The new Google+

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More than 170 million people have upgraded to Google+, enjoying new ways to share in Search, Gmail, YouTube and lots of other places. It’s still early days, and there’s plenty left to do, but we’re more excited than ever to build a seamless social experience, all across Google.

The right reason to build an app

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Kyle Baxter on why he made Basil:

Simple: I love to cook, but couldn’t find the app I wanted, so I built it.

To me this is the perfect reason to build an app. You love to do something, but can’t find the perfect app to do it.

Oh RIM, you morons

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Remember back in the day (last week) when RIM’s Vice President of Developer Relations Alec Saunders said the company was removing sideloading from the PlayBook.

Surprise, no they’re not.

Successful Web design is in the details

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Carrie Cousins:

Pay attention to alignment, contrast, type effects and color because these items can make or break your website design.

Solid advice. It’s the small things that often kill us.

The man who broke Atlantic City casinos

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The Atlantic: Don Johnson won nearly $6 million playing blackjack in one night, single-handedly decimating the monthly revenue of Atlantic City’s Tropicana casino. Not long before that, he’d taken the Borgata for $5 million and Caesars for $4 million. Here’s … Continued

Apple should keep the jobs in China

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Trevor Gilbert:

In light of this increase of attention, it’s apparent that the record needs correcting and that someone needs to show that while jingoistic posts may be enticing, they aren’t based in reality.

I have said this before and agree with Trevor.

Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion

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Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.

Pixelmator [Sponsor]

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Pixelmator – beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing app for Mac OS X.

Beard font

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Imagine if I wrote all of the posts using this font.

Two more execs leave RIM

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Alan Brenner, a senior vice president for the BlackBerry platform, will leave after a transition period, and Alistair Mitchell, a vice president for the BlackBerry Messenger instant messaging product, has already left, RIM spokeswoman Tenille Kennedy said in an email on Friday.

It just keeps getting worse.

Flashback

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John Moltz:

Back when XP was the current version of Windows, it seemed that every Windows user I know complained about being affected by malware. I even knew Windows users who used to brag about how fast they could reformat their machine and have it back up and running in pristine form.

Managing Notes with Siri

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However, I found that I can create, update and list notes with Siri. In fact, Siri is even smart enough to know which note you’re talking about. Here’s how to create and maintain notes with Siri.

I didn’t know you could do that.

Acorn image editor

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Thanks to Acorn for sponsoring the The Loop this week.

Brought to you by Flying Meat’s Acorn, the Mac OS X image editor for humans.

TH2 guitar amp software updated

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  • New Saint Amp effect emulates a classic amp+cab in a pedal.
  • New switch to enable/disable automation for smart parameters
  • Improvement: the list in the sound browser now scrolls to show the current sound and variation
  • Improvement: better compatibility when RTAS and AAX plug-ins are both present

I started using this a couple of weeks ago and I’m impressed so far.

Learn Guitar from iBookstore

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If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to play the guitar but didn’t know where to start and don’t want to spend a lot of money on private lessons, this is the book for you!Follow along with our guitar expert Jen Trani—a guitar instructor who’s been playing since she was 13—as she leads you through 20 video lessons! With interactive diagrams and quizzes, this beginner guitar course will get you acquainted with the basics so you can start rockin’ out today!

If you can play your guitar on the iPhone and iPad, it makes sense that you should be able to learn how to play to.

Isaacson says Steve Jobs was pissed at Google

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AppleInsider:

After hearing Page’s interpretation of Jobs’s words, Isaacson spoke out this week in a speech at the Royal institution of Great Britain. Isaacson said he felt that Android had ripped off many of his ideas found in the iPhone and iPad, and that his ire was very real, according to Macworld.“It’s almost copied verbatim by Android,” Isaacson said. “And they license it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated him. It wasn’t a matter of money. He said, ‘You can’t pay me off, I’m here to destroy you.'”

It’s time for Google to shut up.

Obviousness

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John Gruber:

The sliding camera button on the iOS 5.1 home screen is a perfect example of Apple favoring obviousness over simplicity and even elegance.

How many newspapers have paywalls?

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Adrienne LaFrance:

Pew says around 150 U.S. dailies have digital subscription models, but AP reports 300 newspapers with paywalls.

I gladly pay for a number of blogs, but I don’t have a subscription to a single newspaper.