Oristand:

The Oristand is a standing desk made of cardboard that easily collapses and requires no complicated assembly. It’s made out of industrial grade cardboard that is light, strong and affordable. Not to mention it is 100% recyclable. Meaning you can save some cash and we can save some trees.

I’ve been interested in standing desks for a while but most are over $200. At $25, this looks like something you could test out inexpensively. It’s being produced by the folks behind the Vancouver, BC based Hootsuite.

L.A. Times:

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338. But someone has to win, right? We decided to put that idea to the test.This game starts with $100 to play against multiple lottery drawings. Pick your numbers and watch the money disappear.

I spent $10,000 and “won” $814. That being said, I will still very occasionally buy a lottery ticket, even knowing the odds are stacked against me if only because it’s fun to dream, even if only for a little while, about that kind of money and what I’d do with it.

Above Avalon:

There are two Apples: AAPL, the stock, and Apple, the company. While it would seem logical that one is merely a reflection of the other, in reality, the two are guided by vastly different parameters. Over the long run, Apple and AAPL will likely be at odds with each other due to the very nature of Apple’s long-term mission of making products that people love. It is the classic Wall Street vs. Silicon Valley battle, and 2015 was likely just a taste of what is to come.

It would be an understatement to say that AAPL had a weak 2015. When looking at stock price performance, AAPL’s underperformance was quite striking. While GOOG, FB, and AMZN saw strong double-digit stock price increases, AAPL reported a rare 3% decline, the first annual decline since 2008. Even more striking, AAPL’s performance meant that the market removed $46 billion of market cap from AAPL in 2015, whereas AMZN and GOOG were given nearly $350 billion of additional market capitalization.

Wall St never ceases to amaze me and I don’t mean that in a good way. From the outside, it looks like Apple – with record profits, sales, market share and category ownership – would be a Wall Street success story, Cybart does a good job of explaining why the exact opposite is true.

Macstories:

Earlier today, Apple released the first developer beta of iOS 9.3, which will introduce several new functionalities for built-in apps and for education users. To highlight some of the changes in this release, Apple has launched a mini-site with screenshots and descriptions of what’s coming in iOS 9.3.

Lots of good looking features here.

The Hollywood Reporter:

The X-Files’ complicated mythology, both real and scripted, makes its history the source of endless pop-culture autopsies. But as Fox readies a six-episode revival (starting Jan. 24), the people most responsible for the enduring franchise sound off — for the first time in the same place — about how the show came to be. And be again.

I’ve always been a huge fan of this show (and was even an extra on a few episodes). When it was good (and it wasn’t in the last couple of years on air), it was the best show on TV and I’m really looking forward to seeing the new episodes.

Mentalfloss:

One movie trope Hollywood just can’t seem to move past? The frantic hacker. Here’s how those scenes usually go: A character on the screen is shown banging away at a keyboard while a timer counts down and lines of code flash across their monitor. But how realistic is that? YouTuber elsafrickey compiled clips from various movies made between 1970 and 2000, and the resulting supercut shows that while technology has changed over the years, the misrepresentation of hacking has remained consistent.

I won’t lie – I’ve made several girlfriends and one wife nuts from yelling at the TV screen, “That’s not how it’s done!”

Priceonomics:

In 1997, Congress introduced the Copyright Term Extension Act, which proposed to extend corporate copyrights again — this time, from 75 to 95 years. To ensure the bill passed, Disney cozied up to legislators.

Watchdog records show that the Disney Political Action Committee (PAC) paid out a total of $149,612 in direct campaign contributions to those considering the bill. Of the bill’s 25 sponsors (12 in the Senate, and 13 in the House), 19 received money from Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner. In one instance, Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor.

While it is impossible to say for certain whether or not Disney’s efforts directly impacted politics, the results heavily worked out in their favor: the bill quietly and unanimously passed in the House and Senate with no public hearings, no debate, no notice to the public, and no roll call.

On October 27, 1998, Mickey Mouse’s copyright was extended another 20 years, to 2023.

That’s only seven years away. We can look forward to Disney extending the Mickey Mouse copyright again and again with no public oversight or comment.

McMaster University:

We watch the same TV shows, listen to the same music and wear the same clothes. But when it comes to what we say on Twitter, Canadians and Americans could hardly be more different.

After analyzing millions of tweets, McMaster linguists have found that Canadians tend to be a pretty polite, happy bunch of tweeters.

They also found that our neighbours’ tweets tend to be a little more, uh, raunchy.

You Americans are apparently a foul-mouthed bunch.

TidBITS:

With Macworld/iWorld seemingly stuck in mothballs for good, Apple professionals will have to go elsewhere to gather with their peers. Luckily, there’s no lack of independent conferences both before and after Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference, which usually takes place in June and has far fewer slots than developers who would like to attend.

As usual, Engst is being far too kind. Macworld is well and truly dead and no other conference has arisen from its ashes to replace it. But, this is a good list of events occurring in 2016 that might be of interest to some of you.

Netflix:

Netflix launched its service globally, simultaneously bringing its Internet TV network to more than 130 new countries around the world. The company made the announcement — and the service went live — during a keynote by Co-founder and Chief Executive Reed Hastings at CES 2016.

“Today you are witnessing the birth of a new global Internet TV network,” said Hastings. “With this launch, consumers around the world — from Singapore to St. Petersburg, from San Francisco to Sao Paulo — will be able to enjoy TV shows and movies simultaneously — no more waiting. With the help of the Internet, we are putting power in consumers’ hands to watch whenever, wherever and on whatever device.”

Good news for The Loop readers around the world (except China). You can now watch old TV shows and movies along with the rest of us.

iMore:

If you were at CES, you could see water bottles with screens, alarm clocks with smell, robots with video projectors, underwear that’s smart, and a tablet/refrigerator. That would have been all on one day. Yesterday.

CES started as a trade show for retail. In the ’80s and ’90s, it was a venue for great technology intros such as the CD (1981), the DVD, (1986) and HDTV (1998). By 2000, CES was the place to launch major products such as Xbox (2001). When I look at this year’s show, I see a lot of things no one needs, and few people will want. It’s a Sharper Image catalog brought to life, the ultimate “Why? Because I can!” So why is it still an important event? It’s the place to try and spot the new, new thing that might get consumers to replace the old, old thing. So far, I don’t see it but here’s what I do see.

CES is a gigantic waste of time, energy, and money – but you won’t hear the Tech Media say that. The vast majority of what they “report” on will never see the light of day as a consumer-purchasable product. But they’ll get excited as puppies over it regardless.

Pete Souza:

One of the best and most challenging aspects of my job is whittling down a year’s worth of photographs to the final selections for my annual Year in Photographs. Every year, I attempt to keep it less than 100 photos — and every year I fail in that goal. But I am excited once again to present this gallery for the seventh consecutive year.

We saw Chief Official White House Photographer Souza’s favorite iPhone shots late last year. Here is his gallery of shots by him and his staff. There are some great images here but I particularly like the one of President Obama and basketball player Shaquille O’Neal. Souza “cheated” by using a wide angle lens to great result.

Asymco:

Apple has made a “significant” market entry in phones and others have made entries in cars. If we contrast the rate of growth of Tesla, EVs, and Hybrids to the rate of growth of iPhones in their respective US markets, we obtain a test of significance.

A typically thoughtful post from Dediu. It assumes Apple’s “Cook Doctrine” won’t change in the future and, if so, points to the unlikelihood of Apple making their own car – which I agree with. Given the information in this post, there’s no chance Apple will come out with its own line of cars, any more than they will come out with their own line of HD TV sets.

Center for the Study of the Public Domain:

Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years.

Under those laws, works published in 1959 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2016, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2055. No published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in other countries are different—thousands of works are entering the public domain in Canada and the EU on January 1.

What books and plays would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles.

Copyright’s original intent has been completely bastardized to the detriment of the public and in favor of corporate interests.

Petapixel:

Guess who’s getting into the world of photography workshops? Apple.

That’s right: the company wants people to be more adept at shooting photos with their iPhones and editing photos on their Macs, so it’s now launching free 1-hour workshops on those subjects (and more) in its sleek Apple Stores.

The workshops will be available at every single Apple Store around the world, so starting in January 2016, check your local store’s website for its workshop schedule if you’re interested in attending one.

As a teacher of workshops and classes myself, I love the idea of Apple getting into this. Anything that encourages people to learn more about how to take better pictures is a good thing.

Ken Segall:

Recently, Apple hired Tor Myhren as VP of Marketing Communications. He comes from Grey, where he was the global chief creative officer and president of the NY office.

To borrow some new Star Wars terminology, he’s a big deal in advertising.

On the surface, Tor’s hiring is what it is. But if you look a bit deeper, there are all sorts of juicy implications.

To better appreciate, one must first understand how Apple’s marketing has worked in the past, Steve Jobs-style.

I’ve been following this behind the scenes story for a few years now. The most interesting aspect of this, besides the fact that a world-class ad agency guy would go “behind the wall” to work internally is Segall’s statement that Myhren will be reporting directly to Cook and not Schiller. We’ll see the fruits of this hire inside six months.

CNN:

Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s feature-length Jobs documentary, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, debuts this Sunday on CNN at 9pm ET.

Because of his previous work, I was looking forward to this documentary from Gibney. Sadly, in my opinion, this wasn’t nearly as good as his earlier films.

Mental Floss:

In 1917, Bostonians reacted to an unprecedented tragedy in Halifax with an outpouring of support and resources. Nearly a century later, Nova Scotians haven’t forgotten.

On December 6, 1917, a French ship named the Mont-Blanc was passing through Halifax Harbor, making its way from New York to France. The ship was carrying a staggering load of munitions: 2300 tons of pyric acid, 35 tons of benzene, and 200 tons of dynamite. If you think this sounds like an accident waiting to happen, you’re absolutely right. At 8:45 a.m., the Mont-Blanc collided with a Norwegian cargo ship called the Imo. At first, the French ship simply caught fire, inspiring thousands of people to gather into the harbor to watch.

Then, at 9:04 a.m., it exploded—and the impact was devastating.

As a native Haligonian, We all know the story of this tragedy but few outside the region know of the amazing kindness of the people of Boston. I’ve always wanted to go to the Boston Commons Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony to pay my respects the people of that great city.

Digg:

In America, not many people know much about Boxing Day, besides that it’s the day after Christmas1. In the United Kingdom — and many former colonies of England — Boxing Day, December 26, is a national holiday, yet its origins are still highly debated. Here’s what we know.

For me as a kid in Nova Scotia, Christmas Day was for family and visiting them. Boxing Day was the day you went to friends’ homes.

Pete Souza:

Throughout the year, I post photographs of my White House work on a regular basis to my Instagram, @PeteSouza. Many followers have inquired about whether a certain photograph is taken with an iPhone or DSLR (digital single lens reflex camera). In choosing the photographs for my year on Instagram, I decided to select only iPhone photographs that were captured in the square format on an iPhone. For many purists, the square format was the original inspiration for Instagram. And I certainly admire those that continue to post only square photos taken with a smart phone.

I love these iPhone shots because it shows that, in the right lighting conditions, the iPhone can take shots every bit as good as a professional’s DSLR. It’s not the camera that is important. It’s the photographer and their view of the world.

Macstories:

Screenshot apps tend to fall into one of two categories: managers and editors. On iOS, screenshot management apps dominate, likely because until Apple added a ‘Screenshots’ album to the Photos app with iOS 9, there was no good way to separate screenshots from snapshots of family and friends. On the Mac there are fewer apps, but their feature sets tend to be deeper.

This article casts a broad net to provide an overview of the top screenshot apps on iOS and Mac and help you find the apps that meet your specific needs.

This is a wonderful ridiculously long list of a number of screenshot methods and apps. You’re sure to find one that does just what you need.

Petapixel:

If you’re a Mac user and are annoyed that OS X automatically launches Apple Photos every time you connect a device or insert a memory card, there’s good news for you: you can disable the program from launching for all devices with a single command.

I find this change by Apple really annoying in particular because, every time you format your memory card (which I do often), OS X/Photos (an app I’m never going to use but can’t delete – thanks Apple!), forgets and treats it like a new device. So being able to kill this activity using a Terminal command is a Godsend.

ZDNet:

I used the Internet for years before there was a Web, but when Tim Berners-Lee proposed the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system, to his boss at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, we didn’t know it but we were on the brink of a revolution.

Berners-Lee’s idea wasn’t new. You can trace it back to Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think article in July 1945. Personally, I think Ted Nelson’s 1960 Xanadu hypertext vision had even more influence on how the Web would turn out. And, of course, Apple’s HyperCard did give us a hypertext system that might have beat Berners-Lee to the Web… except HyperCard was totally network unaware.

The door was open for Berners-Lee to turn the hypertext dream into our Web reality.

Hard to believe it wasn’t that long ago. Us old folks will remember what it was like accessing the internet before the World Wide Web. You kids nowadays don’t know the struggles we had using Archie, Gopher and Mosaic.

Bloomberg:

Painters put brushes to canvas, sculptors take chisels to marble, potters shape clay on a wheel, but the process for handblown glass is, to put it mildly, slightly more obscure.

“I’ll be out in the world selling my work at a festival, and I’ll ask a child if they know what glass is made of,” says Lisa Aronzon, 58, a glass-blowing artist based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. “I’ve actually had a child say, ‘Plastic?’” When Aronzon explains that glass is made of sand, “Their eyes light up. … It seems like magic, or alchemy,” she says. And in a sense, it is.

I’ve never done it but I’ve always been fascinated by glass blowing. I could watch people do it all day long.

iMore:

Jony Ive will give Charlie Rose a look inside “Apple’s secret design studio” in an upcoming episode of 60 Minutes that will be aired on Sunday, December 20 at 7:30PM ET & 7PM PT on CBS. Rose’s tour of Apple’s “store of the future” with retail chief Angela Ahrendts will also be highlighted on the show.

While this may be interesting viewing, don’t get your hopes up to see any “secrets”. I’ve been inside Apple’s labs and studios and whenever an outsider is present, all the good bits are well hidden and/or covered in black cloth.

Apple:

Apple and China UnionPay announced a partnership to bring Apple Pay, which transforms mobile payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay, to China. China UnionPay cardholders will be able to easily add their bank cards to Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, providing added convenience and security to everyday shopping.

“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay. “We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass.”

“Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China’s leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.

“Extremely important” may be the understatement of the year. This is the single most important thing to happen to Apple Pay since it was first announced.

Ars Technica:

John Chen, the Blackberry chairman and CEO, is ripping Apple’s position that granting the authorities access to a suspected criminal’s mobile device would “tarnish” the iPhone maker’s image.

“We are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good. At BlackBerry, we understand, arguably more than any other large tech company, the importance of our privacy commitment to product success and brand value: privacy and security form the crux of everything we do. However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals,” Chen wrote in a blog post titled “The encryption Debate: a Way Forward.”

Well, if anyone would know a thing or two about a tarnished brand, it would be the CEO of Blackberry. I’d rather have Apple making sure law enforcement requests have a “clear legal authority” rather than Chen’s plan to roll over whenever the government wants to “help us be safe”.

Macstories:

Pigment works in a rather unsurprising way: the app launches to a library of digital coloring books, ranging from animal figures such as butterflies and birds filled with smaller patterns to flowers, geometric shapes, 3D structures, and the omnipresent mandalas for a total of 200 illustrated works. Most of the books’ artworks have been licensed from Shutterstock, but there are also books by independent artists as well as patterns created with Assembly, Pixite’s innovative design tool for iOS. It’s a good selection of themes and patterns, in line with popular trends in adult coloring books and a solid start for an app that wants to replicate the coloring experience on an iPhone and iPad.

Adult coloring books have been around for a while. As soon as I saw the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, I knew they would be a good fit for people like me who can’t draw but like to color.

BusinessInsider:

Apple announced a sweep of management changes on Thursday, which includes the appointment of Tor Myhren, who has become the company’s vice president of marketing and communications.

43-year-old Myhren will join in early 2016 from well-respected ad network Grey Group, where he was worldwide chief creative officer and president of its New York shop Grey New York.

Now he’s moving client-side. At Apple he’ll be responsible for all the brand’s marketing efforts — everything from its big TV campaigns, to packaging, and retail store displays.

It’s been rumored for a while that Phil Schiller hasn’t been happy with Apple’s ad campaigns in the past 18 months. This is a sign the company is looking to shake up how it projects itself to the consumer.

Westjet:

On December 9, 2015 we celebrated WestJet’s 12,000 mini miracles day. WestJetters wearing blue Santa hats joined Blue Santa with a goal of making 12,000 mini miracles happen across our network over a 24-hour period. A mini miracle is simply an act of kindness that evokes a positive response from someone.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this day a success. We ended up counting a grand total of 31,793 mini miracles

Canadian airline WestJet does this Christmas themed video every year and every year, it brings a tear to my eye. It shows that it doesn’t take much to spread a little goodwill during the holiday season. You can do it too. Try something as simple as buying a coffee for the person in line behind you.