[VIDEO] Even if you are not familiar with Pomplamoose, you’ve probably seen them in one of their commercials, like this one for Hundai.
Their latest effort is a cover of Video Killed the Radio Star, filmed using a Mac (maybe a MacBook Air?) and an Epson projector.
Just as it does on your iOS device, the Mac version of the Shazam app will listen for music and attempt to identify it using its hefty database of tunes. Now it does TV too. Big privacy implications, however.
Battery tech just took a huge leap forward, as Stanford scientists have solved a problem that has been a major roadblock in battery design.
Very cool.
GigaOM:
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said back in February that he wanted to make basic internet access free in emerging markets, through the Internet.org initiative. Well here we go: Internet.org has introduced an app that will act as a limited portal to the internet, and it’s rolling out first in Zambia.
Facebook’s strategy is to enter a market with little to no existing internet access, make a deal with a large provider to create a large swath of internet coverage. Access is free, but the ecosystem is controlled and extremely limited.
Bloomberg:
The second largest U.S. automaker will replace BlackBerry Ltd. (BBRY)’s smartphones with iPhones for about 3,300 workers by the end of this year, Sara Tatchio, a Ford spokeswoman, said yesterday in an interview. About 6,000 more employees will receive iPhones over the next two years, replacing flip phones, she said.
If you’ve been waiting for a speed bump to buy a new MacBook Pro, these numbers show a nice little speed increase.
A man ran up a $7,753.22 bill at an Apple store.
When his debit card was declined, he pretended to call his bank. He gave the store clerk a fake authorization code to punch into the card reader.
And that’s how the man, 24-year-old Sharron Laverne Parrish Jr. of Tampa, scammed one of the biggest high-tech companies in the world — not once but 42 times — totaling $309,768, according to federal court records.
Some Apple Store employees have some explaining to do.
Unlike Uber and Lyft, which use disruption sitting on top of a for-profit model, BlaBlaCar doesn’t require a specific revenue model for success. Like Airbnb, they make their money on fees. This is an innovative form of disruption.
Google has created a new, invitation-only program that gives selected developers access to:
• Mentorship from our Google Developer Experts and Developer Relations
• Exclusive invitation to networking events
• Access to free training, startup bootcamps and resources
• Featuring in our spotlight section
Think Apple should do something like this?
ZDNet:
Prior to this upgrade the base version of the 13.3-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display featured a 2560-by-1600 resolution at 227 pixels per inch retina display, 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3L RAM, and 128GB of PCIe-based flash storage, and it had a price tag of $1,299. For the same price this model now comes with a 2.6 GHz Intel Core i5 chip and 8GB of memory.
The base version of the beefier 15.4-inch with Retina display model came with a 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch display, 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L RAM, and 256GB of PCIe-based flash storage, all of which would have set you back $1,999. Following the refresh this now comes with a 2.2GHz CPU and 16GB of RAM.
The price of the high-end MBPr has dropped from US$2,599 to US$2,499.
Bluetooth locks have been available for your front door for quite a while. Now they are making the leap to one of the largest hotel chains in the world.
In response to the Comcast horror story that’s been making the rounds lately, these stories are spread through a number of other companies.
First there was Samsung, a meteoric rise with a new phone that bore a remarkable resemblance to the iPhone. Seemed like cheating, no real price was ever paid.
Now those chickens have come home to roost. Samsung is getting pressure on the high end by Apple’s offerings and on the low end by China’s own meteor, Xiaomi. It’s deliciously apropos to watch Samsung’s lunch get eaten by another blatant copycat.
This was expected, but still an important step. Next up, US approval of the acquisition.
Fortune:
Samsung Electronics Co. suffered another blow to its efforts to cut the dependency of its smartphone business on Google Inc.’s Android operating system, postponing the launch of a new model that runs on its own Tizen software.
The news is the latest disappointment for the Korean giant which is trying to defend its position as the world’s largest maker of smartphones from the twin challenges of Apple Inc. and, at the other end of the market range, Chinese companies such as Huawei, ZTE and Xiaomi.
Samsung is getting squeezed.
Businessweek:
Microsoft today began taking orders for its new game console from online retailer JD.com Inc. (JD:US) via Tencent Holdings Ltd.âs (700) mobile-messaging applications. The pair of Chinese Internet companies hold exclusive rights to pre-sell the locally made Xbox One until July 30, JD.com said in a news release. The console is slated to ship nationwide in September.
Important market expansion for Microsoft and the Xbox team.
If you are considering signing up for the Yosemite beta, first make sure you make a complete backup of your hard drive, then take a few minutes and read this excellent walk-through by Macworld’s Dan Frakes that’ll take you through the process of creating a bootable install drive of the Yosemite beta.
You did backup your hard drive first, right?
[VIDEO] Noisey:
Marcus Haney has never paid to go to a festival. He makes replica wristbands, sneaks past security guards, and walks with confidence. Sure – he gets chucked out. But often he ends up on the main-stage, hangs out with bands, and captures unique views with his camera.
Marcus Haney is following his passion in a way that few people do. He’s got that rare inner voice, that bright burning vision, that guides him.
Follow the headline link to read the interview. Watch an early, leaked trailer for his documentary, a work in progress, below.
[VIDEO] I’m an engineer at heart. I love creative solutions to problems, even if they turn out not to be practical. I’ll leave it to the vinyl experts to decide if this process works better than a commercial record cleaner, but I give this video an A+ for clever.
One point I pulled from this article: The Chinese smartphone market is maturing, moving from a jailbroken wild west to a market that appreciates aesthetics and is willing to spend more for a better experience.
Apple is holding the line here, playing the long game. And it’s working.
Scorching.
Interesting article, both historically and in the way it reveals the role that design studio 8 Inc played in the creation of the Apple Store.
Lots of great content to dig through, all free until the paywall is put in place in the fall.
The company reported diluted EPS of 55 cents, but that figure included three cents worth of one-time charges. The 58-cent figure compares to analysts’ estimate of 60 cents a share, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters.
So much volatility, it’s hard to get any sense of direction from Redmond. A big part of this instability is the Nokia acquisition and pending layoffs.
[VIDEO] There’s some good stuff in this video. The biggest surprise was the two finger tap in a paragraph of text. Worth the price of admission right there. Nice job, Joshua.
Lots of interesting detail in the Apple Insider article and in the patent itself.
Interesting piece by Dan Frommer. I know every one of these pieces, but never thought of them as wearables until I read this.
Great conceptual approach to logo mechanics. Go to this site, then shrink the width of the browser page, watch what the logo does in response.
Last week, security consultant and former iOS jailbreaker Jonathan Zdziarski made headlines with his talk, “Identifying Back Doors, Attack Points, and Surveillance Mechanisms in iOS Devices”. Here’s a link to a PDF of the slides. The talk gave a sense that Apple left a backdoor for easy access to pairing records (the records that pair an iOS device to a trusted computer). Apple responded.