The rise and fall of 38 Studios

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The rise and fall of video game maker 38 Studios has been extensively documented in an in-depth piece published by Boston magazine.

Carbon Copy Cloner v3.5

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One of the best backup applications for your Mac is Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner, now up to version 3.5. The new release brings Mountain Lion support and has “transitioned” to a fully paid application – while Bombich worked for Apple, the software was donationware. Mike is no longer at Apple and he wants to get paid!

CCC creates automated, incremental and bootable backups and makes backing up simple and easy.

The new version costs $39.95 but is on sale for $29.96 for a limited time.

Steve Jobs: Inspiration or a cautionary tale?

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Wired:

Jobs has been dead for nearly a year, but the biography about him is still a best seller. Indeed, his life story has emerged as an odd sort of holy scripture for entrepreneurs—a gospel and an antigospel at the same time.To some, Jobs’ life has revealed the importance of sticking firmly to one’s vision and goals, no matter the psychic toll on employees or business associates. To others, Jobs serves as a cautionary tale, a man who changed the world but at the price of alienating almost everyone around him.For those who, like Jobs, have pledged to “put a dent in the universe,” his thorny life story has forced a reckoning. Is it really worth being like Steve?

Google acquires Sparrow e-mail app for Mac, iPhone

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Sparrow, which develops an eponymous e-mail client app for OS X and iOS, announced on their Web site Friday that they’ve been acquired by Google and are becoming part of the Gmail team.

The statement from Sparrow CEO Dom Leca said, “Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.”

He said that the Sparrow development team will be “working on new things at Google,” but Sparrow will remain available and the team will continue to provide support for users.

Terms of the acquisition were not revealed.

Apple’s new iPad makes unusually quiet debut in Beijing

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Wall Street Journal:

Apple’s latest iPad model went on sale quietly on Friday at a retail location in Beijing where unruly buyers and sullen crowds had marred past releases. Roughly 40 customers quietly lined up Friday morning outside the Apple Store in Beijing’s high-end Sanlitun shopping and restaurant district. They waited within a cordon surrounded security personnel and reporters. Store doors opened at 8 a.m. without disturbances.In May 2011, customers who lined up for new white iPhones scuffled with employees, leading managers to lock the doors.For the launch of the new iPad, Apple instituted a system new to the location in which buyers were required to take reservations beginning on Thursday, the day before the launch. Customers were then given a set time to pick up their devices.

Roger loves Chaz

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Roger Ebert:

Wednesday, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz?She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading. If my cancer had come, and it would have, and Chaz had not been there with me, I can imagine a descent into lonely decrepitude. I was very sick. I might have vegetated in hopelessness.This woman never lost her love, and when it was necessary she forced me to want to live. She was always there believing I could do it, and her love was like a wind forcing me back from the grave.

Film citric Roger Ebert’s touching love letter to his wife. Excuse me – I’ve got something in my eye.

How much does it cost to be Batman?

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Centives:

We all think about it several times a day (it’s not just us, right?…right?) How much would it cost to become Batman? In anticipation of the impending release of The Dark Knight Rises, Centives decided to find out.The total bill? $2.8 million to show the criminal scum that the city doesn’t belong to them.

Twist, the app that tells people you’ll be late

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Wired:

Whether you have a habit of arriving awkwardly early or annoyingly late for meetings, a new app called Twist is here to help. The location-based app, which launched on Wednesday, is akin to Find My Friends, but adds the useful element of notifying family, friends or colleagues when you’re going to arrive at a specific location.The app offers a clean and simple way to accomplish multiple tasks: Track a person’s location, receive directions, share photos along your route, send messages, and get venue and weather details. It’s not the snazziest-looking app, but the uncluttered experience is actually refreshing in a world where apps are trying to stuff as much as they can into the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen.

I absolutely hate being late and tend to show up 30+ minutes for appointments. Conversely, if someone I’m meeting is 5 minutes late, I worry they’ve been in an accident and are lying dead on the side of the road. This free app might alleviate some of that stress.

Recyclers disagree on impact of glued-in Retina MacBook Pro batteries

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Ars Technica:

Apple’s solution to shaving thickness from the Retina MacBook Pro—gluing its lithium polymer battery cells directly to the aluminum unibody shell—continues to spark debate among proponents of sustainable electronics.Apple submitted the device to the Green Electronics Council for an EPEAT Gold rating last week, prompting critics to argue that the glued-in battery should disqualify it from any rating at all. But it turns out that some recyclers disagree, saying it isn’t dramatically more difficult to safely remove the battery than in other modern devices.Muddying the waters further is Apple itself.

This is The Story That Won’t Die.

AT&T vs. Verizon: Who has the better shared data plan?

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CNET:

With AT&T officially announcing its “Mobile Share” plans and joining Verizon Wireless, there will soon be two options for customers who want to get into a family plan for data services.While these plans aren’t the best deals for individuals, large families or even groups of really, really close friends may want to consider them. That’s because the more people who sign on, the lower the price per gigabyte and user. Of course, if someone is a heavy data user, that person may want to stick with an individual plan, or risk hogging up the total available data for everyone.By and large, the plans are fairly similar.