The Sorkin sketch

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This sketch from Late Night with Seth Meyers struck me as a pitch perfect parody, with a perfectly appropriate cameo at the end.

DirecTV follows Netflix lead, offers 4K Ultra HD video

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It’s clear that 4K video is coming. The question is, will the tipping point be a business as usual delivery mechanism as it makes its way through the usual suspects, first DirecTV, then the cable providers?

Jony Ive speaks about the tragedy of design education

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Sir Jony Ive gave a talk at London’s Design Museum, focusing on what he considers a tragic direction taken by UK design schools.

Speaking at London’s Design Museum last night, Ive attacked design schools for failing to teach students how to make physical products and relying too heavily on “cheap” computers.

A terrific read, all the way through.

BlackBerry and Samsung form alliance to challenge Apple-IBM

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PatentlyApple:

At a BlackBerry event held earlier today in San Francisco they announced a new management-services partnership with rival Samsung Electronics. This is the very first time that the two companies have teamed up for a major product. The new partnership is designed to compete head-on with the new Apple-IBM alliance.

Toshiba’s high-tech grow rooms are churning out lettuce that never needs washing

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Dan Frommer, writing for Quartz:

Why plant lettuce in a clean room? The obvious answer: Because it’s clean. Everything is tightly controlled, including air pressure, temperature, lighting, bacteria, and dust. The result is a crop that doesn’t need pesticides, doesn’t have bugs, and doesn’t need washing.

Build your own Apple I from scratch

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I love to build stuff, especially if it involves circuit boards and solder. I’ve made my share of guitar interfaces (some of which actually do what they are supposed to!) and gadgets of all stripes.

In the video below, Ben Heck from Element 14 talks you through the first part of the process of building a working Apple I computer, complete with peekable, pokable ROM. Part 2 is scheduled to be released Friday night, November 14th.

Apple iMac commercial from 1998

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Though this ad is old, the feel is more in line with some of the more modern spots, using fewer words and more auditory cues.

Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers ad server down

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This is the server that serves up ads for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BBC.com, The Guardian, lots of other big names. Big money at risk here, bad day for folks at DoubleClick.

Pew survey on public perceptions of privacy

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The Pew Research Center did an extensive survey on public perceptions of privacy and security in the so called post-Snowden era. There are a lot of interesting takeaways in the report.

MacBook Pro Retina cable dock

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Bracket is a Kickstarter for a cable dock, specific to the MacBook Pro Retina. I really like this concept, hope it succeeds. You had me at aluminium.

The real usable space of an iOS device

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Kirk McElhearn did an experiment, doing a clean install iOS 8 on a 16 GB iPad mini (first generation). After the install (which includes Apple’s recommended apps), he’s left with just over 8 GB of usable space.

Darkhotel malware

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This is one of the most sophisticated malware campaigns I’ve ever heard of. It targets individuals and waits six months before activating.

The relentless power of nature

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Imagine waking up one day and seeing a lava flow creeping towards your neighborhood. Watch the video below.

How the Berlin wall really fell

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Today is the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I always thought the wall was taken down in response to purposeful social change. But read the linked story. It was all the result of a colossal chain of clumsy bureaucratic error.

Why you probably won’t understand the web of the future

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Quartz:

Language barriers in globalization are hardly a new issue. So why the sudden drive for polyglotism? It’s simple: As mobile operators and web giants try to expand their markets by bringing more people online, we have reached a tipping point where the imbalance of content on the internet has become too stark to avoid.

FilePane, more power for your drags and drops

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There are a number of drag and drop utilities available for the Mac. They all work by inserting themselves in the drag and drop command chain, intercepting a drag event and then presenting their interface to receive and process the drop.

FilePane is an interesting take on this approach.

Amazon Echo, a Siri for the home

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Echo is always on, much like “Hey Siri” or “OK Google”, always listening for its name, a name that you get to choose. Like Siri, you can ask Echo questions or give it commands, as long as they fit into its knowledge domain. Watch the video below to get a sense of how broad that domain really is. And, I suspect, that domain will continue to grow over time.

I think Amazon will sell a ton of these.

NFC, credit card disruption, and the future of Apple Pay

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Interesting piece from Seeking Alpha (reg-wall):

Once paying for purchases at retail with a smartphone becomes commonplace, regardless of whether you believe Apple will roll out its own AppleCard, the credit card companies will fall one by one, starting with American Express. How can it possibly be prestigious to carry a Platinum or Black card when the card never leaves your wallet?