But at some point, it has to find a way to pay the bills.”

While it used to be that big old-media companies, including the powerful television networks, always seemed to display disdain for the online space, but these days they are talking it up like they invented it.

At the conference, in fact, Moonves unveiled CBS’s acquisition of Last.fm, the Internet social music platform, and spoke a lot about getting the company’s content everywhere.

By way of background, D: All Things Digital, the annual tech and media conference Walt Mossberg and I host, has been sold out with a long wait list every year we have put it on.

That has meant only a few hundred people can see the interviews and also demos we do live onstage with some of the tech and media industry’s most interesting and important players and products.

The lineups have included Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, as well as Eric Schmidt of Google, IAC’s Barry Diller, Meg Whitman of eBay, Cisco’s John Chambers and many others.

And we’ve demoed stuff like the Treo when it first came out, as well as digital toilets, Wi-Fi phones and much more.

We usually post the photos and videos of the interviews and demos six or more months after they take place on a separate conference site. This year, our Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski live-blogged D5, and we also posted video highlights from all of the sessions immediately on our newly launched site here.

Now, we are posting videos of every session of the 2007 conference here, in full, and we have made all our photo galleries, hosted by SmugMug and mostly shot by our fabulous Asa Mathat, public too. You can also access our videos via the site’s master player here.

Every day, I am going to highlight a different interview or demo from the conference.

Here is Moonves:

But in the past few years, Apple has mounted a sneak attack on the Windows world. Its weapon has been the Windows version of iTunes, the free media organizing, recording and playback program that most people think of as just a companion to Apple’s iPod music and video players. I think of iTunes as the most subversive software on the Windows computer, not because it does users any harm or does anything underhanded, but because it is allowing Apple to subvert, from inside, Microsoft’s dominant platform position.