Yearly Archives: 2012

8 banned children’s toys from yesteryear

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BuzzFeed:

Only available from 1951-1952, this science kit for CHILDREN included 4 types of uranium ore, a Geiger counter, a comic called “Dagwood Spits The Atom” and a coupon for ordering MORE radioactive materials. One of the four uranium ores included was Po-210 (Polonium) which, by mass, is 250,000 times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide. “Merry Christmas Kevin, here’s that giant box of poison you asked for.”

That’s pretty bad but what might even be worse is the fact that, I’m sure like a lot of you, I actually had many of those old Hardy Boys books they talk about!

USS Enterprise taken out of active service

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TIME:

The world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was retired from active service on Saturday. The Enterprise was the largest ship in the world at the time it was built, earning the nickname “Big E.”

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was the eighth U.S. ship to bear the name Enterprise, but it won’t be the last.

My dad was in the Canadian Navy for many years and I still remember getting a tour of the ship as a ten year old.

Should Apple include a visitor’s center in its new HQ?

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SiliconBeat:

As Apple dreams up details of its new spaceship-shaped headquarters in Cupertino with the starchitects over at Sir Norman Foster’s shop, big-time fanboy and computer historian David Greelish has a suggestion:

“Hey,” he wrote in his blog, “you know what Apple needs? A visitor’s center, that’s what.”

Greelish has gotten something else for all his hard work: a big fat “Thanks but no thanks” from Apple.

And yet, even after being told no by the company, he’s still petitioning Apple online to include this “feature” on their new campus. Anyone else think this is a really bad, dumb idea?

Ringer for iOS and Mac

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Many thanks to Pixel Research Labs for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop with Ringer.

Ringer for iOS and Mac. Effortless iPhone ringtones, text tones, and alert tones. Easily select just the right part of your song to turn into your ringtone. See the waveform for your media so you can quickly find the spot you are looking for. Control fade in and fade out. Choose the gap between rings. Auto volume balance keeps ringtones from being too loud or too quiet. Ringer on the Mac lets you use just about any media including video and automatically imports tones into iTunes, ready to sync to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

Learning from your mistakes

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David Barnard, founder of App Cubby, explains and apologizes to users of Timer for one of his decisions.

Much respect David.

Apple testing carrier’s LTE networks

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This week, however, a Swisscom spokesperson told Telecoms.com that: “Apple only enables 4G access after testing their device on an operator’s live network.”

[…]

It proved, he said, “who is running the industry”, adding: “Apple have put themselves in the driving seat; it’s really changing the game quite a lot.”

Apple has exerted more control over carriers than any other handset maker. Before Apple, carriers had the control, and still do in a lot of cases.

iPad mini and iPhone 5 arrive in China in December

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Apple today announced the Wi-Fi versions of iPad® mini and fourth generation iPad with Retina display will be available in China on Friday, December 7, and iPhone 5 will be available on Friday, December 14.

This is huge for Apple.

App scams

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This is just terrible. Not Apple’s fault, but there definitely has to be a way to track this.

Top Gear and 50 years of Bond cars

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Top Gear:

In a special edition of Top Gear, Richard Hammond celebrates 50 years of James Bond films with a look back at 007’s legendary cars. He also talks to Daniel Craig and Sir Roger Moore, gets exclusive access behind the scenes of Bond’s latest adventure, Skyfall, and pays special tribute to 007 by attempting to turn a Lotus in a fully working submarine car.

This is the 50th anniversary of James Bond and of all the people jumping on the bandwagon, I’m most looking forward to the Top Gear take on some of the iconic Bond cars. Sadly, this show, while available on the iTunes Store, doesn’t include the full Top Gear complement – it’s just The Hamster.

Starbucks iTunes (RED) eGift basket

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Give a gift that gives back this holiday season with Starbucks iTunes (RED)™ eGift basket. You can send loved ones a thoughtful gift of two digital eGifts—$15 eGift to Starbucks and $15 eGift to iTunes—for $30. With every purchase, Starbucks and iTunes will each donate 75 cents to the Global Fund. With the convenience of a Starbucks Card, Starbucks Card eGifts can be used for purchases in-store at participating company-owned and licensed stores in the U.S. and online. This unique and meaningful eGift basket can be purchased online.

Since launching our partnership with (RED) in December 2008, Starbucks has contributed more than $11 million to the Global Fund to help those living with HIV/AIDS. Starbucks continues to support and drive contributions to the Global Fund while raising awareness toward an AIDS Free Generation by 2015.

Fantastical for iPhone

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I test quite a few iPhone, iPad and Mac apps. Some I like, others I don’t really care about and a very limited number, I love. Fantastical for iPhone is an app I love. […]

Twitter sued for access to tweet data

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A San Francisco judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order compelling Twitter to continue providing access to its “Firehose” – the full daily stream of some 400 million tweets – to PeopleBrowsr Inc, a data analytics firm that sifts through Twitter and resells that information to clients ranging from technology blogs to the U.S. Department of Defense.

GuitarTone for iOS

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Inspired by the ultimate collection of legendary and boutique amps and effect pedals, GuitarTone offers a vast array of high quality tones. Sonoma passionately created tonal interpretations of essential vintage and custom amps, pedals and microphones, and assembled them into GuitarTone.

You can do dual amps with this too. Looks great.

Apple releases iTunes 11

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Apple on Thursday released the much anticipated iTunes 11. First introduced in September, iTunes 11 features a simplified design and some new features. […]

Speaking of piracy

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Philip Berne:

I stopped downloading any pirated content about 5 years ago, when I was caught and sent a nastygram by my cable company. But it wasn’t really the cable company who caught me. It was HBO. I was trying to download The Wire. The warning I received said they were not pressing charges immediately, but they wanted me to stop and destroy my copies. They also reserved the right to sue me at any point in the future. I’m probably in the clear, but hopefully this screed will go some way to convincing HBO that I’m completely on their side. I have seen the error in my ways.

I bet that would be enough to make anyone stop illegal downloading.

Making excuses for piracy

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This argument is both ludicrous, and wrong. Ludicrous, because if piracy is actually wrong, it doesn’t get less wrong simply because you can’t have the product exactly when and where you want it at a price you wish to pay. You are not entitled to shoplift Birkin bags on the grounds that they are ludicrously overpriced, and you cannot say you had no alternative but to break into an the local ice cream parlor at 2 am because you are really craving some Rocky Road and the insensitive bastards refused to stay open 24/7 so that you could have your favorite sweet treat whenever you want. You are not forced into piracy because you can’t get a television show at the exact moment when you want to see it; you are choosing piracy.

If that’s not wrong, then hey, no need to write long articles about how they’ve really backed you into a corner. If you think it is wrong, then act like a grownup and wait until you can buy it legally. And really, if you wouldn’t write an op-ed urging storeowners to stay open 24/7 lest they drive their customers to a little light B&E, then please don’t write essentially the same thing about cable networks.

What a great article.

[Via Harry Marks]

Eddy Cue

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The Wall Street Journal did a nice profile of Apple Senior Vice President, Eddy Cue.

Universal Audio 64-bit support coming in Dec.

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Separately, Universal Audio will be releasing a public beta of 64-bit Mac plug-ins (UAD Powered Plug-Ins v6.4.1 software) in December, ensuring that 64-bit UAD plug-in support will be available on both PC and Mac platforms in 2012.

Great to see them bringing support next month.

US-CERT warns about Samsung printers

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Printers manufactured by Samsung have a backdoor administrator account hard coded in their firmware that could enable attackers to change their configuration, read their network information or stored credentials and access sensitive information passed to them by users.