∞ Siri and 911

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John S. Wilson, a health policy analyst, talking about how Siri could revolutionize our 911 system.

Once the word “emergency” is spoken to Siri, a range of beneficial activity could commence. First, the phone could video call 911 utilizing Skype or a similar VoIP video service. This would allow first responders to have a much better context of the emergency at hand. Armed with a live video and audio feed of the event, visual cues could assist the first responders as they deconstruct the problem. Second, Siri could send the GPS location of the caller.

I’m not sure how far off in the future something like this would be or how practical it would be. What if you spoke “emergency” by mistake? Interesting thoughts though.

∞ Paying for digital publications

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A well thought out piece from Shadoe Huard on what he would like to see from digital publications and what would make him part with his money to pay for them.

∞ Apps as TV channels

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John Gruber: Imagine watching a baseball game on a TV where ESPN is a smart app, not a dumb channel. When you’re watching a game, you could tell the TV to show you the career statistics for the current batter. … Continued

∞ HP TouchPad stock depleted

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An email sent to The Loop reader Michael today: Dear Michael, Making sure customers have a positive experience when they purchase our products is a priority for us. In some cases, limited inventory makes it challenging to fulfill all customer … Continued

∞ Tumult Hype

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I’d like to thank Tumult Hype for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.

Tumult Hype lets you create animated HTML5 content that will wow your website’s visitors. Its output works on all modern browsers and mobile devices like iPhones and iPads. No coding necessary.

Tumult Hype has a trial available, and can be purchased on the Mac App Store or its own Tumult Store for $29.99.

∞ Talking to Siri ebook released

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Talking to Siri introduces you to Siri. This short, focused book teaches you how to use Siri from the ground up. You’ll learn how to achieve the the highest recognition rate as you talk. You’ll discover which categories Siri responds … Continued

∞ More stupid advice for Apple

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Apple has been incredibly successful over the last decade, but yet there are people out there that always think they know better.

Jason Perlow for ZDNet talking about what Apple must do:

If we have learned anything at all from the company’s most recent 3rd quarter sales figures, we must ultimately recognize that Apple’s revenue is highly based on an annuity or semi-annuity model of repeat customers. Repeat customers are bread and butter, but it does not create growth.

Clearly Apple has not grown at all over the last 10 years. They don’t rule the smartphone market, iTunes doesn’t sell any songs or movies, and the App Store is sure to fail any day now.

∞ Trick or Treat at the iTunes store

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It’s Halloween weekend and the fun is about to begin. You don’t need to go out to enjoy yourself, you can visit Apple’s iTunes store and pick up movies, apps, music and other media to help you celebrate. 99 cent … Continued

∞ The bullshit Samsung smartphone numbers

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The Internet is buzzing this morning with news that Samsung has overtaken Apple as the worlds leading smartphone vendor. The problem is, there are no numbers to actually back up the claim.

Here’s an example of how it’s being reported. From GigaOM:

Samsung had a very strong quarter, according to numbers it revealed on Friday to investors. Its shipments (which it doesn’t provide specific numbers for) jumped more than 40 percent during the third quarter. Strategy Analytics estimates that amounts to total sales of nearly 28 million devices, while Apple moved 17 million during the same period.

Wait a minute. Samsung doesn’t provide specific numbers, so we are going to take their word that shipments jumped 40 percent? To make matters worse, Strategy Analytics “estimates” sales of 28 million devices.

∞ An informal e-book study

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Marco Arment:

In the past, I’ve always recommended the Kindle over other e-ink readers, and buying Kindle books instead of iBooks on iOS, because Amazon had the biggest library of relevant titles and strongest content ecosystem.But Amazon’s advantage is no longer as clear in my casual searching.

I just buy from iTunes. Apps, music, books, movies, videos, TV shows. Everything. Convenience rules.

∞ Bill Gates: Billionaire, millionaire 'it's the same hamburger'

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Bill Gates on being a billionaire:

“I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars, there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that. But once you get much beyond that, I have to tell you, it’s the same hamburger. Dick’s has not raised their prices enough,” he said, referring to the Seattle-area fast-food chain. “But being ambitious is good. You just have to pick what you enjoy doing.”

Anytime you want to throw a few billion my way Bill…

∞ Purdue University gives BlackBerry the boot

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Purdue University has continued to see a decline in BlackBerry devices using its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) since Jan. 1, 2011, and, after Dec. 31, 2012, will no longer support Exchange synchronization with BlackBerry devices.The combination of a 33-percent decrease in BES use, a subsequent increase in per-unit cost and a proliferation of the use of non-BlackBerry devices influenced the decision.

∞ Avid cuts jobs

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Air Users Blog: So, whilst some users were hoping for a price cut, it is sobering to think that some very good people have lost their job, some of whom are people I know personally. One in particular is a … Continued

∞ Siri's dictation key surprise

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Gary Ng:

After you’ve added the Emoji keyboard, or any other keyboard, you’ll notice Siri’s dictate key beside the spacebar changes from dark to light grey. What’s up with this change in colour?

I would never have found this.

∞ Good news for RIM; someone sucks more than they do at making tablets

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Jon Fingas:

Motorola Mobility pained a dark picture for its tablet strategy with its results on Thursday. The company shipped just 100,000 Xoom tablets in the summer, or less than a quarter of the 440,000 from the spring and less still than the 250,000 from the winter launch. Motorola gave no explanation for the drop.

A possible explanation is that they suck balls.

∞ HP is keeping its PC business

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HP today announced that it has completed its evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG) and has decided the unit will remain part of the company. As John Gruber said, HP might want to buy Netflix or … Continued

∞ It's brutal being an Android user

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Michael DeGusta:

I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States1 up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device – be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch – as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn’t pretty – well, not for Android users:

Wow. That’s all I got for that one.

∞ Steve Jobs, Final Cut and iMovie

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An excerpt from John Buck’s book “Timeline”:

Jobs approached Adobe Systems, and asked them to create a consumer version of Premiere that Apple could bundle with the unreleased Mac code-named Kihei. With Apple’s future still uncertain, and Premiere sales growing on the Wintel platform, Adobe said no.

Like so many other things, Jobs was driven by a belief that he was right. When Adobe said no, Jobs created the applications division at Apple that gave us so many great apps over the years.

∞ SoundCloud releases iPad app

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While maximizing native iPad capabilities like multi-touch and page swiping, SoundCloud’s app takes full advantage of the iPad interface to allow users to touch the newly designed waveform of the sound captured, allowing for a more social experience, which also includes more space for scrolling comments. In addition, users can now record private messages and send them directly to other people on SoundCloud.

∞ Research tells enterprise market to embrace Macs

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Philip Elmer-Dewitt:

“It’s time to repeal prohibition and take decisive action,” writes David Johnson in a new report made available to Fortune (and available for sale here). “Mac users are your HEROes and you should enable them not hinder them.”“HERO,” it turns out, is a Forrester acronym for Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives — “the 17% of information workers who use new technologies and find innovative ways to be more productive and serve customers more effectively.”

∞ Apple has $81.5 billion in cash

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Matthew Panzarino for TNW:

Apple today filed its Form 10-K with the SEC that discloses information to stockholders and the commission. In an amongst the normal legal statements there were a few interesting facts. Among those were that Apple currently has $81,570,000,000 in cash, marketable securities and cash equivalents.

The filing also noted Apple now has 60 thousand employees.

∞ Record high BlackBerry trade-ins after outage and iPhone 4S launch

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Josh Lowensohn for CNET:

The metric follows an extended outage of Research In Motion’s e-mail and BlackBerry messaging services, which left users unable to communicate with one another or send and receive e-mails globally. To placate angry users, RIM offered users $100 in free “premium” applications. The spike also coincided with the release of Apple’s new iPhone 4S.

And the bad news just keeps coming for RIM.

∞ 'Take Control of iCloud'

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“Take Control of iCloud” covers every platform that iCloud supports, which includes Mac OS X 10.7.2 Lion, iOS 5, Windows Vista and Windows 7, and even the second-generation Apple TV. If your computers and devices aren’t running — or can’t run — those operating systems, they won’t be able to participate in iCloud, but the ebook offers some workarounds.

A book written by Joe Kissell and offered by TidBITS founders Adam and Tonya Engst. In other words, it’s really good.