Monthly Archives: November 2011

∞ The £200 bag of potatoes that was an iPad

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Corey Tamas at Macgasm:

The sheister in question approached his mark in Dark Lane, Bentley and offered to sell him an iPad. Once agreeing on a price, they went off to a cash machine together and completed the transaction. After leaving the scene, the buyer discovered he had been sold a bag of potatoes (because why would you ever buy an iPad off a guy on the street and check what’s in the bag before parting ways?).

People, people, people.

∞ Erler Dingbats Unicode Font for free

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For the first time in the entire history of Unicode standard, the full encoding range for dingbats (U + 2700 – U + 27BF) is now covered by a complete, contemporary quality font. Erler Dingbats is a spin-off of the distinguished FF Dingbats 2.0 family, and was designed as a special collaboration between designers Johannes Erler and Henning Skibbe.

∞ EasyPay not EasySteal

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Andrew Richardson on how he thinks Apple’s new EasyPay feature may work:

Combine the authorized-by-EasyPay transaction record, the customer’s location within the store as reported by the app, and an RFID tag inside the product box. An automated system can determine which products may pass through the security portal without sounding an alarm and which cannot. The key is the customer’s phone.

∞ Gamer kids are more creative, says study

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GamePro: HealthCanal reports that a new study of nearly 500 12 year olds found noticeably increased creativity among those who played video games, while use of cellphones, the Internet and computers (for non-gaming purposes) were unrelated to that particular branch … Continued

∞ iOS holds top spot for developers

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There was a lot of talk today about how a new survey rated the Amazon Kindle Fire as the number one Android tablet among developers in North America. While that may be true, it is not the number one mobile OS that developers want to program for — that distinction goes Apple’s iOS.

∞ Apple releases iTunes Match

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Apple on Monday released a new version of iTunes that includes iTunes Match. iTunes Match will set you back $24.99 per year. The software scans the content of your music library and matches it to the music available on the … Continued

∞ Amazon Kindle Fire screenshots

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At the top you’ll notice categories for Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps, and the Web browser. With the exception of Docs and the Browser, each of those menus also include direct links into Amazon’s digital store for that content.

∞ UAE blocks iMessage, FaceTime

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TNW: The UAE is now turning its attention to Apple’s iMessage service as well as Facetime, with Mobile carriers Etisalat, followed by Du, suspending the Apple services.

∞ The photography of Joshua L. Smith

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I mentioned last night that I didn’t get why the world’s most expensive photograph sold for so much, so I thought I’d show you so photos that I do like. These are shots from self-taught photographer Joshua L. Smith.

∞ Sparrow

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I’d like to thank Sparrow for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed on The Loop.

Get mail done. Sparrow, the new mail for Mac, is designed for you to be efficient in the most pleasurable way. Lightweight and fast, it lets you compose, send and read messages in the most simple and elegant manner.

Try our Gmail-only free version or get the full-featured Sparrow at $9.99. Sparrow is constantly updated for free to bring you the best mailing experience on the Mac.

∞ World's most expensive photograph

Written by

Michael Zhang:

Titled “Rhein II”, it’s a 1999 photograph by Andreas Gursky showing the Rhine river. Last night it sold for a whopping $4,338,500 at Christie’s.

Shawn King sent this to me tonight. I have to say, I just don’t get it.

∞ Unicode character recognition

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This is a tool to help you find Unicode characters. Finding a specific character whose name you don’t know is cumbersome. On shapecatcher.com, all you need to know is the shape of the character!Draw your character as best you can in the “drawbox”. You can do this by clicking and holding the left mouse button and moving around. Draw as many strokes as you need to, then click “Recognize” to start the recognition.

Very cool.

∞ Agenda for iPhone and iPad

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The new version of Agenda adds themes from the developers favorite Apple-related Web sites, including one for The Loop.

∞ Sourcebits: Show your design, engineering talent and win a job

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We want to see how talented you are! Sourcebits is giving you the chance to strut your stuff in the most epic job hunt ever. We’re looking for two designers, two engineers and one quality assurance/project lead to help us break in our new San Francisco headquarters, and we only want the best.

Sourcebits is a very talented group of people and it’s nice to see them grow and open a new office. This is a very cool way to recruit some of the talented designers and engineers out there.

∞ Henry Blodget is an easy target

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Henry Bloget is an easy target. He’s wrong more times a minute than his heart gets a chance to beat blood to his atrophied brain. Which is a very harsh thing to say about someone struggling with that sort of disorder, but I can’t always be the nice guy.