Samsung says wearables are challenging

Expect to see a host of new wearables from Samsung this year, including some that were designed, in part, in San Francisco.

Allow me to translate: We expect Apple to release wearables sometime this year. As soon as they do we will copy them in an undisclosed location in San Francisco.

Apple, Samsung CEOs agree to mediation

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon will attend the session with in-house lawyers only, according to a Wednesday court filing. Their legal teams had met on January 6 to “discuss settlement opportunities,” the filing read.

Let me get this started: Stop stealing our shit you slimy bastards and we’ll stop winning lawsuits against you.

New bookmarking service on the way

Nilai will be renamed, redesigned, and be completely open sourced. We’ll offer a fully hosted solution that people can use for both for free and for pay for but anyone that would like to they can download the application and run it themselves. We’re going to build it out in the open, which means that we’ll be publishing our roadmap, our internal discussions, our design mockups (both failures and successes), our business ideas, our marketing materials — anything and everything we can publish as early as we possibly can. In short, we’re going to rebuild Nilai into something new and do it in public.

Interesting. This comes from the folks who make the Barley CMS.

Not news

Totally agree with Gruber.

Amplified: The Angriest Santa

Jim and Dan talk about Canadian blizzards, Jim’s missing 2013 Mac Pro, the LaCie Fuel, Dropbox, DROPOUTJEEP, coding on an iPad, apps that Must Always Be Installed, Jim’s amazing new rig, and more.

Sponsored by Ting, Squarespace, and Freshbooks.

MXR DC Brick

One of the best things I purchased for my guitar pedals.

CSS Blend Modes

Every year brings some new exciting things in design.

The Snapchat drama

Some interesting thoughts from Om Malik on the Snapchat drama of late. I don’t know, I think they really screwed up, but maybe I’m in the minority.

At CES in 1970

The gathering featured some 200 manufacturers displaying an array of gadgets that is quaint by today’s standards, but must have been impressive at the time. As The New York Times described it, the conference’s audio section alone offered products ranging from “phonographic needles to the tiniest radios and TV sets, to giant high fidelity, stereophonic sound systems.”

It’s great looking back. I enjoyed this more than any CES coverage this year.

App Store Sales Top $10 Billion in 2013

Apple on Tuesday said that sales from its App Store topped $10 billion in 2013. Think about that for a second—$10 billion in apps over 12 months. That’s an incredible amount of apps and money. […]

New Samsung tablets have Windows 8-style home screen

Despite running Android, the devices come with a Windows 8-style tile interface called “Magazine UX,” which Samsung says is better optimized for large screens.

There is just no stopping these guys.

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Learn to play “Crazy Train” solo

Randy Rhoads is one of the greatest guitar players to ever pick up the instrument. Alex Vollmer shows you how to play the solo from “Crazy Train.”