New Squarespace iOS apps

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Squarespace released “Blog” and “Metrics” and released iOS 7 updates for its existing apps.

Apple’s solar farms in North Carolina

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Katie Fehrenbacher for GigaOM:

Apple’s two solar farms and one fuel cell farm near its data center in North Carolina are now all live and generating power. The projects are unprecedented in the industry and have helped usher in real change.

What a fascinating read.

John Gruber reviews the iPad mini

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Last year left me with the impression that choosing the Mini meant accepting numerous trade-offs. That is no longer the case. This is the same device as the iPad Air. The only significant differences between them are size and weight.

Exactly.

Sass

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A List Apart has an excerpt from Dan Cederholm’s new book “Sass For Web Designers.”

New PDFpen Scan+: Scanning and OCR on your iPad and iPhone. A power-up for your mobile office!

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My thanks to Smile Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Smile has released a new app in their PDFpen suite of PDF editing tools. PDFpen Scan+ lets you scan documents, articles, receipts, and more, using your iPhone or iPad camera.

PDFpen Scan+ includes OCR on the device, with support for 16 languages. The OCR is performed on the device, so you can use it even if you are not connected to the internet or if you have sensitive documents you can’t share with an online service.

Once OCR has been performed, the text in the scanned document can be copied and pasted into another document or the PDF can be exported with searchable text included. You can also open your scans in PDFpen for iPad or PDFpen for iPhone for further editing or share them via Dropbox, Evernote and other services for seamless editing on your Mac.

PDFpen Scan+ is available on the App Store at the intro price of $4.99. Check out the video demo to see all the powerful features packed into this indispensable tool.

Analyst disappointed with iPad sales

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The analyst [Steve Milunovich] explained that he has been disappointed with Apple’s iPad sales and that tablets in general are at risk from sales of smartphones, phablets… and PCs. The tablet simply isn’t a “must-have” device, he explained.

Steve Milunovich… you’re a fucking moron.

Lessonator: Create music slideshow presentations

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Lessonator is a tool for creating beautiful music slideshow presentations on your Mac. It works like a mashup between Apple’s Keynote and Garageband, where each slide is an animated music score.

It just entered public beta, so go have a look.

Responsive images

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Bruce Lawson writes about where we are with responsive images and why we need to solve this problem.

BIAS amps for iPad

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BIAS starts with stunning replications of 36 of the most sought-after vintage and modern amps in rock ‘n’ roll history and then lets you customize them to respond perfectly to your unique touch and feel. Swap out the tubes, preamp, transformer, tone stacks, cab and mic—even change the tube’s bias—to create your dream amp and distinctive signature sound. Tap once to open your BIAS amp in JamUp and add awesome multi-effects.

A number of people have mentioned this to me in the last couple of days. It looks really nice, so I downloaded it. I’ll get back with my thoughts in a few days.

Rare Jerry Garcia guitar goes to auction

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Jerry Garcia’s Travis Bean TB500 electric guitar, serial number 12. The guitar, designed and built by Travis Bean Inc., was played by Garcia on stage and in recording sessions. Featuring an aluminum neck – a design pioneered by Travis Bean, three single coil pick up configuration and Garcia’s Onboard Effects Loop. This guitar was the first to employ the Onboard Effects Loop, which was then incorporated into all of Garcia’s electric guitars.

The opening bid is $75,000—the guitar is expected to fetch between 100k-200k.

Apple updates iWork for iCloud beta

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In addition to releasing a new version of iOS 7 on Thursday, Apple updated iWork for iCloud beta, adding a number of new capabilities and features, including:

Apple releases iOS 7.0.4

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Apple released an update for iOS 7 today that it says includes bug fixes and a fix that caused some FaceTime calls to drop. You can download the update on your iOS device by going to Settings > General > Software Update.

Giving up on Windows

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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes:

But now, other than for test systems and virtual machines, I carry out my day-to-day work on a variety of OS X, iOS and Android systems. I barely giving my Windows PC systems a second glance. My primary work system is a MacBook Pro, and in the ten months I’ve had it it’s flawlessly done everything I’ve asked of it, from run Microsoft Word to render 4K video. I’ve lost count of the number of notebooks I’ve owned over the years, but this MacBook Pro is, by far, the most reliable system I’ve owned, and I put part of that down to the fact that it doesn’t run Windows.

I don’t think Adrian is alone. Apple is continuously making its products easier to use, while Microsoft is going the other way. People have choices and they are exercising that freedom.

Twitter users send JP Morgan running for cover

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JPMorgan last week asked users of the popular microblogging site to send questions marked with the hashtag #AskJPM in advance of the session set for Thursday at 1 p.m. in New York.

I could have told you this was not going to end well.

Tick Tock timer app featuring Jim’s laugh

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Enrico Susatyo asked me if he could use my laugh in his new timer app for the iPhone—I said sure, scare the hell out of your customers. The app is free and was released yesterday.

PPG WaveGenerator for Mac

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The PPG WaveGenerator comes with a multitude of wavetables. The sound material contains the typical sounds from the original PPG wave models, as well as many new sounds generated by versatile analysis tools and also hand edited waves. This plugin enables the user, to create his own wavetables in a playful way, and to hear the result immediately. Also you can construct the waves by adding harmonics very precise.

Interesting that this started out as an iOS app.

CSS Mac Plus

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Donovan Hutchinson did an amazing job with this.

Amplified: Express Sled Service

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Jim and Dan discuss Apple’s new spaceship headquarters, Amazon and USPS offering Sunday delivery, keyboard covers for iPads, the iPad mini with retina, the iPad Air, publishing on the go with iOS, composer names no longer included in an iTunes store downloads, and more.

Sponsored by Mailchimp, Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME1113 for 25% off), and Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off).

Snapchat rejects $3 billion Facebook buyout offer

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Mobile messaging startup Snapchat rejected an acquisition offer from Facebook Inc that would have valued the company at $3 billion or more, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday.

Facebook representatives reached out to Snapchat in recent weeks to discuss the all-cash deal, which would have been Facebook’s largest acquisition ever, the report said, citing anonymous sources.

I can’t imagine the conditions under which I’d refuse $3 billion.

Dropbox for Business

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With it, users can view their personal files in one tab, and their work files in another tab, without having to use multiple windows. If people already have separate business and personal accounts, they can pair them with the new tool. In a blog post, co-founders Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi explained, “It’ll be like having your house keys and your work keycard on the same keychain.”

Good idea.