It's been relatively quiet in the flops and failures department recently. Along with that seems to be an increasing amount of—gasp—good news when it comes to the economy. To wit: the dollar continued its surge this week, and oil prices plummeted further. Is there a connection? Possibly. But let's not get overly excited just yet. Remember, inflation's still bad and despite they sunshine-y news, a few start-ups still bit the dust:

-Social.FM killed its site this month. The music hub helped social networkers find music through their friends on sites like MySpace and Facebook. While there's been no official word on what went wrong, the three-year-old start-up's website says all it needs to: "We regret to inform you and apologize for this inconvenience, but Social.FM will be shutting down the system on July 31st, 2008. The Company is unfortunately no longer in business and therefore cannot continue its service to you."

-Thoof, a site that's supposed to personalize and aggregate your news, recently went under as well. While this is one of those markets "littered with failed start-ups" as TechCrunch puts it, apparently Thoof was given better odds because of its backers and CEO. It's concept—customizing your news based solely on what you click on—was also unique and irreverent enough that some industry watchers that it had a shot. Unfortunately, that didn't quite pan out.

-As we previously reported, Feedburner, the Google-acquired online ad network, was put down this week. Why there's been little explanation in regards to what Google was thinking, there's been plenty of backlash online—particularly since Google is now shopping AdSense, a tool regarded as inferior, as the alternative.

RIP, all!