CallingVault takes on Google Voice

Written by

Your CallingVault number is a real phone number capable of receiving SMS/MMS messages and calls from any phone. The people you give your number to do not have to be CallingVault members to reach you.We believe that software should be fun and easy to use, and that we should strive to empower users through intuitive design. We believe that privacy is a right and that we should do everything we can to protect it. And we believe that you – not advertisers – should be in control of your data.

This will be fun to watch.

Olympic Games security

Written by

During the Games an aircraft carrier will dock on the Thames. Surface-to-air missile systems will scan the skies. Unmanned drones, thankfully without lethal missiles, will loiter above the gleaming stadiums and opening and closing ceremonies. RAF Typhoon Eurofighters will fly from RAF Northolt. A thousand armed US diplomatic and FBI agents and 55 dog teams will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11-mile, £80m, 5,000-volt electric fence.

Good times.

[Via Jim Coudal]

Perian project comes to an end

Written by

We began the Perian project over 6 years ago. We wanted to simplify viewing your content. Our team has attained that goal and with that in mind, Perian will be retired soon. Our stewardship has been a blast but it’s time for all of us to move on.

Perian allows you to play a variety of audio and video formats on your Mac. I’ve been using it for years and it’s still on every Mac I own.

Plagiarism and The Next Web

Written by

Joshua Gross:

Today, TheNextWeb took a little bit of that away from me by basically plagiarizing my post (pic), being sneaky about it, and defending it.

The response by The Next Web is terrible.

iCloud

Written by

Ben Brooks:

A widely adopted, seamless, fast, robust iCloud is the greatest threat to Apple’s competitors — and this time around I think Apple knows it.

iCloud is becoming the center of everything Apple wants to do with it’s devices, whether it’s a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV.

Drawing conclusions

Written by

John Gruber:

So the reason Apple TV doesn’t show up in Freewheel’s data is because it doesn’t show any ad-backed video. Freewheel’s data isn’t about online video watching — it’s specifically about ad-backed online video watching.

I don’t understand how people can draw conclusions from data like this. Gruber gets it right.

Apple planning photo sharing upgrade to iCloud

Written by

Eric Slivka:

The new features, expected to be announced at Apple’s world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said. Currently, users can only store one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

The original story is at WSJ, but that story is for subscribers only, so enjoy it at Mac Rumors.

Kaspersky lied

Written by

This statement was taken out of context by the magazine – Apple did not invite or solicit Kaspersky Lab’s assistance in analyzing the Mac OS X platform.

In other words, we lied and got caught.

Capo [Sponsor]

Written by

Reverse Engineering Rock and Roll: Capo is a revolutionary tool that helps you learn the music in your iTunes library. Available for your Mac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad.

Download the free trial for the Mac at http://capoapp.com, and check out the new mastering-quality slowing engine that retains the detail in your music all the way down to quarter-speed!

Question marks in headlines

Written by

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines states the following:Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no’.Ian Betteridge explains his theory as follows:The reason why journalists use that style of headline is that they know the story is probably bollocks, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it.

If you post crap, but post it first, it’s still crap.

Adobe decides to issue security upgrades for CS5

Written by

“The team decided to make available patches for Photoshop CS5.x, Illustrator CS5.x, and Flash Professional CS5.x.” The time frame for availability of those fixes is unclear. “We are still in the process of finalizing the timeline for the patches,” the spokesperson said. “We will update the respective security bulletins once the patches are available.”

It’s good that they did this, but the original decision to not issue updates and force people to upgrade to CS6 left a bad taste for many users.

‘A giant middle finger’

Written by

In English: Photoshop CS5 will not be patched for this vulnerability. The only way to remain secure is to upgrade to Photoshop CS6 for $200.

This could get ugly.

This is what Android fragmentation looks like

Written by

Kim-Mai Cutler:

Animoca, a Hong Kong mobile app developer that has seen more than 70 million downloads, says it does quality assurance testing with about 400 Android devices. Again, that’s testing with four hundred different phones and tablets for every app they ship!

What a bunch of shit to make your developers go through.

Carroll Shelby dead at 89

Written by

Carroll Hall Shelby, the Texan who created the famous Shelby Cobra and uncounted other high-performance machines that turned the auto world on its ear, and made it a whole lot more fun for 50 years, died in Dallas Thursday night at age 89. He had been hospitalized for pneumonia.

5by5 Radio app for iPhone

Written by

This is the official 5by5 Radio application, and the best way to listen to your favorite 5by5 broadcasts and hosts live!

Amplified: ManPhone

Written by

Jim and Dan talk about the latest 7-inch iPad rumors, justification for Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie, iOS 6’s new Maps app, Lightroom 4, The Beard’s WWDC party, the MacMan, and more.Sponsored by Igloo Software and Hover.

Facebook co-founder renounces citizenship

Written by

Reuters:

Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, has renounced his U.S. citizenship, according to an Internal Revenue Service report, just days before the company’s record initial public offering.The offering could leave Saverin – who once owned 5 percent of the company – with a hefty capital-gains tax bill.

That’s convenient.

‘Best smartphone ever’

Written by

You know it’s a slow day when the media is picking up on the fact that Siri is using WolframAlpha’s search to return a query for the “best smartphone ever” as the Nokia Lumia 900 4G. Here are a couple … Continued

Reminders and Notes on iCloud

Written by

Federico Viticci:

A few minutes ago, developer Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted a photo showing a “beta” login page for iCloud.com, Apple’s suite of web applications to access iCloud services like Mail and Calendar. The photo showed Apple’s icon-based navigation for iCloud.com, with the addition of Reminders and Notes icons in what appears to be an internal version of iCloud.com carrying future features.

With iCloud being at the center of Mountain Lion and iOS, this shouldn’t be a big surprise.

RingMindMe for iPhone

Written by

You can choose to manage your ringer by time-of-day or your current location. By time-of-day, set the ringer “Off” and ringer “On” times using a selection wheel and press Start. By location, just tap Start and choose the desired “Ringer-Off Zone” size. That’s it. RingMindMe does the rest. No account set-up required. RingMindMe does not override your ringer/silence switch. It just reminds you to change your ringer/silence switch based on the time-of-day or your current location.

I’ve had this happen to me a number of times. Simple, yet intuitive, the way an app should be.

Apple accuses Samsung of destroying evidence

Written by

Yoni Heisler writing for NetworkWorld:

On May 1, Apple filed a motion in the Northern District of California alleging that Samsung intentionally destroyed documents it was obligated to hand over as part of the discovery process, an act referred to as “spoilation of evidence” in the legal parlance.

Not good Samsung. Maybe RIM is heading up Samsung’s legal team.

Maps

Written by

Mark Gurman:

While Apple has always had full control of the actual iOS Maps application design, the backend has belonged to Google. That will change with iOS 6 thanks to their purchases of Placebase, C3 Technologies, and Poly9; acquisitions that Apple has used to create a complete mapping database. Now that the application is fully in-house, it is being renamed to simply “Maps.”

Makes sense.

BBEdit 10

Written by

Thanks to Bare Bones Software and BBEdit for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

BBEdit 10 from Bare Bones Software — The leading professional HTML and text editor for the Mac just keeps getting better, with more than one hundred new features. Download the demo and see for yourself!

Frictionless sharing

Written by

Robert Wright:

Because at some point over the past year he had clicked a button without reading the fine print and thus had entered the world of “frictionless sharing.” In this world, if you’re on a website that permits frictionless sharing (theatlantic.com doesn’t), every time you click on a headline, the site can report this behavior to your Facebook friends.

Things like this are just creepy.

The Hindenburg

Written by

Paul Kafasis: This week marks the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster, a wreck perhaps best known for introducing the phrase “Oh, the humanity” to our lexicon. While chatting with my pal Marco a while back, I realized I knew … Continued

Drafts for iPhone

Written by

Drafts is the quick, easy way to capture and share ideas on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Very clean interface with support for Markdown, TextExpander, Twitter and other services.