Gwyneth Paltrow joins Apple’s ‘Planet of the Apps’ reality series

Actress-entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow will serve as a mentor to contestants in Apple’s “Planet of the Apps,” a reality-competition series designed to showcase the tech goliath’s iTunes App Store that is set to bow in 2017.

Tech investor Gary Vaynerchuk and will.iam are also involved in the show as advisers.

Musician Finder

This isn’t the first site of its kind, but it never hurts for us to try out new places to find people to jam with.

Time for Twitter to sell

Shares (TWTR) closed up 7% Wednesday on speculation about a rumored joint takeover bid by two billionaires who are major Twitter investors: former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, no stranger to substantial tech investments.

Twitter is different than anything Google or Facebook has, at least for me. The mere mention of Ballmer made me shudder.

Seattle: The Silicon Valley of space start-ups

No single spot can claim to be the Silicon Valley of such companies yet, but Seattle is on the short list of contenders, investors and entrepreneurs say. The area is home to two tech billionaires — Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft — who are funding ambitious, varied efforts to make space more accessible. They have been joined by a few smaller companies like Spaceflight, attracted by Seattle’s abundant supply of software engineers from stalwarts like Amazon and Microsoft and aerospace experts from Boeing, the aviation giant that has major operations in the area.

I didn’t know that, but it makes perfect sense.

Tesla reports 13th straight quarterly loss

The 13th straight quarterly loss for the Silicon Valley electric carmaker underscores the financial hurdles that hamper it while it takes on increasingly ambitious goals – a ten-fold ramp of vehicle production in three years and the recent plan to acquire solar panel installer SolarCity Corp.

Wow.

Apple’s Developer Insight Series: Houzz

Houzz shares its unique approach to e‑commerce, and how the experience evolved from a side project for co‑founders Alon Cohen and Adi Tatarko as they renovated their home to a multi-platform app with tens of millions of users monthly.

Apple releases new diversity numbers

At Apple, we take a holistic view of diversity that looks beyond the usual measurements. A view that includes the varied perspectives of our employees as well as app developers, suppliers, and anyone who aspires to a future in tech. Because we know new ideas come from diverse ways of seeing things.

These are great numbers for Apple. They are moving in the right direction and they care.

Astropad 2.0

The #1 app for turning your iPad into a drawing tablet for Mac! Astropad allows you to use your iPad to draw directly into Photoshop and any other Mac creative tools, including: Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Affinity, Corel Painter, Manga Studio, Pixelmator, Mischief and any other Mac app you like!

This is a huge update.

Telescopes

I’ve mentioned a number of times in the last week about my increasing fascination with telescopes and space, so I thought I’d post some of the ones I’m looking at. The price variance is incredible, as are the features. I still need to do a lot more research, but it’s interesting to see what they can do.

1Password for individuals service launches

Earlier this year, we released two amazing new services: 1Password Families and 1Password Teams. Both rely on our new hosted platform to bring awesome new features that weren’t possible when 1Password was just a standalone app.

The response has been amazing and many of you asked for a special plan so you could also enjoy these benefits. We now have the perfect answer: our new service made for individuals!

I love 1Password. It’s installed on all of my devices and has been for quite a while. It’s a company I trust.

The Transit Elevated Bus

The Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) is powered by electricity and can carry passengers above two lanes of traffic while cars drive underneath it. The 22 metre long, 7.8 metre wide and 4.8 metre high bus trundled along a 300 metre stretch of road in the city of Qinhuangdao, Hebei province, at an excruciatingly slow speed for its inaugural test run, but the finished version should hit speeds of 40 mph.

That thing is huge.

Ulysses 2.6

Ben Brooks:

It’s no secret that I love, and use, Ulysses all day long — nor is it no secret that I publish with WordPress and only use iOS. This storm of factors means that I have a very specific set of requirements to make a dream writing app, and The Soulmen (the company behind Ulysses) asked me what I still yearned for in their app. The above features were at the top of my very short list.

This sounds like a great release.

Apple, Broadcom countersue Caltech

Apple argued that Caltech did not file the lawsuit until May 26, 2016, more than six years after the publication of the 802.11n wireless standard, and thereby the time limit to collect damages has passed under U.S. law. It also argued that Caltech does not make, use, or sell any product that practices any claim of the asserted patents.

Things to listen for when using audio compression

Compression is an invaluable tool for audio engineers. Despite having been engineering for over 15 years now, I feel as if I’m still learning new techniques and applications for compressors on a regular basis.

Compression is a great thing for gluing a mix together, if used correctly. Not everyone uses it correctly.

Chip-card checkout nightmares

Chip-card checkout nightmares? WSJ’s Joanna Stern explains the transition to the new EMV chip cards for credit and debit, and why your smartphone is the real answer to all your payment problems.

It seems amazing that the U.S. is having such a tough time with this while the rest of the world has been using it for a while now.

OpenTV settles patent dispute with Apple

Kudelski said in a statement that the deal includes a “comprehensive patent license agreement” with Apple and that all pending patent litigation between the two companies would be dropped. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Good.

Samsung mocks Apple for removing headphone jack

Okay, two things: First, Apple hasn’t removed the headphone jack, those are only rumors. Second, I’m saving this video for later because Samsung is pretty quick to copy everything Apple does.

P.S. Pay your debt to Apple, Samsung, you thieving bastards.

Instagram Stories takes cue from Snapchat

Today, we’re introducing Instagram Stories, a new feature that lets you share all the moments of your day, not just the ones you want to keep on your profile. As you share multiple photos and videos, they appear together in a slideshow format: your story.

They disappear after 24 hours.

The history of the guitar Fuzz tone

In fact, the story about how the original “fuzz tone” was born takes a number of unusual twists that are pretty amazing for such a ubiquitous sound.

It is amazing how some of these things were created.

Apple updates iOS 10 with more than 100 new emojis

More than one hundred new and redesigned emoji characters will be available to iPhone and iPad users this Fall with iOS 10. This exciting update brings more gender options to existing characters, including new female athletes and professionals, adds beautiful redesigns of popular emoji, a new rainbow flag and more family options.

Apple is working closely with the Unicode Consortium to ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere.

Wonderful.

macOS Sierra beta 4 available

In addition to releasing iOS 10, tvOS, and watchOS beta 4, Apple has also released macOS Sierra beta 4 today. You can download it via the automatic download mechanism if you have Sierra installed. You can also download it from Apple’s developer portal if you are a registered developer.

Kagi shuts down

It is with sadness that we announce Kagi has ceased operations as of July 31st, 2016.

Wow, I remember using Kagi to purchase shareware for many years.

Judge voids $625.6 million verdict against Apple

A federal judge has thrown out a verdict requiring Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to pay VirnetX Holding Corp (VHC.A) $625.6 million for infringing four patents relating to Internet security technology, causing VirnetX’s share price to plunge.

VirnetX said they are preparing for a retrial.