One problem ... Last.FM was acquired by the media giant CBS!!! NO!!! Last.FM didn't observe the day of silence to revolt against the rate charges for online radio performances. The internet was suppose to be the frontier to free us from radio consolidation!

Well, not all of this is bad. CBS will be able to make the negotiations needed to get most of the music content on Last.FM. Also, there Label/Artist tools are REALLY cool. You can buy promos that will insert your tracks into peoples "listening" streams when listening to artists that are "similar" to your music. Another brilliant idea.

So will this replace Billboard's charts? Not at the moment. They've only got 15 million users. Wait a minute .. 15 million?? Maybe that's enough to be considered THE source for music charts. Billboards charts are based on celestial radio play ... not actual user plays/listens. Maybe Last.FM is a more reliable source because it's based on what people are CHOOSING to listen to. But, how many of those 15 million users are actively "scrobbling"? Hmmmm.

Sounds good so far ... Most of the successful services create a system for displaying new content that's brand new. Digg's got there "upcoming" page, StumbleUpon throws in new pages to see how users react. But what about RawSugar? I looked, and looked, and looked, and realized that RawSugar isn't displaying any new submitted user material. And on top of that, all of the links listed on the homepage (and subsequent pages) are all submitted by the same user (prakash)!!

What's the purpose of this site?!?! It's basically prakash's bookmarked sites playground! It doesn't display any new sites from other users! Booooo! Way to kill early adopters!

Rule #2 for web 2.0 startups:
Give users obvious vanity reasons to use your service. Why do people add random friends on MySpace? So there proverbial MySpace muscles are bigger!!

Today, I "stumbled" onto an awesome flash animation using drum programming sounds. It's called "Drum Machine" and it was created by "tokyoplastic" (as stated on the page). It takes a few minutes to build up, but once it get's going it's DAMN cool.

A cool feature in StumbleUpon is the "send to" button. Having that "send to a friend" feature so close and handy (and in the same spot over and over) is beginning to get over used by me! I know I know, your thinking "most sites have a send to a friend feature, whats the deal?" The fact that it's in the same spot and remebers the past emails is HUGE! It's all about the little things.

Along with the japanese "Drum Machine" flash, I stumbled on some really cool time wasting pages! I built a face in flash! Found some amazing lightning photography! Watched a stunning guitarist sound like an ensemble of instruments in a new guitar playing technique (at least new to me)! And found a photographers gorgeous portfolio of 4x5 camera work. Oh look! Three hours just went by. Awesome!

I gave this time waster it's own paragraph! It's a physics modeling thingy called "Soda Constructor" that lets you play god on this wireframe robot object. It's WAY cool. Go ahead, play with it! You get controls to model the gravity and "stuff" that interacts with the object. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time on these things (because there fun).

So in the end, why do I use StumbleUpon? Or more importantly, why would I keep using it? Pure social entertainment. I have yet to try out the recommendation features, so I could be missing a huge piece of the pie. But, am I going to "Stumble" onto a key piece of research or website that I've been hunting for? Not likely. But, I'll have a great time "stumbling" onto fun time wasting sites.