Claiming progress in his campaign to get American schools wired for the future, President Barack Obama is announcing commitments from U.S. companies totaling about $750 million to connect more students to high-speed Internet.
Apple is pledging $100 million in iPads, computers and other tools. AT&T and Sprint are contributing free Internet service through their wireless networks. Verizon is pitching in up to $100 million in cash and in-kind contributions. And Microsoft is making Windows available at discounted prices and offering 12 million free copies of Microsoft Office software.
Microsoft names Nadella as next CEO
Nadella was in charge of Enterprise and cloud for Microsoft, so to me, having him being named CEO seems like more of the same. I was kind of hoping for something different from Microsoft—a visionary, somebody that could really change things for them. Microsoft needs to move quickly and confidently in the mobile space to make up for what they’ve already lost.
BiteMyApple.co: Buy Kickstarter products for iPhone and iPad [Sponsor]
Online retailer BiteMyApple.co has an impressive lineup of more than 60 successful Kickstarter products currently on sale. The retail site offers a wide range of accessories for the iPad, iPhone and other Apple devices.
Image lightbox, responsive and touch‑friendly
I think this is really well done. Most Lightbox overlays are busy and take a while to load, but the demo at the bottom of the page gives you a number of options to keep things small and only show the information you need.
Lenovo plans to surpass Apple, Samsung with Motorola
Clearly, the big comment of the story is the fact that Lenovo plans to surpass Apple and Samsung over time, but the story behind the acquisition is interesting too. I think the next 12 months or so will show how successful the new Motorola can be.
New SF Apple retail store renderings
Obviously, this store is still in the planning stages, but I always look at what the company is doing with its stores. Simply beautiful.
Batch rename files for free
Great tip from Chris Breen. I find myself needing to batch rename images from time to time, especially when I’m working on The Loop Magazine.
DipJar: A tip jar for credit cards
This is a great idea.
30 years of the Mac video all shot with iPhones
From sunrise in Melbourne to nightfall in Los Angeles, they documented people doing amazing things with Apple products. They shot over 70 hours of footage — all with the iPhone 5s. Then it was edited and scored with an original soundtrack. Thanks to the power of the Mac and the innovations it has inspired, an effort that normally takes months was accomplished in a matter of days.
This is a great story and video.
Image, Deploy and Manage Boot Camp with Winclone and Boot Runner from Twocanoes Software
Many thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.
If you run Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp, check out Winclone and Boot Runner. Winclone is an easy and reliable way to make an image of your Boot Camp partition so that you can quickly restore, migrate, and mass deploy Windows in Boot Camp. Boot Runner provides a powerful way for both users and administrators to switch between OS X and Windows on dual boot Macs.
When you get a new Mac or have issues with your Windows installation in Boot Camp, reinstalling Windows is time consuming and difficult. Winclone makes it easy to make a complete clone of the Boot Camp partition, and restore it back to the exact same state on your existing or new Mac. Winclone supports migration of Boot Camp partitions over the network, moving your Boot Camp partition to an external drive and making it bootable, and much more. It also works great for mass deployment so deploying Boot Camp is as easy as deploying a package to a group of Macs.
If you manage lots of dual boot Macs, Boot Runner provides a great way to manage the OS selection. People can decide which OS to use by selecting OS X or Windows prior to logging in. Network administrators can fully customize and manage the selection screen, and can even remotely select the OS through network policy. Boot Runner also includes a scheduling feature to make sure that the Mac is booted into Windows during your maintenance window. Check out the intro video to learn more.
Winclone and Boot Runner are available for purchase and download today at twocanoes.com and have full phone, email and forum support options.
Worst Super Bowl prediction ever
What the hell is this guy talking about!
Philip Seymour Hoffman dead at 46
Very sad.
Hum
I love this app. You can hum a new song into the app, so you can remember it for later. You can also write lyrics in the same window, so your song is kept together.
Color psychology in design
Equally important in relation to color (chromatics) is “no color” (monochromatics), which is the negative space or nothingness that surrounds an object or subject, something of particular value in publishing, the art industry, and advertising. Recent trends have seen a return to the simple—celebrating crisp and clear designs that demonstrate professionalism and accuracy, thus giving the consumer a sense of reassurance as well as stylistic aesthetic satisfaction.
Color is fascinating. It can make you feel warm, cold, happy or, if there’s too much, confused.
Interaction and ecosystems in the future
Some very interesting points from Ben Evans about what the future may hold.
Gibson’s Government Series guitars
Constructed using woods that were seized by the Feds, then returned once there was a resolution and the investigation ended, this radical Government Series II Explorer makes the perfect memento of an infamous time in Gibson history. And it’s a fierce performer in its own right.
Wow, that’s quite a swipe at the government.
Interview with Satya Nadella from before he was the (likely) next Microsoft CEO
Om Malik:
Before he was the front-runner to be the next CEO of Microsoft, I sat down with Satya Nadella in San Francisco. We talked about the cloud, competition and the future of Microsoft. It’s very revealing, the challenges facing whoever is soon-to-be-announced new CEO.
Interesting to see how the (maybe) next Microsoft CEO thinks.
Markdown tables generator
I love this.
Tumblr magic
The magic of Tumblr is that it sits between Twitter (short form) and WordPress (long form) and fills a gap in the world of blogging that nobody else has managed to capture. There are elements of Facebook and Instagram in it as well. So it’s a lot like all of these apps but in the end it is like nothing else. It has a soul and pulse and a vibe that other social apps don’t have. At times, it is simply magic.
That’s a really good way to describe Tumblr.
Apple being Apple
John Gruber:
For one thing, they sweated the details. The greatest testimony to their genius is just how much of that original design is recognizable in today’s Mac OS X 10.9. A Mac user from 1984 could sit down in front of an iMac or MacBook today and recognize it as a successor to that original machine. That’s simply amazing.
John is so right. Apple sweated the details and they still do—that sets them apart from every other company.
Thoughts on making things
Another great find by Tina Roth Eisenberg.
Why Google bought Nest
Google will keep the Nest group intact inside the company. The new division will still work on hardware devices, but not necessarily thermostats or smoke detectors. In fact, Google would like Fadell to work on gadgets that make more sense for the company. Will it be a phone or a tablet? It’s unclear for now.
We suspected that Google wanted Fadell. Makes perfect sense.
The Loop Magazine Issue 20: Protecting Yellowstone
In this issue, Christopher Jennings takes a look at the history of Yellowstone National Park; Alex Saretzky talks about where designers should focus their time and skills; Bryan Irace discusses CocoaPods and Objective-C; Scot Olsen is a photographer taking beautiful pictures with his iPhone 4s; and Darren Murph looks at T-Mobile’s free international data.
Flag: An app that prints and mails your iPhone photos for free
Flag allows anyone (within the US to start) to print and mail a pack of 20 photos each month for free. You can keep the prints yourself, or send them to the people you love. If you want more than 20 a month you can buy as many as you need.
To make photo printing fun – for the first time by our reckoning – we’ve designed a photo finishing system ready for the 21st century. Museum quality (Giclée) printers, German 220 gram photo paper from sustainable sources, laser cutters, and robots with carbon fiber arms will allow Flag to deliver prints, for free, that are better than any you can pay for today. We want to turn your memories into mementos you can be proud of.
Our secret to making photo printing free? An advertisement on the back of each print. It will always be tasteful, and we are steadfast in our commitment to never sell or share your personal information with advertisers.
This is something I would use. I’m okay with an ad on the back of the photos. Samuel Agboola really came up with something interesting here.
MacTech Events
You can sign-up for the MacTech BootCamp III, MacTech Conferences and Microsoft Office for Mac Accreditation programs right now. There is a special savings on the page for readers of The Loop.
Lenovo buys Motorola from Google
TechCrunch has confirmed reports that Lenovo is buying Motorola Mobility from Google. This is the division within Google that the company purchased in 2011 for $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility will go to Lenovo for $2.91 billion.
First Google Reader, now this. Seriously, Google got what they wanted out of Motorola—the patents.
CSS Regions in responsive designs
A well reasoned article from Brian Rinaldi.
extractCSS: Online CSS Extractor
extractCSS is an online tool which can extract ids, classes and inline styles from HTML document and output them as CSS stylesheet. All you have to do is to type or paste your HTML document and let extractCSS to do the rest for you!
A detailed model of a Boeing 777 built from paper
This is just incredible. When I first looked at the pictures, I thought he just did the outside of the plane, but no. He also has a YouTube Channel.
President Obama acknowledges Apple in State of the Union Address
President Obama on Tuesday gave his 2014 State of the Union Address to the American people. In it, he praised a number of technology companies, including Apple, for helping with his ConnectED program, which aims to connect 99 percent of schools to the Internet via high speed connections. […]