Finally, learning and practicing a new language is easier and more intuitive than ever before. Introducing HelloTalk, the language app where your teachers are native language speakers from around the world. You just pick the language you want to learn—there are over 100 from which to select—and almost instantaneously you’ll be in touch with native speakers of that language … and you’ll start learning and practicing immediately.

HelloTalk isn’t a course you strictly follow; rather, you learn and practice at your pace and in the manner that best meets the way you learn. Practice foreign languages with people around the world. Simultaneously speak and type the language you’re learning. Record your voice before speaking to your HelloTalk friends and compare your recording to standard pronunciations. Change your friends’ audio messages to text for better understanding, and receive help to improve your grammar. Easily translate whenever you don’t understand, and so much more.

With HelloTalk, you’ll discover learning a new language is fun … and fast. Download your copy for iPhone or Android today.

I was by Yerba Buena today and Apple was putting up the banners in preparation for Monday’s event, so I thought I’d share.

A street photography project to document world’s humanity in one single day. World wide participants will share their city stories through one photo per hour during 24 hours.

Sounds great.

In February 2015, I traveled far north to Norway to hunt down and photograph the Northern Lights, one of the most mesmerizing natural phenomena of this planet.

The Northern Lights are amazing.

Apple received the highest score for loyalty of any brand cited across all categories. What explains Apple’s unrivaled loyalty in China? Yes, the products are attractive. Yes, the price point is high enough that the iPhone is a status symbol that is more accessible than a diamond-studded watch or flashy sports car.

Very interesting article.

AltConf is a free, community-driven and supported event, held in downtown San Francisco alongside Apple’s WWDC. We’re currently planning the 2015 conference, and we’ve got some very exciting plans in the works that we’re hoping that we can announce very soon.

Mike and Judy do a tremendous job with AltConf. If you’re interested in speaking or wish to support the conference, be sure to get in touch with them.

Samsung lawyer Kathleen Sullivan of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP said the South Korean company had all but stopped using the patents, so no injunction was needed.

Wait, I thought Samsung said it didn’t infringe on Apple’s patents. Now they’re saying they did infringe, but they sort of stopped. This company is crazypants crazy.

The seven-track demo (Metallica’s second overall) dropped during the summer of 1982, when the band members themselves (which then included Dave Mustaine on guitar in the pre-Kirk Hammett days) sent the copies out to friends and the underground metal cognoscenti.

Yeah, I’ll be picking this one up.

Apple has promised to distribute a client-side patch for the issue on both iOS and OS X by next week, while the researchers who discovered the flaw — from INRIA, IMDEA, and Microsoft Research — have been working to notify hosts who still serve export ciphers.

“These products are the result of a simple philosophy,” Samsung CEO J.K. Shin said. “It comes to two words: Relentless innovation.”

Here are two more accurate words: Copying Apple.

Here’s some news from the Zeppelin camp: A film offering a bevy of Led Zeppelin live footage is coming to a movie theater near you. The movie, appropriately called Led Zeppelin, will feature Zeppelin performing several concerts that happened throughout their career and play in more than 300 U.S. cinemas March 30.

This is going to be a must-see film. I hope they make it available on iTunes because I’ll be buying it.

Samsung ditched almost all of its hardware differentiation to go all in on iPhone 6-style design — though layering in, iPhone 4-like, with glass on both sides.

Does this company have no shame? Can they not come up with anything on their own? Pathetic.

I’ve been waiting for this version since I saw it at NAMM in January. The new software includes Apollo Expanded featuring Console 2.0 Software; Sound Machine Wood Works Plug-In; Distortion Essentials Plug-In Bundle; Friedman Amplifiers Plug-In Collection; and (Mac) Support for OS X Yosemite. This is a great update.

Kayne talking to Oxford students:

“I love Steve Jobs, he’s my favourite person, but there’s one thing that disappoints me. When Steve passed he didn’t give the ideas up. That’s kinda selfish. You know that Elon’s like ‘yeah, take these ideas’. Maybe there are companies outside of Apple that could work on them and push humanity forward. Maybe the stock brokers won’t like that, the stock holders wouldn’t like that idea, but ideas are free and you can’t be selfish with them.”

What a moron.

This is a really nice looking app. I just downloaded the trial and it works great too—if there’s one thing I would add, it would be access to custom fields in WordPress. Otherwise, I really like it.

Steve was wicked smart. I was always amazed at how sharp he was and how quickly he could focus on what was important. I don’t know ANYONE that even comes close to how good he was at being able to do that.

Don’t just read the story, read the comments too. I miss Steve.

I don’t know why I found this so cool, but I did. Working CSS Clocks.

It is absolutely priceless where loser.com goes.

The Workflow Video Field Guide starts with a few, easy workflows and builds upon them over the course of an hour to turn you into a Workflow pro. By the time you get to the end, you’ll be able to roll your own workflows and change the way you work on your iPhone and iPad.

I always like David Sparks’ work.

People take incredible photos and videos on iPhone 6 every day. And here are some of our favorites. Explore the gallery, learn a few tips, and see what’s possible with the world’s most popular camera.

A new page from Apple highlighting some great shots taken with the iPhone 6. These are quite impressive.

A note from John Gruber on Vesper device support and pricing.

This is a new project from the very talented Khoi Vinh. I think this is such a great idea and will make things much easier for a lot of people. You can get a deal after the 30-day trial by using code LOOP.

A new book by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli that John Gruber had the opportunity to read and he likes it.

This was an interesting article from Om Malik on his recent apartment purge of items that were cluttering his life. We all have so much “stuff” that a purge is good once in a while.

Thank you to Algoriddim for sponsoring The Loop this week. djay Pro for Mac provides a complete toolkit for performing DJs. Its unique and modern interface is built around a sophisticated integration with iTunes and Spotify, giving you instant access to millions of tracks. Pristine sound quality and a powerful set of features including high-definition waveforms, four decks, audio effects, and hardware integration give you endless creative flexibility to take your sets to new heights. Special introductory pricing (40% off) for a limited time.

Jim’s Note: I had the opportunity to test djay Pro for Mac and loved it. I’m still using it.

That growth was led by Apple and its blockbuster iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which captured the overwhelming majority of the industry’s profit. Android, meanwhile, was relegated to a record-low of 11 percent global smartphone profit share during the quarter.

Apple had 89 percent and Android took 11 percent. It’s hard to argue with numbers like that.

Web-only access is a free level of iCloud service that’s available to anyone, including people who don’t own or use Apple devices. It includes access to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote for iCloud and 1 GB of free storage for any documents you create.

This is such a great idea.

Apple updated its web site today confirming it will live stream the March 9 event.

Apple on Thursday sent out invites for a special event to be held on March 9, 2015. The event will be held in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a venue that Apple has used many times before for special events. […]

This is exactly what I’d expect from Apple—lots of room on the page with the focus being on the product, and not on a bunch of needless words. It speaks for itself.