Alfred Hitchcock

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Maria Popova writing about how Hitchcock affected one child.

TextExpander [Sponsor]

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The new <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>TextExpander 4 from Smile dramatically increases the options for automating your work with advanced “fill-in” snippet types. They are great for creating form letter templates that can be personalized on the fly. Check out the video demo and see the new multi-line text fields, multiple choice popups, and optional text blocks in action.

Registered TextExpander users can upgrade for $15. (There’s no charge for the upgrade if you purchased after January 15, 2012.)

Still haven’t tried TextExpander? <a href=”http://loopu.in/P7xRCA>Download the free demo! There’s even a new Snippet Creation Snippet to get you started.

Twitter posts stats from Olympics

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We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation.

Truly some great moments at the Olympics.

Shaking my head at this one

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Anil Dash:

If anyone questioned whether Microsoft could get back in the fight once the cuffs finally came off, Surface should put those doubts to rest. The gorgeous PC/tablet hybrid is the only example in recent memory of a company clearly and emphatically going toe to toe with Apple on the industrial design front. The iPad will have to improve. Android tablets will have to improve. Surface isn’t another me-too device—it moves the entire category forward.

Incredibly kind words for a product that nobody has even used yet. “Moves an entire category forward”? Bullshit.

18 free icon fonts

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Six Revisions:

Icon fonts are font files that have symbols and glyphs (e.g. arrows, folders, magnifying glasses) instead of standard alphanumeric characters.

There are a few really good collections.

Google fights piracy in search results

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Google is adding a new feature to its search algorithm that will make it harder to find pirated material, effectively making it extremely difficult for you to keep up with Game of Thrones next season.

Moving a site from WordPress to Pelican

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Gabe Weatherhead from Macdrifter.com recently moved his Wordpress site to the static-file based Pelican system. He gives a wonderfully detailed look at why and how he did it.

Samsung caught trying to trick the jury

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Bryan Bishop for The Verge:

During cross-examination, Samsung attorney Kevin Johnson attempted to discredit Balakrishnan, first by trying to insinuate that two slides presented by Apple were incorrect. In fact, the images Johnson showed featured representative stills from a video the slides actually contained; the video itself was consistent with the labeling and testimony. Johnson then challenged Balakrishnan by giving a live demonstration of a 7-inch Galaxy Tab that didn’t incorporate the bounce-back feature — while neglecting to mention what operating system or skin it was running. He followed it up with a video that he said proved the Galaxy Tab 10.1 didn’t use the feature either. Unfortunately for Johnson, Balakrishnan had to point out that in the video the user wasn’t actually scrolling to the end of the web page in question — a requirement to trigger the feature in the first place.

The only reason you would do this is if you’re guilty.

LogMyRun 1.2

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LogMyRun now supports kilometers for distance and Celsius for temperature in addition to miles and Fahrenheit. You can convert the distance or temperature units for your entire log in Settings. You can also log individual runs in either kilometers or miles when adding a new run or editing an existing run.

CSS style guide

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Ordering properties is just one choice you have to make that makes up a complete styling strategy. Naming is a part of it. Sectioning is a part of it. Commenting, indentation, overall file structure… it all makes up a complete CSS style guide.

Noise in the conversation

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Michael Mulvey brought up another great point to Marcelo Somers “Linkblog Cancer” post that I linked to yesterday:

If I don’t have a unique perspective to the link in question, I usually won’t link to it. I don’t want to be the noise in the conversation.

That’s a great point. I believe readers are looking for a writers perspective. There are lots of places to get the news, but each writer has their own perspective.

Samsung’s basis of competition

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Horace Dediu:

What is surprising is that the overall sales volume is not growing. At least for the products catalogued (which exclude the Note) growth for the last four quarters has been: 5%, 34%, 31%, -53%. These are in stark contrast to the iPhone pattern shown in the outline bars behind Samsung’s.

Interesting article from Horace.

Harvest

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Many thanks to Harvest for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. We’re more than halfway through 2012. You can’t buy that time back, but you can start tracking it wisely. Use Harvest to log your billable hours, and see … Continued

Samsung could face court penalty because of lawyer

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Samsung could face penalties from the U.S. District Court in Northern California after one of its lawyers involved in the patent battle against Apple admitted that she hadn’t file the paperwork necessary to practice law in front of the court.

Samsung’s lawyers haven’t been impressive so far.

Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here

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Wish You Were Here, released in September 1975, was the follow up album to the globally successful The Dark Side Of The Moon and is cited by many fans, as well as band members Richard Wright and David Gilmour, as their favorite Pink Floyd album.

Gilmour and Roger Waters are incredible.

Samsung sold 21.25 million phones, 1.4 million tablets in two years in the U.S.

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Documents filed by Samsung lawyers on Thursday reveal that from June 2010 through June 2012 Samsung sold 21.25 million phones, generating $7.5 billion in revenue. On the tablet side, the company sold 1.4 million Galaxy Tab and Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices, producing $644 million in revenue.

That doesn’t seem like a lot of sales to me. Maybe most of their sales are international.

Blizzard’s Battle.net gets hacked

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The unauthorized access included email addresses associated with Battle.net accounts in all regions, outside of China. Additional information from accounts associated with the North American servers (which generally includes players from North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia) was also accessed, including cryptographically scrambled versions of passwords (not actual passwords), the answer to a personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators. It’s important to note that at this time, Blizzard does not believe this information alone is enough to gain access to Battle.net accounts.

At least it wasn’t clear text passwords.

[Via Mac Rumors]

Linkblog cancer

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Marcelo Somers:

Our job as independent writers isn’t to be first or even to get the most pageviews. It’s to answer the question of “so what?”. Taken as a whole, our sites should tell a unique story that no one else can, with storylines that develop over time that help bring order to the chaos of what we cover.

Marcelo has a lot of good points in his article. To me blogging is about honesty and personality. I hate reading something that is just bland words with no feeling or conviction. I want to know how the writer feels about the subject they are writing about.

That’s what I try to do. It doesn’t mean everyone agrees with what I write, and that’s okay, but I am giving you my honest opinion.

Apple is now price matching iPhone discounts

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Eric Slivka:

But a source has now revealed to MacRumors that Apple’s retail stores have been given authorization to match these discounted prices from approved major retailers and carriers.

I never thought Apple would do that, but good for the consumer that wants to purchase from an Apple retail store.

The Designbuss

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We’ve seen some pretty spectacular thesis projects by up and coming designers over the years, but never before have any of those projects involved a 6+ month-long road trip through small towns all across Sweden.

Very cool. No money changes hands for his design work, only goods and services that allow him to continue the journey.

A Samsung iPhone

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Ilya Birman sent this to me today. It’s a sign in Russian, but translated. Clearly people aren’t confused about things. Definitely not.

Definitions

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Mike Beauchamp defines “Benchmarking” and “copying” for Samsung.