“Screw the readers”

Written by

Tell me this – Do you want to go to a site, click on something that looks like a story and instead have an ad fed to you? Because that’s what Mashable just “invented.”

I know what I think of this.

Preschoolians: Where Barefoot Is Best [Sponsor]

Written by

Preschoolians is a footwear company for children birth to five years of age. Our footwear most closely resembles being barefoot. Our footwear protects the feet while being sure to stay out of the way.

Our Visu-Fit is a clear panel on the bottom of the shoe which allows parents to know for sure if our footwear fits and when it is time for a new pair. Time Magazine awarded Visu-FIt Invention of the Year.

Our recently introduced E-Photo-Fit allows you to take a photo of the bottom of your child’s foot and know for sure which size to order. We have have the largest selection of footwear in the world for pre-schoolers; in fact billions of choices.

We are the only company which even allows you to custom design the colors using our Design Your Own.

Use the code: theloop to save 20% on your first purchase.

Linquet Mini

Written by

This is cool. There are lots of products that help you find things like your iPhone, but they are already lost at that point. The purpose of Linquet Mini is to make sure you don’t lose them in the first place. Watch the video.

Barley: A new content editing system for Web sites

Written by

Barley looks really cool with its inline editing and philosophy of having no backend admin section or plug-ins. It’s not available yet, but it will be interesting to see how it does when released.

NY Times review cost Tesla $100 million

Written by

Musk, co-founder of Tesla and PayPal, recently said that Broder’s review cost Tesla $100 million.

During his SXSW talk, Musk called Broder’s review a “low-grade ethics violation” that “was not in good faith.” He added, “I don’t have a problem with critical reviews. I have a problem with false reviews.”

That’s a lot of money.

Apple’s Siri lawsuit against Samsung will go forward

Written by

Apple also accused Samsung in a second lawsuit of violating a separate batch of patents, including the rights to search technology that is part of the iPhone Siri voice feature. That case is scheduled for trial in March 2014.

That’s what happens when you steal.

Save over $500 on top Mac apps with MacUpdate’s Spring bundle!

Written by

Thanks to MacUpdate for sponsoring The Loop this week with their Spring Bundle.

For only $49.99 you get all this:

  1. Parallels Desktop 8 – $79.99 – The best way to run Windows on your Mac.
  2. DEVONthink Pro 2 – $79.95 – A powerful information organizer.
  3. Prizmo 2 – $49.95 – Scan/OCR any document or photo.
  4. MotionComposer 1.6 – $149.00 – Create professional HTML5 and Flash Web animations.
  5. 1000 OpenTypeFonts Collection – $99.00 – Complete with commercial-use and WebFont licenses.
  6. iStat Menus 4 – $16.00 – Monitor your Mac from the menubar; a power user’s dream.
  7. PhotoStyler 6 – $29.99 – Add dazzling effects and personalize your photos.
  8. DiskAid 6 – $29.90 – A must-have utility for iPhone, iPad, or iPod owners.
  9. Intego Mac Internet Security 2013 (3-Pack) – $74.98 – The #1 malware solution, rebuilt for 2013.
  10. MacUpdate Desktop (6 months) – $10.00 – The best way to keep all your apps up-to-date.

Don’t delay, this offer won’t last long!

Samsung: Windows 8 is no better than Vista

Written by

Jun Dong-soo, president of Samsung’s memory chip division:

“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Jun said. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”

And, as if that wasn’t enough:

“[Microsoft’s] rollout of its Windows Surface tablet is seeing lackluster demand,” he said. “Meanwhile, previous vigorous pitches by Intel and MS for thinner ultra-books simply failed and I believe that’s mostly because of the less-competitive Windows platform.”

But the Surface makes you dance.

Bloomberg News vs Bloomberg News and the fight for stupid

Written by

Here is a brilliant piece written by Daniel Eran Dilger in February 2013 that shows how pathetic the mainstream media is when reporting on Apple. Bloomberg even goes so far as to contradict its own reporting.

Dilger tears them apart.

Google admits it infringed MPEG H.264 patents

Written by

Almost three years after Google released its WebM video encoding technology as a “free” and open alternative to the existing H.264 backed by Apple and others, it has admitted its position was wrong and that it would pay to license the patents WebM infringes.

Google got away with stealing Java code, so I guess it thought why not steal some video codecs too.

Apple’s iOS kills Android among airline passengers

Written by

Apple devices are still reigning above the clouds, following the tablet trend with the iPad being the device of choice. Among all mobile devices being used to connect through Gogo, 84 percent carry Apple’s iOS operating system while 16 percent carry the Android operating system. If you look only at the smartphones our customers are using, the iPhone makes up 73 percent and all Android devices make up 26 percent, with Blackberry and Windows based devices each making up less than 1 percent of devices being used in air.

Maybe Android users are too busy getting rid of all the Malware on their devices.

Microsoft is batshit crazy

Written by

Craig Mundie, Senior Advisor to Steve Ballmer:

“We said, ‘oh the OEMs, that’s their design, they deal with it.’ We got huge diversity out of that at all possible price points, but it became hard to guarantee a uniform quality of experience that the end user had,” he explained. Pointing to the initial touchscreens in Microsoft’s first-generation phones, there were clearly devices with better hardware than others. “If you were in front of a bad one then people said that was a piece of crap; it didn’t work a damn.”

So let me get this straight. The way Apple does it, controlling hardware and software is the best way to do things. Got it.

And OEMs are to blame for everything that went wrong at Microsoft.

Perfect. Carry on Microsoft, you’re doing just fine.

Nokia CEO takes 45% cut in pay package

Written by

Elop, hired in 2010 from Microsoft Corp to turn around the Finnish mobile phone maker, earned 4.33 million euros ($5.63 million) in 2012, down from 7.94 million euros in 2011.

While his base salary rose by 59,500 euros to 1.08 million euros, his stock and option awards fell slightly and he earned no bonus, according to the Thursday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

I felt bad for him until I saw the numbers. How much money do you deserve for running a company into the ground?

Researchers get around Android security by freezing the phone

Written by

To get around this, researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C.

The trio discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software rather than its onboard Android operating system. The researchers dubbed their custom code Frost – Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones.

Not a good day for Android. Then again, not many days are good for Android.

Windows RT is a lemon

Written by

As currently conceived, Windows RT is a lemon, and users are avoiding it in droves.

Haven’t we known this all along?

iPad in the classroom is a winner

Written by

Every once in a while we hear statistics about how technology like the iPad is helping kids learn and how the device is moving education forward, but those are just numbers. It’s not until you see and hear students and teachers talking about using the iPad do you get an understanding of how much it’s really doing. […]

Be safe Android users; Actually, I don’t give a shit

Written by

F-Secure:

Android malware has been strengthening its position in the mobile threat scene. Every quarter, malware authors bring forth new threat families and variants to lure more victims and to update on the existing ones. In the fourth quarter alone, 96 new families and variants of Android threats were discovered, which almost doubles the number recorded in the previous quarter.

Android accounts for 79 percent of the security threats for mobile platforms. iOS barely registers in the results, despite the fact there are hundreds of millions of users. F-Secure published a PDF with all of the results.

Good luck Android users.

RIP Stompin’ Tom Connors

Written by

Truly a sad day. Stompin’ Tom wrote what many Canadians consider to be the real national anthem — The Hockey Song.

Much Respect Stompin’ Tom.

Passion

Written by

Such a great article by Om Malik on “Doing that one thing.”