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Priceonomics:

As helium supplies start to dwindle, the prices have already started to rise, and party balloons are taking a back-seat to the more serious applications. A hundred years down the line, a party balloon might be about as precious as a gold ring.

Despite the fact that science has known about the impending helium scarcity for decades, it’s only made the news in the past five years. Why that is has a lot to do with helium’s complicated political history in the United States.

What a fascinating story about an element most of us give no thought to unless we are sucking it in to make funny voices.

I have been reporting on Apple for more than 20 years now, and in all that time no product has had such an impact on my life as this little piece of hardware and software. I don’t say that for dramatic effect, it has had a profound effect on the way I live. As you will read later, this is the most personal review I have ever written. […]

LensProToGo:

As many of you may have heard, LensProToGo suffered a break-in at our Concord, MA location over the weekend of June 13-14 totaling just shy of $600,000 worth of gear stolen. We’ve taken a full inventory and this is the list of items that was taken. While this list is quite large, it does represent only a portion of our inventory, so we’re still able to handle customer orders with virtually no effect.

Please take a look at this list and be wary of any used camera items for sale in the coming months. Always ask to see serial numbers before purchasing.

The nice folks at LensProToGo (who I’ve rented from often) need your help. As with any purchase, always check the serial numbers and, if you are a photographer, be on the look out for “special deals” on eBay, Craigslist and other places on lenses. As you can see by the list, LensProToGo got ripped for a lot of lenses that will soon start showing up for sale.

CBC:

Cook had left his smartphone in a taxi and traced it electronically to an address on Highbury Avenue.

When he and a relative went to the address, he was confronted by three men in a car, London police Const. Ken Steeves told CBC News.

After a discussion about the phone, the men started to drive away and Cook dove onto the hood of the car. He was shot soon afterward.

We hear “heartwarming” stories of people tracking down their iPhones, confronting the bad guys, and getting them back all the time. Here’s the flip side. Please don’t do this. I promise your phone isn’t worth your life. Contact your local police if you’ve lost your phone and can track it to a specific location.

Great appreciation piece on Medium.

Finally, learning and practicing a new language is easier and more intuitive than ever before. Introducing HelloTalk, the language app where your teachers are native language speakers from around the world. You just pick the language you want to learn—there are over 100 from which to select—and almost instantaneously you’ll be in touch with native speakers of that language … and you’ll start learning and practicing immediately.

HelloTalk isn’t a course you strictly follow; rather, you learn and practice at your pace and in the manner that best meets the way you learn. Practice foreign languages with people around the world. Simultaneously speak and type the language you’re learning. Record your voice before speaking to your HelloTalk friends and compare your recording to standard pronunciations. Change your friends’ audio messages to text for better understanding, and receive help to improve your grammar. Easily translate whenever you don’t understand, and so much more.

With HelloTalk, you’ll discover learning a new language is fun … and fast. Download your copy today.

Download HelloTalk for iPhone

Download HelloTalk for Android


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The folksy roots, the founder breakups, the dysfunction — all those things made Twitter a very human and a much beloved service. It was a service everyone (especially those in the media) wanted to love — and yet it is 2015 and the narrative around the company has become negative and toxic. The more I read all these things about the company, the more I wonder — how did Twitter lose the plot, the narrative. Till not too long ago, the press was generally very kind to the company.

It’s very true, there’s been very little positive out of Twitter in a while.

I began using OS X El Capitan shortly after last week’s WWDC keynote when I met with Apple to talk about the latest release of the operating system. […]

iPhone Photography Award:

From intimate, thought-provoking moments to stunning, captivating scenes, this year’s iPhone Photography Award winners are nothing short of impressive.

The three Photographers of the Year Awards go to Michal Koralewski of Poland, David Craik of the United Kingdom and Yvonne Lu of the United States. Their photographs take full advantage of the iPhone to quietly capture their subjects without disturbing the atmosphere.

Always amazing to see what photographers can do with the iPhone. Inspires me to want to shoot more with it.

Re/code:

Here are the real numbers, according to Robert Kondrk, the Apple executive who negotiates music deals along with media boss Eddy Cue: In the U.S., Apple will pay music owners 71.5 percent of Apple Music’s subscription revenue. Outside the U.S., the number will fluctuate, but will average around 73 percent, he told Re/code in an interview. Executives at labels Apple is working with confirmed the figures.

Those totals include payments to the people who own the sound recordings Apple Music will play, as well as the people who own the publishing rights to songs’ underlying compositions. That doesn’t mean the money will necessarily go to the musicians who recorded or wrote the songs, since their payouts are governed by often-byzantine contracts with music labels and publishers.

No surprises here as the 70+% is pretty standard. What I’m curious to know is how much will those “basement musicians” Apple mentioned get? Apple talks of unsigned artists being able to get their music listened to on the service. If those artists get 70% of the revenue, it might generate significant money for them.

Mic:

The Internet has a wealth of concerts, but it can be next to impossible to wade through the options. Places like Netflix and Hulu carry the classics, like The Last Waltz and Gimme Shelter, while random YouTube pages carry snippets of concerts. But somewhere in the middle are hidden gems — complete nights from historic moments in music.

From the Beach Boys to Rage Against the Machine and B.B. King to Nirvana, here are eight historic shows available at your fingertips.

I am so watching the daylights out of that Rage Against The Machine concert right now.

I’d like to thank Microsoft for sponsoring The Loop this week. This year, Microsoft is making major investments in developer and cloud tools to move beyond Windows and bring great support to iOS developers and other popular platforms. As part of this focus, Microsoft is sponsoring Altconf this week and will be there to show you some of the cool new services and free tools to help you take your apps to the next level.

I also want to thank Microsoft for sponsoring the Beard Bash party on Monday June 8th. Life may run on code, but we all know developers run on beer.

If you cannot attend Altconf or the Beardbash, you can learn more about what is possible at http://AnyDevAnyApp.com.

I wonder if the 140 character limit on regular tweets is sacrosanct, or if its days are numbered, too.

Techcrunch:

After years of user-growth struggles, Twitter just announced that its CEO Dick Costolo has chosen to step down July 1, though he’ll remain on the board. Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey will be the interim CEO.

Dorsey will continue to be Square’s CEO, but will fill in for Costolo until Twitter finds a replacement. Dorsey was previously Twitter’s CEO before being forced out and replaced by co-founder Ev Williams in 2008. Dorsey became Twitter’s executive chairman in 2011 when Costolo became CEO.

Chaos is never good for a publicly traded company and Twitter has certainly had many ups and downs during Costolo’s tenure. Many hope the next CEO, who ever he or she may be, will finally give the company a direction both users and Wall St can look forward to.

Design Taxi:

To promote its newly announced music service, Apple has rolled out three new ads showing its product’s ubiquity.

Its first ad—titled ‘Apple Music—Worldwide’—features music as the go-to companion for every situation in life. From the routine daily commute to moments of sadness, Apple Music never fails you. The second spot gives you a glimpse of the past with the ‘History of Sound’, presenting Apple Music as the future of the music industry.

The final commercial delves into the features of Apple Music and how it houses all your favorite sounds.

Apple Music is available to users at the end of this month—let’s see if it is able to live up to its big promises as advertised.

I always love when Apple posts new ads. I especially love all the “ad experts” pontificating about them the next day.

Merlin and Jim talk about TV. Subscribe to this podcast Sponsors: Hover — Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. Use code GREENBOTTLE for 10% off. Harry’s — Go to Harrys.com and use the promo code … Continued

Apple kicked off its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday in San Francisco, Calif. While some of the presenters (not mentioning any names) weren’t up to the usual Apple polish, the company did introduce some nice updates.

The Verge:

On the sidelines of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, marketing SVP Phil Schiller has spoken to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber for a live episode of his The Talk Show podcast. The full interview hasn’t been posted yet, but it’ll be worth checking out for Apple fans when it is — Gruber asked Schiller about a few things that have become hot topics among the company’s community of users and developers.

Can’t wait to see the video. If Twitter is any indication, it was quite the surprise and quite the interview. Kudos to Gruber for scoring a big one.

Billboard:

Apple Music, which launches on June 30 with an arsenal of 30 million songs, has been in the works for more than a decade, says Iovine, who first started talking to the Cupertino-based giant on the heels of the iTunes launch in 2003. Now, it’s a reality, boasting on-demand streaming (with an offline component, to help stem the decline of downloads), a 24-hour human-curated radio station (helmed by former BBC DJ Zane Lowe) and a connect function that facilitates direct-to-fan engagement.

It’s a massive undertaking whose impact is sure to be felt almost instantaneously thanks to the 800 million credit cards Apple already has on file. With a click, users can sign up for $9.99 a month — or $14.99 for the family plan, which allows up to six accounts — price points that, Cue says, took much deliberation.

These interviews are always interesting not only for what they say but what they don’t say. Notwithstanding Iovine’s “unpracticed” appearance and Eddy Cue’s dancing during WWDC, these two guys are the brains and the engine behind the new service.

Apple:

Student Winners – Elementary Minute for iPhone, jump-O for iPhone

Design Award Winners – Shadowmatic, Metamorphabet, Robinhood, Affinity Designer, Crossy Road, Fantastical 2, Does not Commute, Vainglory, Pacemaker.

I always love this list because, if nothing else, the vast majority of these award winners are gorgeous looking apps.

ZDNet:

With iOS 9 Apple is making a direct play for Android users with an app to help them migrate their data and apps to the iPhone.

The new app, called ‘Move to iOS’ will be released this fall with iOS 9 and is one of two apps targeting the Android platform, the other being Apple Music.

According to Apple, the apps will allow Android users the ability to securely transfer “contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs and books” wirelessly to an iPhone.

Great move by Apple to make this process as easy, painless and efficient as possible.

Six colors:

Now that the main show is over, I’ve combed through Apple’s site and press releases to try and find more about those details that didn’t make the cut for the presentation, as well as those announcements that may have been glossed over.

Dan has a good overview of yesterday, recapping what was and wasn’t announced. He caught a bunch of little stuff I missed or that Apple didn’t even mention during the keynote.

Nieman Lab:

The big news — and pitched as one of the biggest new features in iOS 9 — is an app called News. It’s an awful lot like Flipboard — though the power of being installed on every iPhone and iPad is obviously huge.

The presentation features all the same sort of bells and whistles we’ve seen in Facebook’s Instant Articles — animations, swipe-able photo galleries, fluid movement. And it promises, like other aggregator apps, to get better with time, as it learns which sorts of articles you’re interested in.

Its importance remains to be seen. I don’t necessarily think “Apple just sherlock’ed Flipboard” but, depending on how news organizations take to this, it will be another medium to publish rich content on. I’m interested to see whether or not average people will be able to create “magazines” with these tools.

John Welch:

WEDR, and its DJs taught me things. Like what funk was. What soul was. Not the calm, whitewashed things you saw on TV when they trotted out Ray Charles for yet another rendering of “Georgia on My Mind” or “Hit The Road, Jack”. But the deep dirty funk. It’s where I first heard Prince, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and so many other artists.

But here’s the thing: WEDR and the DJs were the only way I was going to hear that. My friends were all into either Zeppelin & Pink Floyd, or Disco. From them, I’d have never heard this stuff.

My friend John Welch makes a great point about Apple Music and Beats 1. Like him, I’m interested, if not excited, by what Apple and their DJs come up with. Like John, I’m of an age when DJs mattered. Maybe Apple can bring that age back.

Ars Technica:

All of the Apple Watch’s third-party applications so far have used WatchKit, a small SDK that limits apps’ functionality and UI and restricts them from using all the watch’s underlying hardware. At its WWDC keynote today, Apple announced that it would be moving beyond WatchKit and giving its third-party developers a more capable, native SDK that can take advantage of more of the Apple Watch’s features.

With WatchOS 2 and the native SDK, third-party apps will be able to do more of the things that Apple’s first-party apps can do.

This is a really big deal, akin to the launch of the App store the year after the original iPhone launch. It’s going to make the Apple Watch app ecosystem positively explode.

Macworld:

On Monday morning at WWDC, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed new enhancements to iOS 9, calling it “the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.” Among the key features are a major Siri update, deep-dive transit Maps and a ton of useful user-experience improvements.

According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering who led the iOS presentation and demo, Apple wants to add “intelligence throughout the user experience.”

Watching the keynote, I thought the same thing – Siri will not only get more “intelligence” but, for me, a lot more functionality.

Re/code:

Apple today introduced the next version of its Mac operating system, OS X El Capitan, focusing on two key areas of improvement: Experience and performance.

Mac OS X El Capitan is available to developers today, and will be released to the public in the fall as a free download.

I’ll get it just for the cool “find my cursor” feature.

Apple:

WWDC15 is the epicenter of change. Experience the keynote live today at 10 a.m. PDT.

Apple has already begun posting photos from outside the Moscone Center.

This year, Microsoft is making major investments in developer and cloud tools to move beyond Windows and bring great support to iOS developers and other popular platforms. As part of this focus, Microsoft is sponsoring Altconf this week and will be there to show you some of the cool new services and free tools to help you take your apps to the next level.

I also want to thank Microsoft for sponsoring the Beard Bash party on Monday June 8th. Life may run on code, but we all know developers run on beer.

If you cannot attend Altconf or the Beardbash, you can learn more about what is possible at http://AnyDevAnyApp.com.

Mashable:

The day before Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), the company hosted a special orientation session for the recipients of its WWDC Scholarship Program — with a special surprise guest, CEO Tim Cook.

Cook, who surprised the scholarship winners by making an appearance at the orientation session. He looked at apps, talked to the winners and took selfies.

Good interview.