Knowledge vs. Intelligence

Anthony Colangelo:

The difference between knowledge and intelligence is key here. Knowledge is the collection of skills and information a person has acquired through experience. Intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge. Just because someone lacks knowledge of a particular subject doesn’t mean they can’t apply their intelligence to help solve problems.

I love that.

Google kills Google Wallet for digital goods

Google has quietly revealed it plans to retire the Google Wallet API for digital goods on March 2, 2015. The company plans to continue supporting the sale of apps on Google Play as well as in-app payments, but users will not be able to purchase any virtual items offered on the Web through Google Wallet.

Cheapskate morons

I totally agree with Gruber here. Flooding the App Store with one-star reviews because a company needs to make money is wrong.

Elon Musk’s Next Mission: Internet Satellites

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk shook up the automotive and aerospace industries with electric cars and cheap rockets. Now, he is focused on satellites, looking at ways to make smaller, less-expensive models that can deliver Internet access across the globe, according to people familiar with the matter.

Elon is definitely as visionary and the man get’s shit done.

The Internet mogul of 2014 is… Will Ferrell

It was one of the most hilarious (and important!) moments of the year: Zach Galifianakis interviewing President Obama about…the Affordable Care Act. And it vaulted Funny or Die—the world s greatest comedy site, brought to you by Will Ferrell and friends—to such stratospheric heights of viral-video dominance that the site has now hired some Wall Street guys to evaluate potential buyers. Amy Wallace embeds in the company’s Hollywood HQ and learns why FOD may soon be laughing all the way to the, well, you know

Clickbait and linkbait

Joe Wilcox:

Clickbait and linkbait also corrupt longstanding, and sensible practices regarding headline writing that negatively affect audience attitudes about what is valuable content. Good headlines should be aggressive or provocative, such that they pull people to read the story. Emphasis: Read. Deliver value. Clickbait and linkbait headlines and stories aren’t written for people but for Google—to capture search ranking and pageviews.

This is worth a read.

FTC asking Apple about health data protection

The two people, both familiar with the FTC’s thinking, said Apple representatives have met on multiple occasions with agency officials in recent months, to stress that it will not sell its users’ health data to third-party entities such as marketers or allow third-party developers to do so.

Someone at the FTC confused Apple with Google.

Jason Snell reviews the Kindle Voyage

Jason knows all too well that I don’t get the Kindle—never have, and probably never will. Still, I enjoyed Jason’s review. I should note that this is Jason’s new site since he left Macworld—congrats, it looks great.

Samsung copies Apple yet again

Samsung this week announced its answer to Apple’s Continuity: a new cross-device sharing feature called “Flow,” intended to allow users to move activities and content between Samsung smartphones, tablets, wearable devices, PCs, and more.

I’m shocked that Samsung would so blatantly copy Apple. SHOCKED!

Pro Tools begins new software licensing

On October 10, 2014, Avid announced that new Pro Tools and Pro Tools | HD Software purchases, upgrades and crossgrades will include 12 months of upcoming features—such as future cloud collaboration capabilities—as well as a support plan. Even better, customers who buy/upgrade and activate to Pro Tools 11 by December 31, 2014 will receive extended coverage through March 2016.

The only thing that could throw a wrench into this is that audio pros tend to find a version of software that works and stick with it. Upgrading studio hardware and software can be a dangerous proposition when you have clients that want to record music. We’ll see.

Field Notes: Ambition

I love Field Notes notebooks. I have two with me in my bag wherever I go.

The Zone of Interest: A Novel

I don’t post about books very often, but I was listening to a CBC podcast called Writers and Company, where they interviewed the author, Martin Amis, and was very impressed. I’m going to buy this one.

Mixing with the Channel Strip Principle

I agree with Graham on this. Far too often I come across mixes that are just packed with plug-ins, and that takes away from the sound you’re trying to achieve. The best way to get yourself out of the habit is to use one channel strip plug-in and shape the sound with it. After you’re comfortable doing that, you can add the odd plug-in to the mix to enhance the sound.

The Uber story

I loved reading this story by Kara Swisher profiling Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber. It takes guts and a lot of belief in your company to do what Kalanick did to get Uber off the ground.

BFD Rock and Metal drums

BFD Oblivion is an expansion for FXpansion’s BFD3, BFD Eco and BFD2 designed to provide ready-to-use heavy rock and metal drum sounds.

Sold! I like BFD.

Creative Sound Blaster Roar Portable Speaker [Sponsor]

“Dollar for dollar, the Sound Blaster ROAR produces the best sound of any portable Bluetooth speaker I’ve heard.”

– Tom’s Guide

The compact Sound Blaster Roar boasts of two 1.5-inch high-frequency drivers, a dedicated 2.5-inch subwoofer, and a pair of side-firing passive radiators. Now, all these drivers will only sound as good as the music you play through them, and the Roar supports aptX and AAC over Bluetooth for high-quality audio streaming.

All this, while adding other features like NFC support, a USB port for charging, an integrated MP3 player through its microSD card slot that also allows you to record calls taken with the built-in speakerphone.

The Red Dot Design Award-winning Roar has received consistent 5-star reviews on Amazon since its launch. Now available at $149.99 via Creative.com and Amazon.com.

roar

Pixelmator for iPad

Many thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed. Pixelmator for iPad is a powerful image editor that gives you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance your images. It lets you work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images. Packed with powerful creative tools and engineered to harness the full iOS and 64-bit architecture power, Pixelmator for iPad is a real image editor right at your fingertips.

Unread RSS reader

I really like Unread on my iPhone. It’s all about gestures and swiping to navigate the app, which is a nice way to do an RSS reader. There’s an iPad version too—I bought both.