Inside the Wilson tennis ball factory. I also find these things fascinating.

With all of the press it’s received in the past couple of weeks, it will come as no surprise that Pokemon Go has been a huge success. In fact, Apple told me today that the game has set a new App Store record with more downloads in its first week than any other app in history. That is impressive. […]

These are cool, I’d love to have some of these.

“Because our network is a shared resource and we need to ensure all customers have a great mobile experience with Verizon, we are notifying a very small group of customers on unlimited plans who use an extraordinary amount of data that they must move to one of the new Verizon Plans by August 31, 2016,” a Verizon spokesperson told Ars. “These users are using data amounts well in excess of our largest plan size (100GB). While the Verizon Plan at 100GB is designed to be shared across multiple users, each line receiving notification to move to the new Verizon Plan is using well in excess of that on a single device.”

I have no idea how someone could use 100GB of data a month.

With the wireless industry maturing, Verizon has been buying up internet and advertising technology companies, including AOL, and presenting itself as the best bet to take on Google and Facebook Inc. in mobile advertising. Yahoo has millions of users, a collection of websites including Flickr, Tumblr and Yahoo Finance and Sports and some useful digital-ad tech like Flurry and BrightRoll. Together with AOL, the new Yahoo under Verizon may have a better chance of competing in a digital ad market dominated by two big players.

It’s interesting to me that all of the companies Yahoo bought basically disappeared from consumer consciousness after the purchase. I’m not sure if Verizon can raise the profile of those companies or not, but it will be interesting to watch this play out.

Thank you Igloo for sponsoring The Loop this week. Igloo is an intranet you’ll actually like. It’s 100% cloud-based, so you’ll always have the latest version and it can be accessed from any device, anywhere. It’s time to simplify work and keep people more connected than ever before.

The country’s National Center for Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) issued nine instructions to users of the mobile game, ranging from advising them not to use their real names to warning gamers over fake apps.

Be safe people.

A good article from Jason Snell, showing you where and how to see what’s associated with your Apple ID.

Each day, we make million of updates to Google Maps throughout the world. But it’s still not enough to ensure that every single restaurant, shop or landmark worldwide has the most accurate information possible. That’s why we’ve been rolling out new, easy ways for you to help keep the neighborhoods and places where you hang out up-to-date.

Making it easier for users to update places in their neighborhood is obviously a smart idea.

Via MacStories]

I also found my frame rates to be significantly higher than before the patch as well. For example, in certain areas I would average around 30 – 50 frames per second before the switch to Metal. After the switch I found myself getting around 70 – 90 frames per second in the same places.

You can also read the follow-up post.

I’ve looked at telephoto lens in the past, and this is a good roundup of what’s available. Ultimately, I went for the DxO One.

There has been some speculation today that Apple purchased cloud-based music provider, Omnifone. According to my sources, that’s not the case. […]

With Plex for Sonos you can now browse and play your entire Plex music collection on any Sonos device, right from the Sonos app.

Great news.

ChefSteps recently introduced Joule, a small and easy-to-use sous vide tool, the first of many of the products planned by Young and his team of over 50 chefs, scientists, photographers, writers and engineers.

It’s not often you hear of a person with this combination of attributes. Interesting interview.

One of the two oldest methods of applying color to web pages, named colors remain very useful in web design and development today. Consisting of 149 distinct keywords (shown above, with their hexadecimal equivalents) CSS named colors have a few special features

The decision to drop a paywall can provide insight into how a news organization’s “values intersect with its commodification strategy, its technology design, and its brand identity” as outlets of all stripes are still deciding how much their reporting should cost.

This discussion has been going on for two decades.

Modi’s cabinet on Wednesday is likely to approve a three-year exemption on local-sourcing requirements for foreign single-brand retail companies with “cutting-edge technology,” according to the people, who asked not to be identified due to rules for speaking with the media.

This is great news, although I’m not sure what happens after the three-year exemption.

No matter how you look at it, that’s impressive.

The new episodes of Making A Murderer will provide an in-depth look at the post-conviction process of convicted murderer Steven Avery, and his co-defendant, Brendan Dassey, as their respective investigative and legal teams challenge their convictions and the State fights to have their life sentences upheld.

Like many people, I was glued to the TV set watching this series.

Gawker Media LLC founder Nick Denton faces personal bankruptcy after a U.S. judge refused on Tuesday to extend protections shielding him from liabilities resulting from a lawsuit over the invasion of privacy of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.

This story completely ruined Denton.

Fraser Speirs documented his experience of rolling out 90 iPads. Impressive.

Version 2 sports the world class, professional photo editing that you users of Camera+ for iPhone have been enjoying via The Lab. But the iPad version takes photo editing to a new level by supporting selective brushing of the various edits and filters. And those of you who own an Apple Pencil will appreciate it even more because we’ve also added Pencil support, enabling you to get very fine, precise control over brushing with it.

Camera+ has a lot of tools and is certainly worth a look if you are into photography on your iPad.

There are some great new features in the latest version for iOS including:

• Quick Selection Tool – this is an awesome and super accurate new selection tool that lets you swipe over areas to select them.
• Magnetic Selection Tool – this tool snaps precise selections around objects and is really fun to use.
• Selection improvements – there’s also a ton of improvements to the overall selection experience (including an Invert Selection feature).

I use Pixelmator as my only image editor and love it.

Interesting story.

Twitter Inc said on Tuesday it had signed a deal with the NBA to stream exclusive non-game programing, pushing deeper into sports streaming as it seeks new ways to attract users.

Twitter also signed a deal with the NFL this year. I’ll have to wait and see what kind of content comes out of this deal, but on the surface, I’m not sure this appeals to me.

“Due to the wide array of available Android devices, we are targeting our support to a select number of Android devices to continue improving our overall Salesforce1 for Android user experience,” the company said in the support document.

Translation: Android is so fucked up, we were forced to take steps to make it work for us.

The iPhone is “faster; smoother. Android freezes up” and has to be restarted too often, the source said. The problem with the Android is particularly noticeable when viewing live feed from an unmanned aerial system such as Instant Eye, the source said.

Makes sense that the Army would want the best equipment they can get.

I am absolutely astounded by what this report from F-Secure says. It makes the “gangs” seem like companies being graded on their customer service after hacking your computer: […]

If you installed any of the updates Apple released today, you may be interested in the security content of what you installed. These are for the official releases, not the betas.

These are great videos.