Monthly Archives: November 2011

∞ Copycats

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Matt Gemmell: There’s an entire spectrum of terms available besides ‘copied’, ranging from “inspired by” to “plagiarised”, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be influenced by the work of others. The key is to ensure that you’re consciously … Continued

∞ Elvis Costello: Steal this record

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Elvis Costello on the pricing of his new box set: Unfortunately, we at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire. All our attempts to … Continued

∞ Fantastical [Sponsor]

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Fantastical is the Mac calendar you’ll actually enjoy. Create events with simple sentences like “Go to lunch with John on Tuesday” or “Summer vacation 6/9-6/16.” Easily locate and search for your events with Fantastical’s beautiful and easy to navigate calendar. … Continued

∞ Examining bitcoin currency

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Bitcoin, the preferred currency of the drug server Silk Road, is on the decline. Benjamin Wallace examines what led to its creation and its downfall.

∞ My Living Desktop

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I’d like to thank My Living Desktop for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.

Time to bring your desktop to life. Since 2005 My Living Desktop has been bringing a unique cross between a Video Desktop (moving wallpaper) and a traditional screensaver to your Macintosh. My Living Desktop adds a whole new dimension to your computing experience by turning your Mac’s desktop into a beautiful, moving environment… complete with soothing sounds.

My Living Desktop provides a wide array of stunning, relaxing high definition video scenes shot from all over the world that you can use on your desktop and as a screensaver. You can even import your own movie segments to create a truly personal and unique desktop environment.

∞ Returning the Jawbone UP

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Michael Surtees: Ultimately I really liked the concept of collecting information without having to do much at the time of it being on. Up hasn’t gone far enough with creating options for the person using the device to start slicing … Continued

∞ TellMe vs. Siri

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Remember when Microsoft said they’ve had Siri technology for more than a year? I wonder if they actually tried it.

∞ The illusion of information choice

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Frugal Dad has posted an interesting infographic that shows just how consolidated news, information and entertainment is in the United States. The results are truly astonishing: six megacorporations control 90 percent of what we read, watch, or listen to. It’s … Continued

∞ Apple posts Black Friday deals

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Apple has posted Black Friday shopping specials on its US online store Web page, available only on November 25, 2011. The company has discounted MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac systems by $101, with savings also available on iPod nano, … Continued

∞ RIM offers free PlayBooks

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If you’re an IT manager considering whether to update your organization to BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0, you may want to act now. If you upgrade to BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0 before December 31st, 2011, you’ll receive a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet

Because $300 off just wasn’t enough.

∞ AT&T withdraws FCC application for T-Mobile merger

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BGR: AT&T said Thursday that it has withdrawn its application from the Federal Communications Commission to acquire T-Mobile USA. AT&T and Deutsche Telekom said they will instead focus on fighting an antitrust lawsuit brought against the proposed $39 billion merger … Continued

∞ The problem with Stamped

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The problem with Stamped is that it correlates popularity of your stamps to quality. It makes the assumption that because you like something – and use up one of your “limited stamps” to demonstrate this as a showing of quality – that others will be inclined to agree or incited to try out whatever you stamped. I don’t think that could be further from the truth.

I agree.

∞ Five ingredients for a great WordPress theme

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Aravind Ajith:

In order to save some time the next time you go hunting for WordPress themes be sure to note these five essential ingredients that make up a great WordPress theme – for any type of website.

The Loop uses WordPress, but we used a custom designed theme.

∞ More on readable news sites

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Rian van der Merwe: I’m worried that the wells of attention are being drilled to depletion by linkbait headlines, ad-infested pages, “jumps” and random pagination, and content that is engineered to be “consumed” in 1 minute or less of quick … Continued

∞ Reading the unreadable on a news site

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Brent Simmons on trying to read a news story: I was there because I just wanted to read something. Words. Black text on a white background, more-or-less. And what I saw — at a professional publication, a site with the … Continued

∞ Doom 3 source code now available

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John Carmack has released the source code to the legendary first-person shooter Doom 3. The code can be downloaded via the Github.com Web site. Carmack made some changes to the source code to comply with license restrictions – most notably, … Continued

∞ Pictures, video from Apple's Grand Central store

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The Loop reader Mike DeFrancesco took a couple of pictures and iPhone video from Apple’s Grand Central store earlier today. Rumors had the story opening sometime this week, but that seems unlikely at this point.