Heineken NV, the world’s third-largest brewer, forecast growth against a tough market backdrop in the year ahead after reporting higher revenue for 2014 and increasing its dividend.

I’ve done my part.

A Craigslist ad selling a guitar:

“THIS GUITAR WILL NOT PLAY DOOM METAL. This guitar needs to play GOOD RIFFS and not BORING doom riffs. If your favorite band is Black Sabbath, I can’t sell this guitar to you. If you own a Fender or Gibson and want to upgrade, I can’t sell this to you (Ibanez Japanese guitars are the PRIME of guitar craftsmanship crafted by the ancient Japanese wizards—if you think otherwise, you haven’t played one of these HEAVY METAL BATTLE TANKS.)

“If you want to play REAL GUITAR RIFFS, this guitar is for you! If you have a Marshall full-stack in your bedroom, THIS GUITAR IS FOR YOU. If you say you are ready to buy this guitar and show up to buy it wearing a Mastodon shirt, I can’t sell it to you. I MEAN RIFFS, not some banjo jangle pentatonic shit. If you own an HM2, this guitar is perfect. You can get the perfect chainsaw distortion with these HOT HIGH GAIN RAIL PICKUPS. Real riffs only.”

That’s some funny shit.

Good list of apps here from Lee Peterson. I use all of those and a couple more.

Each month, Foremost releases a limited-edition collection of clothing — three-to-five items per gender — alongside an interview series with some of the world’s most prominent, interesting, and creative personalities.

Good luck to my friend, Matt Alexander, on his new project.

Zak Wylde puts on such a great show. This is one of my favorite BLS songs.

The number of stolen iPhones dropped by 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York in the 12 months after Apple Inc added a kill switch to its devices in September 2013. In London, smartphone theft dropped by half, according to an announcement by officials in the three cities.

This was a real concern for cities around the world. The drop shows how powerful the kill switch has been as a deterrent.

The project in Monterey County, California will provide enough energy for 60,000 homes as well as Apple’s future head office in nearby Cupertino, Cook said at a Goldman Sachs technology conference in San Francisco.

“We know in Apple that climate change is real. The time for talk is passed,” he said. “The time for action is now.”

Great move.

As his body weakened from a muscle disease, Ethan Och knew the time had come.

He told his music teacher he’d have to give up his favorite school activity.

His teacher wouldn’t let him just quit. They had another idea.

Today Ethan is back in the percussion section, drumming on an iPad hooked to an amplifier.

What a wonderful story.

Good luck to Steve, Dave, and Kelly.

Animal wins for the screams.

We all snap pictures like crazy these days and post them to a number of sharing sites. But there was a time when you would be so excited to get your roll of film back to see what pics you shot. Mari and Linda Johannessen are bringing that experience back with a new app for iPhone. You can take 24 pics, but you can’t review them. When the “film roll” is full, you send it away and get back 24 developed prints, delivered to your physical mailbox, within a week.

Personally, I love the idea.

Slashing prices on tablets all over the place. I thought they were selling so good.

Buy a phone, get a tablet for $0.99. And they still can’t beat the iPad. It makes you wonder why people are so worried about iPad sales.

I think this will be pretty popular.

A hidden treasure trove of gear flown on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon sees the light of day after Neil Armstrong’s widow shares the find with the Smithsonian.

Wow.

Once a week, inside the 142-square-foot apartment he shares with his parents and two siblings in a rural California farming town, a two-year-old has a standing appointment with an iPad.

Born deaf, the toddler received cochlear implants seven months ago. He and his mother use FaceTime video chat to have hour-long sessions in Spanish with a speech therapist who is helping the boy learn how to listen and understand the new sounds.

What a truly great story.

Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set.

The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.

Such TV sets “listen” to some of what is said in front of them and may share details they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.

Fuck. You.

I just can’t get over how good they are after all these years. Interesting to note that drummer Phil Rudd wasn’t with the band—try to hire one hitman and you lose your job.

Very impressive.

Many of you have noticed that The Loop Magazine hasn’t published as often since mid to late last year. I tried to make up for missing issues by publishing double issues once a month, but the schedule was still erratic. Clearly, this isn’t fair to the subscribers of the magazine.

I have been going through a personal crisis that has affected my ability and commitment to publish the magazine. I have kept the details private, but my problems are no excuse for letting a fine publication falter. I want to apologize to all those that put their faith in me to put out a quality product—I failed.

That said, I believe in The Loop Magazine. I believe the magazine app developed by Chris Harris and Mateusz Stawecki is second to none in the App Store. I believe the content we publish is engaging and different from everything else put out on Newsstand. I believe The Loop Magazine can work.

I am moving the magazine to a monthly publication that will contain double the amount of stories that the bi-weekly edition published—that’s 8-10 stories per month. I’m currently finishing up the latest issue and it should be published this week. This will be the start of a new chapter for The Loop Magazine, and I’m sure it will be a successful one.

Although I have no right to ask for it, I need your support to make the magazine successful. If you haven’t subscribed, take a look at the magazine and the content and see what you think—if you like it, subscribe. If you tried it before and were disappointed in me, try again. It’s available for both iPhone and iPad.

I have a lot to prove to you, the readers, but I believe this will work.

Thanks for your support.

Jim

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 almost choked when he said this whole wall is full of Les Pauls.

Many thanks to Elgato for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock enables you to connect everything to your MacBook or Ultrabook at once. With two Thunderbolt 2 and three USB 3.0 ports, simultaneously connect all of your devices with only one cable. Built-in HDMI enables you to directly connect a display of your choice up to 4K resolution, while enjoying increased network performance with built-in Gigabit Ethernet and crystal-clear conference calls through the separate microphone input and amplified audio output.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple has made a major push to recruit talent from the electric carmaker, offering massive bonuses and significant salary bumps for those willing to come to work in Cupertino.

Musk said Apple’s attempts have not been successful. I do have a lot of respect for Musk and the work he’s done.

The device will communicate via a form of technology known as NFC and won’t have to be charged, Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek said in an interview. The Swatch smartwatch will also let consumers make mobile payments and work with Windows and Android software, he said.

I really like the not having to be charged bit.

Hayek is ready to go head-to-head with Apple Inc., which has scheduled its smartwatch introduction for April.

Nobody is truly ready to take on Apple.

With strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2014, Apple’s iOS has overtaken Android in the US, according to sales data from market research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. […]

Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, “Steve Jobs” invites audiences behind the scenes of the digital revolution to witness an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

It is a pretty damning indictment that Microsoft had to spend hundreds of millions on front end apps for its own platform –Microsoft Exchange — and it should send alarm bells ringing.

Microsoft has a long history of not getting product trends. They didn’t get the iPod, tablets, iPhone and a host of other products that it could have made a lot of money on. Microsoft is profit-focused, which means it makes shitty products. Apple is product-focused, which means people buy the quality and Apple makes a lot of money. Reading this, Microsoft will have no idea what the difference is.

Now there are signs that the companies are more likely to be ferocious competitors than allies. Google is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, most likely in conjunction with its long-in-development driverless car project. Drummond has informed Uber’s board of this possibility, according to a person close to the Uber board, and Uber executives have seen screenshots of what appears to be a Google ride-sharing app that is currently being used by Google employees. This person, who requested not to be named because the talks are private, said the Uber board is now weighing whether to ask Drummond to resign his position as an Uber board member.

Google is a big investor in Uber, and has been from the beginning. However, this isn’t the first time a Google employee sat on a company’s board and then decided to enter the same market. Eric Schmidt sat on Apple’s board and witnessed the development of the iPhone.

John Biggs:

Sources tell us Uber is hiring more than fifty senior scientists from Carnegie Mellon as well as from the National Robotics Engineering Center, a CMU-affiliated research entity. Carnegie Mellon, home of the Mars Rover and other high-profile robotics projects, declined to comment at this time, as did scientists mentioned by our source. Uber has “cleaned out” the Robotics Institute, said the source.

So, who isn’t building a self-driving car?