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Ping, Apple's half-hearted attempt at its own music-focused social networking site, has finally received an update worth noting: Social Playlists. On Friday, the iTunes-only website Ping added a new feature which lets you create a playlist of your favorite songs. Those playlists can then be published for your Ping followers to rate and review or even collaborate on with you.

Google unveiled its long-awaited Chrome OS, notebook and Web store today and already we're itching to see what life lived entirely in the cloud is like - not that we're far off as it is. While we don't have our hands on a Chrome OS notebook quite yet, if we did, MOG would be one of the first apps we would install.

MOG has announced a beta release of its music player for the Chrome Web store and we have to admit, we're excited to see one of our favorite cloud-based music players hit the shelves.

Winamp has announced new versions of its desktop and Android apps today, bringing Android users another way to manage their music collections and stream content to their devices. According to the company, the combination of the two "creates a complete end-to-end music management solution for your desktop and Android device."

Spanish barcode marketing company Macanudos has developed a scannable QR-equipped dress to promote flamenco. Flamenco (which includes the older, more profound palos of deep song) has been declared a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. To promote it, the company has created QR lunares for women's attire.

The lunares, or circles that customarily decorate dresses used in flamenco dance or worn by women singers, are embedded with a QR code that, when scanned, will trigger one of nine flamenco forms.

Yesterday, Apple teased visitors heading to its homepage at www.apple.com of a major announcement, coming this morning at 10 AM EST. "Tomorrow is just another day. That you'll never forget," the homepage text read. Initially, people were hoping that the news was related to the long-rumored "iTunes in the Cloud" service, which Apple has been building large data centers in N.C. to support, reportedly.

However, later in the day, a number of folks had figured it out: the news was that the Beatles were finally coming to iTunes. The WSJ confirmed. As it turns out, they were right.

In a major victory for record labels and a major bummer for P2P file-sharers, the Gnutella-based download client LimeWire has been ordered to immediately stop distributing and supporting its software. U.S District Judge Kimba Wood handed down a 17-page permanent injunction today, and an announcement on the Limewire site shutters the site and the client no longer functions.

Judge Wood found earlier this year that Limewire had knowingly participated in copyright infringement "on a massive scale" after the RIAA, along with several major record labels, brought suit against the company. And while the RIAA wanted the site shut down then, Limewire was given a reprieve to build a new copyright-friendly technology.

We Are Hunted is just one of a number of web upstarts hoping to displace Billboard as the chart of record for music. What makes We Are Hunted slightly different is that it not only produces the requisite daily and weekly music charts, it releases a set of research reports every 6 months. It recently published over 100 reports on popular music artists, covering the 6-month period January to June 2010. The research is based on analysis of 531,901 music articles and 13,439,734 music-related tweets.

The reports are most helpful in showing the impact of Twitter and online press coverage on musicians. One of the most popular artists of 2010 has been Lady Gaga, so let's see what her We Are Hunted report shows.

When Apple launched Ping, its new music-focused social network found within iTunes 10, the response was decidedly lukewarm. The effort felt incomplete, as if its social features had been rushed out the door before the service was fully built. Ping lacked the most basic functionality, including the ability to rate non-music purchases and an inability to take into account your own music ratings. It also lacked personalized recommendations for artists to follow (apparently everyone likes Lady Gaga) and, at the last minute, Apple pulled Ping's Facebook integration, too.

Still, we cautioned that disappointed new users shouldn't give up on Ping yet - the features it needs to be successful aren't beyond Apple's grasp. And this weekend, Apple added two new features that prove the company isn't giving up on Ping yet, either.

Joachim Van Herwegen, an intern at the online music company Last.fm, has plotted his company's music information against user gender and age data. These "Gender Plots" also incorporate music information from Last.fm, as well as user profile information.

What results is a freaky series of visual statements that are as noteworthy for their as if! properties as for the window they provide on music and culture. Even where you disagree with the implied conclusions, these plots serve as a place of departure for your own internal conversation on music.

Napster, the once peer-to-peer music sharing service turned pay service, has finally entered the mobile music market for Apple users with today's release of a Napster app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Though it's entering the market a bit later than some competitors, it comes with a larger catalog than some and features similar to those that have tipped the scales for other services.