Macworld:

Check out Ghostery, a Safari extension (also available for Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer). With Ghostery installed, whenever you visit a Web page that uses such tricks to track, you’ll briefly see a box listing all the services that are tracking your visit to that page.

Click the Ghostery icon in Safari’s toolbar, and you get a detailed list of each of those service along with the specific script(s) each is using on that Web page. Click a script to view it in a new Safari tab or window. Click the More Info link next to a service to view Ghostery’s page for that company, which includes information about the company; contact information; a link to the company’s full privacy policy; and a summary of the types of data the company collects, how that data is shared, and how long it’s retained.

I’ve been using Ghostery for a while and really like the way it reminds me of just how much tracking is going on and it shows you just how ridiculous the situation has gotten. One page I visited had 54 trackers on it. Needless to say, it was a painfully slow web site.

Ars Technica:

At the Flash Memory Summit in California, Samsung has unveiled what appears to be the world’s largest hard drive—and somewhat surprisingly, it uses NAND flash chips rather than spinning platters. The rather boringly named PM1633a, which is being targeted at the enterprise market, manages to cram almost 16 terabytes into a 2.5-inch SSD package. By comparison, the largest conventional hard drives made by Seagate and Western Digital currently max out at 8 or 10TB.

That’s quite a lot of porn.

Twitter:

While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages let you have private conversations about the memes, news, movements, and events that unfold on Twitter. Each of the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent across Twitter every day is an opportunity for you to spark a conversation about what’s happening in your world. That’s why we’ve made a number of changes to Direct Messages over the last few months. Today’s change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun.

I honestly don’t know if this is a good thing or not.

9to5Mac:

Apple has joined the official NFC Forum as a top-tier sponsor. Along with the sponsorship role, Apple has joined the forum’s Board of Directors, according to the forum’s official website.

With representation and sponsorship of the forum, Apple will be able to help advance the development of NFC chips across the industry and develop new NFC-based products at a quicker pace.

Apple has joined multiple industry forums for key components over the past several years, and the Cupertino-based company is a core member of both the USB and Bluetooth connectivity organizations.

This will undoubtedly help drive even more innovation in NFC. Apple waited to implement the protocol until they had the device to really take advantage of it. Now that they do, they are looking to use their directorship to drive further development in ways beneficial to the company.

iMore:

iOS 9 takes multitasking from the background and puts it right up front on the iPad.

Apple calls it Multitasking for iPad. The iPad, of course, has always multitasked at the system level, and over the years has gained background tasks and refresh and other forms of third-party multitasking as well. With iOS 9, however, the iPad is getting more than just the ability to do multiple things at once—it’s getting the ability to show multiple apps at once. It’s getting Slide Over and Split View.

Both Slide Over and Split View allow you to have two apps on-screen at the same time—a “primary” app and a “secondary” app. The primary app is the one you start with, full screen. The secondary app is the one you bring in that either overlays a part of the screen in Slide Over or takes over part of the screen in Split View.

This new functionality might actually get me using my iPad more. It’s been gathering dust since I got the iPhone 6 plus but Slide Over and Split View sound like the kinds of features I’m looking for to help the iPad get closer to a laptop in terms of useability.

Re/code:

CurrentC, the payments app being created by a consortium of big retailers known as MCX, may not launch widely this year as originally planned, MCX CEO Brian Mooney told Re/code in an interview on Tuesday. The company will begin a public pilot of its app in Columbus, Ohio in a few weeks and will not rush a wider rollout if the product is not ready, he said.

“This is a long game,” Mooney said. “Certainly going faster is always better — that’s not necessarily a debatable point. But we’re going to do it right.”

I don’t think there’s much doubt, after RiteAid and Best Buy and others have changed their plans, that CurrentC, at least in its present form, is DOA.

Vinyl Record Day:

Vinyl Record Day is dedicated to the preservation of the cultural influence, the recordings and the cover art of the vinyl record, celebrating our fondest music with friends and family.

Today is the day Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. Do you remember the first (or last) vinyl record you bought? For me, it was Rush’s “Bastille Day”.

Mental Floss:

The British Library is the largest library collection in the world, with more than 170 million items in its catalogue.

The collections are generated by the so-called “Mechanical Curator”, which randomly chooses images from public domain books from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Better yet, every image links back to a PDF of the source book so you can determine the full context. The sheer volume of images means it’s impossible for the institution to organise them alone, and so part of the project is a request that users help identify and tag the content. Essentially, you get to contribute to the British Library’s curation.

Do not go to The British Library’s Flickr page unless you have a lot of free time. It’s an absolute time suck.

Macworld:

Photos for OS X is designed to appeal to a broad audience, with simple editing tools that let anyone improve their photographs. But is that it? Even though it’s a 1.0 product (replacing iPhoto and Aperture), a lot of editing power is actually hidden beneath that user-friendly surface.

I’m a happy Lightroom user and won’t touch Photos for OS X with a ten foot pole but this article does a good job of explaining what kind of editing you can expect to find in the app.

Business Insider:

We’ve rounded up some of the best libraries around the world that offer not only an impressive collection of reading material, but also boast unique architecture.

From an 8th-century monastery in Switzerland to a library with hanging bookshelves in Mexico City, here are the libraries that every book worm should visit.

I still remember going to the Halifax Library as a kid and marvelling at all the books. To this day, I love these kinds of expansive, beautiful libraries. I was surprised to see Vancouver’s Public Library on this list. While its outside is interesting, it’s interior is fairly pedestrian and not nearly as spectacular as many of the libraries pictured.

Fortune:

Ad-blocking software is estimated to cost websites nearly $22 billion in ad revenue this year.

Software that blocks digital ads will cost online publishers nearly $22 billion in advertising revenue this year, according to a new study.

That figure comes by way of a new study from Adobe Systems Page Fair, an Irish startup that caters to websites and advertisers looking to avoid those so-called “ad-blocking” practices.

As a content creator, this is a disturbing statistic (and one I take with a truckload of salt because of the inherent bias in the study’s creator) but it’s a problem brought on by the industry itself. If ads hadn’t gotten so intrusive and obnoxious, perhaps their intended recipients wouldn’t be working so hard to avoid them. And it’s only going to get worse for both sides.

Venturebeat:

The startup, backed by a rare lineup — Tim Cook, Schmidt’s Family Foundation, Y Combinator — launched preorders for its first product, a shower-head, on Kickstarter last night. The size of Nebia’s seed round was not shared, but Y Combinator is known to invest at least $120,000 by default. Nebia aims to raise at least $100,000 more on Kickstarter.

But Nebia isn’t just out to create some pricy shower system. CEO Philip Winter claims the device uses 70 percent less water than a traditional shower, and he hopes to scale the product to a point where it’s cheap enough to bring to developing markets.

I’ve been very vocal about my dislike of Kickstarter projects in general but I love showers even more than I hate Kickstarter. This idea is very clever, looks great and, as someone who is always looking for a better shower experience (and to use less water), it’s something I am very interested in. I’ve backed this project.

NASA:

As the third brightest object in the sky the space station is easy to see if you know when to look up.

NASA’s Spot The Station service gives you a list of upcoming sighting opportunities for thousands of locations worldwide, and will let you sign up to receive notices of opportunities in your email inbox or cell phone. The space station looks like a fast-moving plane in the sky, but it is dozens of times higher than any airplane and traveling thousands of miles an hour faster. It is bright enough that it can even be seen from the middle of a city!

Obviously, the times of overflight vary and you likely won’t see every sighting but it is still kind of cool to get an email or SMS, go outside, look up and see the bright ISS transiting your night sky.

The Verge:

There was a time in the not-too-distant past where you couldn’t just open Spotify, your favorite torrent client, or iTunes and get hold of a song you wanted to hear. No, you had to obtain actual physical goods that they sold in things called stores. That is, of course, unless you were a member of the Columbia House music club.

Mail-order convenience was big back then, and the idea of a subscription music service that came to your door was pretty appealing. But times change and mediums mutate, and now The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Columbia House has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was an ugly ending. Revenues for Columbia House peaked in 1996 at $1.4 billion, but last year the company declared net revenue of just $17 million.

Living in the backwoods of Nova Scotia as a kid without much money and no access to a record store, Columbia House was the only way many of us could get the latest CDs and cassette tapes. And, getting 12 albums for a penny also may have been my first lesson in “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.

Business Insider:

Google just announced a brand new operating structure.

It is now a subsidiary of a company called Alphabet, which has Larry Page as CEO. The CEO of Google is Sundar Pichai.

“Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly-traded entity and all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights. Google will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Alphabet.”

This is blockbuster news breaking as we speak.

Petapixel:

After another stage performance in “Hamlet” this past weekend, actor Benedict Cumberbatch stopped outside the Barbican theater in London to make a request of his fans: he wants theater-goers to put away their cameras during his performances.

Speaking to the large crowd of fans gathered outside the theater, Cumberbatch politely says that seeing cameras pointed at him during the play is “mortifying” and that there’s “nothing less supportive or enjoyable” for the actors on stage.

It’s just as bad for the performer as it can be for the audience. Nothing ruins an event more than having a dozen cell phone screens brightly ruining your view of what is happening on stage.

Wired:

While streaming services provide endless ways to introduce listeners to unfamiliar music, the sheer number of them has fragmented the market. As we listen to music more each year, radio still holds the crown in one very important regard. “Radio continues to be the #1 source of discovery for new music,” says David Bakula, a Nielsen analyst.

According to Nielsen’s findings, this is true even for younger listeners, the prime audience for streaming services. “For younger millennials in particular, discovery is more and more driven by social media and other digital formats, but that’s still supplemental to radio,” says Bakula.

To me, Beats 1 is the most interesting aspect of the very uneven Apple Music. I tend to listen to music I already know and like but, listening to the Beats 1 DJs, I’m more likely to hear, listen to, and want to learn more about artists I’ve never heard of before.

Macworld:

Customers of the oft-criticized security and performance program MacKeeper have until Nov. 30 to file a claim for reimbursement, the result of a proposed class-action suit settlement.

Those who bought MacKeeper before July 8 are eligible, according to the settlement website where claims can be filed.

The class action suit accused MacKeeper’s original developer, ZeoBIT, of deceptively advertising the program and making false claims about what it could fix.

Half a million US customers are eligible to get at least some money back. If you know anyone who bought this crapware, please let them know about this settlement.

Time and Date:

The Perseid meteor shower, one of the brighter meteor showers of the year, occur every year between July 17 and August 24. The shower tends to peak around August 9-13.

The best time to view the Perseids, or most other meteor showers is when the sky is the darkest. Most astronomers suggest that depending on the Moon’s phase, the best time to view meteor showers is right before dawn.

I’m headed out later to shoot the meteor shower and test some photo gear tonight.

KelbyOne:

Each year, photographers around the world gather together on the same day to explore an area, photograph, share those photos with one another, and hopefully make some new friends! This year that happens on Saturday, October 3rd.

I’ve been a Walk Leader since the beginning and always have a great time hanging out with photographers of all skill levels. It’s a really cool idea to think that you and thousands of other photographers around the world are all shooting on the same day. If there is one in your area, go for the walk. If there isn’t, it’s not hard to organize a walk yourself.

Outside:

In Jay Blahnik’s first extended interview since Apple hired him to help launch the Watch, the company’s director of fitness for health technologies insists activity tracking is overemphasized, elite athletes have a sitting problem, and the real breakthrough apps for the device will probably be created outside of Cupertino.

You have to read between the lines sometimes but it’s pretty obvious Blahnik isn’t just a talking head and that he really wants the fitness aspect of the Apple Watch to be a big deal.

The Atlantic:

Today’s discerning beer drinkers might be convinced that America’s watery, bland lagers are a recent corporate invention. But the existence of American beers that are, as one industry executive once put it, “less challenging,” has a much longer history. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, himself an accomplished homebrewer, complained that some of his country’s beers were “meagre and often vapid” nearly 200 years ago.

Jefferson never lived to see the worst of it. Starting in about the mid-1800s, American beer has been defined by its dullness. Why? The answer lies in a combination of religious objections to alcohol, hordes of German immigrants, and a bunch of miners who just wanted to drink during their lunch break, says Ranjit Dighe, a professor of economics at the State University of New York at Oswego.

There are some amazing craft beers in America and elsewhere but the major brewery beer – Bud, Coors, Molson and the like – are quite simply not worth drinking.

Comedy Central:

On Jon’s last episode of The Daily Show, he revisits The Best F#@king News Team Ever, gets a send-off from his top political targets and says goodbye after 16 years as host.

In case you missed it.

I find most assembly lines mesmerizing. I’m completely addicted to the TV show “How it’s Made”. So any Youtube video that shows a process like this is a guaranteed view from me. This is different in that it is a homemade contraption and it is a wonder to behold. Not to mention the fact, this lucky guy has 11,000 marbles to play with.

The Washington Post:

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the first bomb exploded over Hiroshima killing, by some estimates, 140,000 people, and destroying 90 percent of the city. But near its hypocenter only one building was left standing.

Seventy years later, the Genbaku Dome — now known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial — is part of a very different city that’s home to 1.2 million residents and filled with skyscrapers, apartment buildings and streetcars.

Armed with archival photographs, Reuters photographer Issei Kato revisited some of the same locations destroyed 70 years ago in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On such a sombre day, it’s good to not only look back and remember what happened but also to look forward and see how the city has endured and prospered. The before and after pictures are truly heartening.

CNET:

Apple’s latest mobile OS is now on 85 percent of all iOS devices, according to Apple’s App Store Distribution page. That figure refers specifically to all iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches that visited Apple’s App Store on Monday, August 3.

And what about iOS rival Android? The latest flavor, namely Android Lollipop, is on just 18 percent of all devices running Google’s mobile OS, according to the latest Android Developers Dashboard.

I feel less smug about these adoption numbers than I feel sorry for the mess adoption is for Android users.

WIRED:

Motorcycles are not made for surfing. They do not float. They are not waterproof. All of which explains the biggest problem Robbie Maddison had when he tried to use one as a surfboard.

“We sank the motorcycle over a hundred times,” he says.

None of that stopped the Aussie stunt rider from combining his adult profession with his childhood passion to create Pipe Dream, a short video in which Maddison rides the wicked waves of Teahupo’o on a modified KTM 300 motocross machine.

First time I saw stills from the video, I thought it was pretty good photoshop work. Then I started watching the video and thought, that looks like fun. Then I saw him surf the waves of Teahupo’o and thought he was a crazy person.

The Wall Street Journal:

We don’t love paying through the nose for the ink, and the arrangement means that at the first sign of printer trouble, many of us just dump the thing and buy a new one.

Epson’s new move is a sly one. Rather than compete on price, the printer maker is dropping the cartridge issue entirely.

When you buy an EcoTank printer — for instance, the ET-2550 — you fill up its four-chambered reservoir with ink from plastic containers included with the printer. There’s a satisfying feeling of dumping all of that ink into the tubs. You then let the printer prime itself and your ink worries are over.

Fast forward two very print-productive years. You and your family have churned out more than 35 black-and-white and 60 color pages every week. Finally, you need more ink. Epson will sell you a whole set of replacement canisters for $52. That same amount of Epson ink, in XL cartridges, would cost more than 10 times as much.

I’m a big fan of my Epson R2000 photo printer but I dread using it knowing how much I’m going to be spending on ink. I don’t know if higher upfront costs will be a game changer but it’s good to see Epson (and undoubtedly other manufacturers) stepping up to change the economics of printing.

TidBITS:

Wired has reported on new research being presented at this week’s Black Hat security conference on a proof-of-concept Mac worm that could spread through the Mac’s firmware, rather than software. While Wired’s piece makes this sound like a super worm capable of leaping through air gaps and infecting the world’s Macs, the reality is more mundane. The research itself is excellent and fascinating work from Trammell Hudson and Xeno Kovah, and as always we hope Apple patches all the flaws quickly, but this isn’t something most Apple users need to lose any sleep over.

Here are the answers to your most pertinent questions about this vulnerability.

As always, Rich Mogull is the guy I trust the most for any Mac security issues. Rich’s level headed expertise is why I know the vast majority of the Tech Media’s reporting on these issues is always blown completely out of proportion to the threat. I’d encourage all of you to follow Rich on Twitter so that the next time this happens (and, because it’s the Tech Media, it will happen again), you’ll be able to confidently ignore the Chicken Little’s.

Vanity Fair:

Taylor Swift’s recent missive to Apple—the one that caused the tech behemoth to reverse course, once again demonstrating her world-beating pop power—came after some late-night soul searching, the singer tells Vanity Fair writer Josh Duboff, in the magazine’s September cover story.

“I wrote the letter at around four A.M.,” Swift says. “The contracts had just gone out to my friends, and one of them sent me a screenshot of one of them. I read the term ‘zero percent compensation to rights holders.’ Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll write a song and I can’t sleep until I finish it, and it was like that with the letter.”

As whiny as I find her music, this story shows a very self-aware young woman who knows what she wants.