Yearly Archives: 2012

Ferdinand Porsche dead at 76

AP:

He designed Porsche’s classic 911 sports car – the sleek model that evokes power, wealth and envy among aficionados – cementing his grandfather’s name into the modern psycheFerdinand Alexander Porsche died Thursday in Salzburg, Austria at age 76, Porsche AG said. No cause was provided.

First Jim Marshall, now Porsche.

Pro Tools Express free training video

Russ starts at the beginning with opening and saving a session, then goes into using loops, recording and editing audio, using virtual instruments, built-in effects and exporting your masterpiece for CD and the internet.

The 1 hour video is free with registration. I use Groove3 all the time for Pro Tools video training and it’s always high-quality stuff.

Nokia Lumia 900 has ‘mediocre hardware’

So why didn’t Nokia pack the phone with the newest processor, best display, and more storage? I think it all comes down to price.

There is a place for low-end smartphones, but I don’t think people want shit products.

Android fragmentation vs iPhone fragmentation

Chris Sauve:

iOS 5 captured approximately 75% of all iOS users in the same amount of time it took Gingerbread to get 4% of all Android users. Even more astounding is that 15 weeks after launch iOS 4 was at 70% and iOS 5 was at 60% while Ice Cream Sandwich got to just 1% share at the same age. If there were any question as to whether iOS had a less fragmented ecosystem than Android, the past two charts provide a fairly definitive answer.

But Android is winning.

The difference between 7-inch and 7.85-inch is everything

Odi Kosmatos:

Here’s why I think there will be a tablet from Apple that’s optimized for reading and has a 7″ retina display that runs iPhone apps unmodified, not a tablet with a 7.85″ display that runs iPad apps unmodified.

User Experience Design is alive and well

Rian van der Merwe:

I understand and appreciate the arguments these designers and writers are trying to make, but as someone who teaches introductory courses on User Experience Design, this plead to call ourselves something else (or nothing at all) is problematic.

Jim Marshall dead at 88

It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of our beloved founder and leader for the past 50 years, Jim Marshall. While mourning the Guv’nor though, we also salute a legendary man who led a full and truly remarkable life.

Marshall amps are the sound of Rock for so many of us. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim Marshall a few years ago and was able to tell him the effect his life’s work had on me.

Rest in Peace.

New iOS app helps ships avoid whale collisions

Wired Gadget Lab:

There are only around 400 North Atlantic right whales left in the world today, according to International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), one of the collaborators on the app. With such a small population, the right whales are one of the rarest large animals and are close to extinction. Collisions with ships is currently the leading cause of death for these remaining whales.To prevent ships from striking whales, Whale Alerts works by linking near-real-time acoustic buoys that listen for whale calls to an iOS device in a ship’s bridge. Using these whale calls, a GPS system and a vessel’s Automatic Identification System (AIS), the app displays a whale’s location in relation to a ship’s location on a digital nautical chart. The app also sends alerts with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conservation measures when a ship enters a conservation area.

“Find My Whale” app?

Universal Audio 1176 Classic Limiter Collection

Picking up where UA’s original 1176LN Limiting Amplifier plug-in left off, this new 1176 collection provides unrivaled emulations of three distinct 1176 hardware units, and is indispensable for any serious engineer or producer.

Some of the best.

Leave Steve alone

Mat Honan:

Steve Jobs is dead. He doesn’t need to do another day’s work as your puppet pundit. Let the man rest.

Yes, please.

Google CEO: Steve Jobs’ fury about Android was just for show

Google CEO Larry Page:

I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

So, Larry looks to make the world a better place and Steve didn’t? Oh please.

Dropbox referral bonuses double to 500 MB

The Dropbox Blog:

For every friend you invite that installs Dropbox, you’ll both get 500 MB of free space. If you’ve got a free account, you can invite up to 32 people for a whopping total of 16 GB of extra space. Pro accounts now earn 1 GB per referral, for a total of 32 GB of extra space. Have you already invited a bunch of people? Don’t worry. Within a few days, you’ll get full credit for every referral that’s already been completed. Boom!

Nice little bonus for those of us who use Dropbox.

Mac business sales grow

CIO Journal:

About 46% of corporations now issue Macs to employees, up by half in just two years, according to a Forrester report. “The use of iPads and iPhones in the workplace is creating increased awareness and consideration of Macs,” said Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.Even though more companies are starting to issue Macs, the percent of workers using them is still fairly slim. About 7% of computers companies give to employees are Macs, he said.Macs are the de facto choice of many Silicon Valley startups, and many larger companies now let workers choose a Mac. For example, Cisco CIO Rebecca Jacoby told CIO Journal that about 25% of Cisco’s 63,870 employees use Macs.

The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson:

Even though he will not be around to see them to fruition, his rules for success helped him build a company that not only will create these and other disruptive products, but will stand at the intersection of creativity and technology as long as Jobs’s DNA persists at its core.

“as long as Jobs’s DNA persists” may be the key to the future success or failure of Apple.

The blogging cycle

Dave Caolo:

I’ve noticed an interesting shift in blogging. In short, there’s a trend moving away from hyper-focused niche blogs, back to what I’d call “personality” blogs. It makes me think of when I started writing online in 2000, and I like it.

Dave’s article really took me back to when I began writing on the Internet.

For me, blogging in 2000 is what Twitter is today. People posted short items or a picture of what they were doing, but then it started to become a business. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it is nice to reminisce.

The next wave of iOS apps

Erica Ogg for GigaOM:

Snapguide and Paper have two things in common. Both appeal to the creative side of mobile users, and both are themselves beautifully made and deceptively simple to use.I think it’s these qualities that are going to provide a roadmap for more iOS apps to come that will appeal to the artsy, creative side of people, rather than the traditional consumption-oriented theme of what have so far been the most popular types of apps on Apple’s platform.

Absolutely right. We’ve gone through several of these waves of apps from productivity to games and every time developers start to push the envelope of what can be done, we get another one. Creativity looks to be the wave.

BlackBerry party ends after man is stabbed in the neck

Mark Hattersley for Macworld UK:

BlackBerry’s woes continue after a celebrity party, thrown by the company last night to celebrate BBM, ended in a vicious stabbing that forced police to lock celebrities inside the club and BlackBerry to cancel the event.

I could make a joke like maybe someone threw an iPhone into the crowd, but out of respect for the person that was injured, I won’t.

iPhone vs. anything

Om Malik:

The non iOS devices for me are purely for academic purposes and to keep up with the devices, trends and apps.

And there you have it in one neat sentence.

Google hates Feedburner

Doug Stephen:

My feed is served up via Feedburner. Feedburner is another Google property, but it seems that it’s been mostly abandoned. They were working on a new, more Google-like interface a while back but they have seemingly abandoned it what with the Beta for this interface being gone. It’s too bad that Google has seemingly lost interest in Feedburner, because it’s an awesome service for RSS feed analytics.

I’ve had nothing but trouble with Feedburner. Actually, everyone I’ve ever talked to has had nothing but bad things to say about Feedburner.

Java for OS X Lion 2012-001 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 7

Apple has released Java for OS X Lion 2012-001 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 7. The updates address the vulnerability in Java exploited by the Flashback.K trojan. The latest variant of Flashback.K could hijack you Mac even if you don’t enter an admin password. Apple says this can occur when visiting a Web page that is running an untrusted Java applet.

The update is available for OS X Lion 10.7.3 and Mac OS X 10.6.8, and you can get it via Software Update.

Apple holds iCloud master decryption key

Ars Technica:

Ars recently attempted to delve into the inner workings of the security built into Apple’s iCloud service. Though we came away reasonably certain that iCloud uses industry best practices that Apple claims it uses to protect data and privacy, we warned that your information isn’t entirely protected from prying eyes. At the heart of the issue is the fact that Apple can, at any time, review the data synced with iCloud, and under certain circumstances might share that information with legal authorities.

It’s a a good article and should be read by anyone who uses iCloud but the bottom line is, if you didn’t encrypt it yourself, it can be vulnerable to others.

Some CNN stupid

Clyde Prestowitz for CNN:

As a business, Apple has a right to fear that moving the assembly work from China to the United States will entail raising labor costs so high as to make the company less competitive and profitable. But for it to say that it has no obligation to help solve America’s problems is completely unacceptable.

The problems in the U.S. economy are not for Apple to resolve. They pay taxes — I’m sure they pay a lot of taxes — and they employ tens of thousands of Americans in high paying jobs.

Apple is not a charity, nor should it make business decisions based on a country’s needs or wants. Apple has one financial responsibility — to make money for its shareholders.

Instead of giving trillions in bailout money to companies that have been mismanaged, why not use that money to make doing business in America more attractive.

Tim Cook leads top CEOs rating

Apple’s Tim Cook tops the ranks of CEOs whose employees think they’re doing a good job, according to a new poll at Glassdoor.com.

BlackBook: Server based contact management

BlackBook is your new company-wide address book. All users in your company can access these contacts, allowing for an easier flow of information between employees. From the BlackBook Server, you can control who can read contact information, edit contacts, and export/share contacts. And each user can set categories for easy sorting by contact type.

The company says with its built-in cardDAV server, you can get the contacts on your iOS device too.