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What if you could get 5% of your day back? What would you do?

You already have enough work to do today and shouldn’t have to waste time looking for the things you need to do your job.

Igloo makes it easy to find what you need, when you need it. And it’s not just for locating your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It also helps you find experts, talk about problems and share content with your team. So stop digging through your inbox for that file from 3 months back and give yourself the tools you need to do your best work.

Try it yourself or send your IT guy to investigate Igloo, an intranet you’ll actually like.

Engadget:

Were you panicking at the thought of Twitter messing with your timeline order? Were you declaring #RIPTwitter and getting ready to move to Peach? Relax. Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has piped up to say that there’s no truth to the rumors of a Facebook-like feed arriving next week.

“Hello Twitter! Regarding #RIPTwitter: I want you all to know we’re always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week.” said Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO on Twitter.

As usual, Twitter lost its collective mind over this. But Twitter stepped up and squashed the rumor. Now we can all go back to bitching about something else.

Ars Technica:

No matter your edition or specific RPG of choice, today D&D continues to be the measuring stick by which other pen-and-paper games are judged, be it on sales, popularity, or even complexity. For many gamers over the course of the game’s existence, D&D has been the entry point into role-playing which sparks a lifetime of storytelling and adventure.

So, with more than a year behind it, how does the newest edition of D&D hold up for newbies and hardcore fans alike?

I’m tempted to find a game to play this latest edition but I’m afraid the game won’t be as fun in middle age as it was in high school and college. I think I’ll leave my fond memories of playing intact.

The Daily Dot:

A new study of the leading fitness trackers on the market found that most of these devices leak your data to a far wider audience than you might imagine—and, in some cases, allow others to alter your information.

The study found that, in every case save for the Apple device, the wearables emitted a unique Bluetooth identifier that allowed a third-party to track the device’s movement over time if the device was not actively paired with another device.

The researchers did not find any security holes in Apple’s signature wearable.

This will only get worse. As the Internet of Things becomes more prevalent, it will become even more obvious that security of our data is, at best, a secondary issue to many manufacturers. It becomes of even greater concern as our devices start to collect significant health data.

Slate:

Apple doesn’t have to leave Touch ID security this way. It could detect hardware changes and require extensive user reauthentication. It could offer third parties some type of parts-vetting process. It could give customers more leeway to choose what risks they want to take. Instead, Error 53 is excessively paternalistic. It’s good to help protect consumers by building in precautions and encouraging the use of high-quality parts, but Apple isn’t a parent. It shouldn’t literally take customer’s phones away if they do something it doesn’t like.

Like the writer, I get why Apple does this but, as seems typical for the company, they lack subtlety in their implementation. The other issue is, while almost anyone can buy an iPhone, not everyone lives conveniently close to an Apple Authorized Repair Facility.

Thanks to ExpanDrive for sponsoring The Loop this week.

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I’ve been very vocal about the problems I’ve had with Apple Music since it was released, but the service has improved quite a bit over the last couple of months, so I should be just as vocal about that. One of the more significant improvements I’ve found is with Apple’s built-in radio stations. In fact, it’s changed how I listen to music. […]

Vulture:

There are few movies as quotable as the 1980 disaster-movie parody Airplane! — and of the movie’s many memorable gags, arguably the most enduring is the moment when reluctant pilot Ted Striker (Robert Hays) tells Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen), “Surely you can’t be serious,” and Rumack replies, “I am serious — and don’t call me Shirley.”

As part of our weeklong 100 Jokes That Shaped Comedy series, we dug into the origins and execution of that exchange — as well as the overall comedic mechanics of Airplane! — with the trio who wrote and directed the film, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker.

Airplane! is one of the funniest, silliest movies I’ve ever seen, and as enjoyable now as when I first saw it as a kid. I remember hearing that line for the first time and using it in real life millions of times since. One of the funniest lines ever uttered in a movie.

Really, Tesla? You cancelled his car order? Both sides should be embarrassed by this back and forth.

The Verge:

…this video from the show’s associate director Carrie Havel shows you a small slice of the action, with Havel coordinating the live footage — singing along to “Great Lightning,” but with all the lyrics replaced with camera numbers.

It just goes to show that when it comes to live performances, the choreography behind the scenes is usually as impressive as what’s on stage.

This behind the scenes stuff is fascinating. You can’t begin to imagine the work that goes into a production like this and then to add to the pressure, they’re doing it live. Incredible work.

Walt Mossberg wrote this morning that Apple’s apps need work. He’s absolutely right. […]

NASDAQ:

After dipping its toes into brick-and-mortar retailing last year with its first physical bookstore, online giant Amazon.com Inc. is poised to dive into the deep end.

The Seattle company plans to open as many as 400 bookstores, Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive of mall operator General Growth Properties Inc., said on an earnings call on Tuesday.

While nothing official has been announced by Amazon yet, if true, this seems like a bit of a head scratcher. After all, Amazon has been the prime suspect in the decline of traditional bookstores. But the best part of this story is the line, “Physical stores would give Amazon customers a place to leaf through books before buying them.” You don’t say. What a clever idea.

Re/code:

Mophie, the accessory maker best known for its iPhone battery cases, is being bought for at least $100 million by rival Zagg.Zagg CEO Randy Hales said in a statement that the deal creates “numerous opportunities” to boost profits and revenues by combining the two companies’ strengths and distribution networks. Mophie CEO Daniel Huang and operating chief Shawn Dougherty will continue in their current roles, reporting to Hales. The deal, approved by both boards, should close later in the first quarter.

I’ve always been a fan of the Mophie products. I met their people several times at Macworld Expos and really liked them. Hope this works out well for all involved.

BBEdit is the leading professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh. Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. An intelligent interface provides easy access to BBEdit’s best-of-class features, including grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, project definition tools, function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages, code folding, FTP and SFTP open and save, AppleScript, Mac OS X Unix scripting support, text and code completion, and of course a complete set of robust HTML markup tools.

I’ve been using BBEdit for 20 years—I love this app.

Introduced in 1975, the Marshall JMP 2203 amplifier ushered in a new era of Marshall rock dominance. The JMP 2203 — which became the JCM800 in 1981 — offered varying degrees of intense, modern-sounding crunch and bold clean tones. Over the ensuing decades, the 2203 became a go-to for artists ranging from Jeff Beck and Andy Summers, to Tom Morello, Judas Priest, Slayer, and the Pixies’ Joey Santiago.

This was announced at NAMM and released today. You know I’m downloading this classic amp. There are pictures and video of the amp in action at Universal Audio’s Web site.

The Daily Dot:

Upwards of 360 million photos are uploaded every day to Facebook. But are you still posting pics like it’s 2006?

From creating a disappearing profile photo to stopping the Facebook app altering your images when you upload them, here are eight pro tips you seriously need to know.

I don’t post a lot of pictures on Facebook but I know lots of people do. There are some good tips here regarding privacy, ideal dimensions, filters and auto-enhancing.

Viljo Marrandi:

Our owner and operator, Viljo Marrandi, has been doing handwork since childhood, growing up the son of a carpenter and wood carver. Beginning with a one week class taught by master engraver, Sam Alfano, in Antwerp, Belgium, Viljo was fascinated with the art. After practicing his craft for several years, Viljo received private lessons from Scott Pilkington, another renowned engraver and custom crafter, and honed his skills at English scroll with engraver Simon Lytton.

Viljo named his company, “Bottega Marrandi,” the word “Bottega” meaning “Workshop” in Italian. So welcome to his workshop, we think you will love it.

Check out the pictures of the Apple Watch engravings. If you’re looking to really personalize your Watch, these designs would be amazing. No idea about costs – I have neither money nor an Apple Watch. Thanks to my friend George Canellis for the link.

Copy:

We know this comes as disappointing news to our users, but rest assured that we will do everything we can to take care of each of you in the manner for which Barracuda is known. We have partnered with Mover to make migrating your data to another service as easy as possible and have created a step by step guide that walks you through the process of moving your data to a local hard drive or another cloud storage solution.

Copy was used by a lot of people when it initially came out as a back up to or replacement for Dropbox. They gave new users a lot of free data storage – I had 75GB. It goes without saying, that was unsustainable. They have included an FAQ on how to move your files but it’s easy enough to just download them to your desktop for storage elsewhere.

CNET:

At the heart of the film, acclaimed British actor Hardy plays twin brothers Reggie and Ronnie Kray, notorious real-life gangsters who ruled the London underworld in the 1960s by killing and robbing, while also rubbing shoulders with celebrities in the nightclubs they owned. Although the film’s story could be more focused, Hardy is captivating — and justly award-winning — in the twin roles.

“I read the script as if it was going to be two actors playing Reggie and Ronnie,” said Pope. “It came as a huge surprise to me that they had signed Tom Hardy up to play both roles! From being a fairly straightforward narrative, it turned into an extremely technically challenging production.”

I’ve seen this film and the performance by Hardy is made all the more incredible by the visual effects.

Another amazing mash up. The editing skills of these guys are incredible. And the addition of the “Uptown Funk” song is brilliant.

Wired:

Reese is just the sixth person to hold a solo record for the famed “Cannonball Run.” Solo, because he did it on a motorcycle, with no one to take the wheel to give him a break or relieve the physical toll of spending serious time on a bike.

No one could help him stay awake and upright on the bike, but he did have lots of help. “I don’t think one guy could throw a leg over a motorcycle and do something like this,” Reese says. A dozen groups of safety teams spread out along the route to monitor road conditions, keep him abreast of weather changes, and to look out for cops. That last point is important: Reese averaged 73 mph on the whole trip, and periodically topped 110, so getting pulled over was a constant risk with serious repercussions.

As a motorcyclist, I think this is an amazing if utterly insane thing to do. I once interviewed John Ryan, a well known long distance rider, who had ridden solo from the northwestern tip of North American down to the southeastern tip of the continent in only 86 hours and 31 minutes – that’s 5,645 miles in a little over three and a half days. The longest I’ve ever ridden in one day was 800 miles (12 hours in the saddle) and afterwards I thought I’d never want to ride a motorcycle ever again.

Vulture:

A joke, as defined by this list, is a discrete moment of comedy, whether from stand-up, a sketch, an album, a movie, or a TV show.

For clarity’s sake, we’ve established certain ground rules for inclusion. First, we decided early on that these jokes needed to be performed and recorded at some point. Second, with apologies to Monty Python, whose influence on contemporary comedy is tremendous and undeniable, we focused only on American humor. Third, we only included one joke per comedian. And fourth, the list doesn’t include comedy that we ultimately felt was bad, harmful, or retrograde.

As with most lists, there will always be disagreements and even with the caveats, this list doesn’t seem as funny as you would have hoped it would be. But there are still some great, and some even could be considered important, moments included.

Native access to cloud storage without sync?

ExpanDrive is a virtual drive that connects to cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google, Box, OneDrive, Amazon, SFTP and more. Access and manage files within Finder or edit them using your favorite apps like Photoshop or Sublime Text.

Save 20% today using the coupon LOOP20.

Jim and Merlin talk about the highlights from NAMM, Sherlocking, and the blues.

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links

• Best of Delta Blues
• 8 Companies Apple is Screwing Over with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite | Digital Trends
• WWDC 2014 Wrap Up, Sherlock All The Things Edition | AppleTalk
• Karelia Software – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Emulsional Rescue: Revealing ‘The Godfather’ (Video 2008) – IMDb
• Emulsional Rescue: The Godfather Restoration Documentary – YouTube
• Postmates On-Demand Delivery
• Chef Chu’s Delivery in Los Altos | Postmates
• Jeff Baxter – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Crossroads (1986) – IMDb
• Resolv | Samson Technologies
• Robert Johnson – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Master of Reality – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Macstories:

If you want to drive an average tech nerd crazy, try to talk about email clients.

Despite its archaic nature and stale protocols, email works – it’s the closest thing to a common standard for digital communication we have. Messaging services may rise and grow and fall and shut down, but email will always be there, humbly humming along, hoarding thousands of unread messages in your inbox. You have to believe that, if this planet were to end tomorrow, cockroaches and IMAP would survive it.

I’ve been trying Airmail for the past couple of months, and it brings some unique features and options to the table, but, as usual, the road ahead is going to be long.

I consider myself an email power user (I get approx 2000 emails/day) and there is no way I would try and deal with that many emails on the iPhone or even an iPad.

Time:

Following last year’s Shot on iPhone 6 campaign, Apple is bringing back the concept for the iPhone 6s.

The new ad campaign features 53 images from 41 amateurs and professional photographers from around the world.

While the previous campaign included a variety of photographic subjects – from landscapes to extreme close-ups – this time, Apple has put the focus on portraits, most of them photographed in subtle, everyday moments.

As someone who teaches beginners how to take better photographs no matter what camera they have, I love this campaign and have used past iterations to show students what kind of amazing images you can create with “just” an iPhone.

Techinsider:

On Monday, the NHL will release NHL.TV, a new app that allows hockey fans to watch live, out-of-market hockey games, keep up with their favorite teams, and more.

NHL.TV was built by MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), major league baseball’s tech division. It’s the same company that handles streaming video for HBO Now, the WWE, the MLB, and many others.

I checked out the app on Monday night. I’m not even a hockey fan, but what immediately piqued my interest was the new mosaic view, which allows you to watch as as many as six HD video feeds at a time. It only works on some games for now, but when it does work, it’s an awesome way to watch a hockey game.

I’ve seen some hockey fans complaining about this app (one of the issues is you can’t watch a replay of a game without seeing highlight descriptions first) but this is certainly the future for sports apps. And for sports information junkies, it’s going to get even better.

TidBITS:

Super Bowl 50 (yes, 50 and not L, because the NFL has switched from Roman to Arabic numerals) will take place 7 February 2016 at 6:30 PM EST. If you want to watch the showdown between the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos, but don’t have traditional TV service, the good news is that CBS will be streaming the game for free to viewers in the United States.

Here’s how to stream the game on any of your Apple devices:

If for some reason you can’t be in front of a TV this coming Sunday, there are still ways for sports fans to see The Big Game.

Reuters:

The comments from Porsche Chief Executive Oliver Blume show that some car makers believe their drivers want to remain firmly in control at the wheel.

“One wants to drive a Porsche by oneself,” Blume said in an interview with regional newspaper Westfalen-Blatt published on Monday.

“An iPhone belongs in your pocket, not on the road,” Blume added, saying that Porsche did not need to team up with any big technology companies.

Even though some Porsches do come equipped with Apple’s CarPlay, it makes corporate sense to take this line. Besides, why would you buy a sports car only to let a computer have all the fun?

Outdoor Hub:

Wildlife experts advise that if you run across a moose on a trail in the winter, it may be prudent to turn around and leave. Just like you, moose would rather walk on trails than sink their legs into deep snow. Whatever else you do, don’t approach the moose or try to push it off the trail. Moose can be aggressive animals, especially when they are already tired. As you can see in the video, this moose decided to speed through a patch of snow rather than confront the skiers.

I’ve encountered a couple of moose in my life and they are gigantic, stupid and therefore terrifying animals. Never get into a confrontation with them. As this video shows, you will lose. I find it safer just to not go into the woods.