Redesigning HPs brand and identity

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Moving Brands partnered with HP as their lead agency to set a creative vision for the HP brand. The vision was to transform the world’s biggest technology company into the world’s most powerful brand. HP would become the blueprint of a moving brand, built for a moving world.

Microsoft co-founder launches space project

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Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen is planning to build a spaceship that could replace the Space Shuttle and put paying passengers into orbit this decade.

I think I’ll wait a little bit.

Kobot

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The Kobot is a new EV concept for navigating around cities and towns, developed by Kowa Tmsuk. There are three models in this prototype range, the single person vehicles ν (nyu) and β(beta), which with the push of a button from a smartphone can transform so that they can be parked securely in a compact space, and the π(pi) which can hold two people.

Louis CK makes $500k in three days selling $5 video

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The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it

That’s awesome.

Nokia can’t give its phones away

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Om Malik talking about his trip to Helsinki: Walking around the downtown (where I am staying), I have seen many more iPhones than Nokia phones. And most of the startup people I met have some variation of the iPhone. One … Continued

iOS App Store downloads are unique too

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Matthew Panzarino for TNW:

So we contacted Apple and it has confirmed to us that the numbers released about the iOS App Store, currently at 18 billion downloads, with 1 billion downloads a month, are uniques.

Yesterday I contacted Apple and confirmed that the 100 million Mac App Store downloads were unique and did not include Lion, updates or downloads to other Macs. Panzarino took it a step further and confirmed the same for the iOS App Store.

My Living Desktop 5 for Mac released

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Amuse, Inc. today is pleased to announce My Living Desktop 5.0.1 for Mac OS X, an upgrade to their critically acclaimed application that includes dozens of unique, high definition videos to create soothing visual and aural environments on the Macs desktop. In addition to videos of natural beauty shot from all over the globe, the application also allows the user to import their own home movies.

Always thought this was kind of cool.

I would like to thank RIM’s co-CEOs for their incompetence

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The holidays are approaching fast. It’s the time of the year where we take stock of the good (and bad) things that happened over the last 12 months, and figure out goals for the next year.

I would like to personally thank RIM’s co-CEOs for their complete and total incompetence in 2011. Without your lack of attention to the market and the details that would make a great product, my year wouldn’t have been so successful.

10 CSS design resources

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The following collection is a one-​​stop-​​shop for CSS. From the official home page of W3C to gradients and button generators — each of these resources has been carefully reviewed and tested. With these tools, you can accomplish any CSS design task that you want using CSS as the primary, if not only, system for implementing the look and feel.

CNET calls Gruber a ‘fanboi’

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Brooke Crothers on CNET: Take the blog Daring Fireball. It offers some solid analysis. But in the end it’s a fanboi site, assailing the misinformed or pointing out how wrong or disliked the Android competition is. That kind of attitude … Continued

BitTorrent spies

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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for ZDNet:

Think no one knows what you’ve downloaded off the Internet with BitTorrent? Think again.People have privacy delusions about the Internet. They seem to think that just because they don’t sign their real name to a site that no one can see what they’ve been doing on it. Oh dear. So dumb, so wrong.

Nothing is private. Nothing.

Create drop cap effect with CSS3

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Drop caps have been around for years in the print industry, but they are still pretty rare in the web world despite the :first-letter selector having been around for a fair few years. Let’s take a look at how we … Continued

RIM screws up again

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John Paczkowski talking about the four things RIM had to deliver to Indonesia, including a regional data server:

RIM delivered on all four. But evidently it didn’t carry out the fourth in quite the way the BRTI wanted. It put the data center in Singapore, which is not geographically all that far, but a different country and not nearly as “regional” as the BRTI would like. Aggravating matters further, Indonesia has been asking for a local server for nearly three years.

Now Indonesia is threatening to shutdown RIM’s operations. Seriously folks, I could not make this stuff up.

Carrier IQ and the FBI

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Brad McCarty for TNW:

It probably wouldn’t come as a surprise if the FBI were to use data from Carrier IQ, but there’s no need for alarm, just yet. However, that’s contrary to what’s being reported elsewhere, so let’s take a moment to clear the air.

A very sensible article and approach from Brad.

More Kindle Fire bashing

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USA Today:

These early adopters are running into an experience that is often clunky, a touchscreen that isn’t super responsive, a Web browser that struggles on many websites and head-scratching hardware omissions. (There are no volume buttons.)

2011 Best App Ever Awards

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The Best App Ever Awards were created to celebrate the best mobile apps and games available, as chosen by our readers. Our goal is to help gather together the very favorite apps of the real users, not just the best-selling ones. This year we are making a big change, including Android applications and games in the mix. For each category there will be winners in iOS (both iPhone and iPad combined) and Android divisions.

Kindle Fire is the new Edsel

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David Streitfeld for the New York Times:

A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky.

I haven’t seen a completely positive review of the Kindle Fire yet. Most people are having problems with it and Amazon needs to get that fixed. The company says they have an update coming and many expect a new device next year, but I don’t know if that will be enough.

The tablet market has mercilessly chewed up everything except the iPad.

Studiometry [Sponsor]

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Get organized! Studiometry helps small businesses track all their clients, projects and invoices — all in one place. From leads and planning to invoicing and more, the award-winning business management software works as hard as you, keeping your business organized and your projects managed.

Download our FREE 30-day trial. Frequent free updates and a developer who actually listens give you the best project management experience for Mac, Windows, and iOS devices.

Apple’s Mac App Store tops 100 million downloads

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Apple today announced that over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store in less than one year. With thousands of free and paid apps, the Mac App Store brings the App Store experience to the Mac so you can find great new apps, buy them using your iTunes account, and download and install them in just one step. Apple revolutionized the app industry with the App Store, which now has more than 500,000 apps and where customers have downloaded more than 18 billion apps and continue to download more than 1 billion apps per month.

Wow!

Designing for the Web

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The prevailing wisdom in web has been to design for the most common screen resolution that most people use and at the time of writing, it has been 1024 x 768 for quite a few years now. However, there is a relatively new and important factor that designers need to account for and that is the rise and prevelance of hand held devices. The popularity of the Android device as well as iOS (Apple’s operating system for most all things they manufacture — starting with the letter ‘i’) and the slow rise of Windows 7 devices, cannot be ignored and must be accounted for. These devices can be phone sized or tablet sized devices and their design size needs to be included in our new ‘guidebook’.

Drunk RIM execs chewed through restraints on the plane

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CBC:

New details are emerging about the rowdy behaviour of two Research In Motion executives who were fired for disrupting an intercontinental flight — including that they managed to chew their way out of restraints after being handcuffed by crew members.

Clearly these two worked on the PlayBook. What else could possibly account for such frustration.

TextExpander

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Thanks to TextExpander for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.

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HP to contribute webOS to open source

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HP today announced it will contribute the webOS software to the open source community. HP plans to continue to be active in the development and support of webOS. By combining the innovative webOS platform with the development power of the … Continued