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A fascinating piece by Mat Honan on a business that had big plans for journalism, but we’ll never see it.

This course is for Hendrix fans who want to learn his unique style of blues playing. Taking cues from Red House and Voodoo Chile Blues, this course will not disappoint.

Anthony Stauffer just released new guitar lessons teaching you all about Jimi Hendrix, one of the greatest guitarists to ever pick up the instrument.

Bryan Chaffin does a very good job on this piece. I especially like page 2, but it’s all worth a read.

Everything affects your tone when playing the guitar.

Macworld:

The first true automator for iOS, Workflow takes full advantage of Apple’s looser restrictions on sharing to bring new levels of interactivity and multitasking to our handheld devices. More versatile than the situational IFTTT and more powerful than even Launch Center Pro’s slick system of shortcuts, Workflow’s endlessly customizable actions integrate seamlessly into the apps you already use to help you work smarter, faster, and just plain better.

I have yet to try this app (not really the target customer), but if my Twitter feed is any indication, many people find it incredibly useful.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. halted online sales of its products in Russia due to “extreme” ruble fluctuations, showing how the currency’s swings are rippling out to international businesses.

The iPhone and iPad maker stopped sales from its Web store as Russia’s currency lost as much as 19 percent today.

Not good news for Russian Christmas shoppers, among others.

The impactful, full-bodied qualities of Marsala make for an elegant, grounded statement color when used on its own or as a strong accent to many other colors.

It’s a pleasing color.

Like most people these days, I demand quality from the products I purchase. I want quality design, functionality, and I want them to be built from quality materials so they last. I demand it. […]

Delivering a unanimous verdict today, the group said Apple’s iTunes 7.0, released in the fall of 2006, was a “genuine product improvement,” meaning that new features (though importantly increased security) were good for consumers. Plaintiffs in the case unsuccessfully argued that those features not only thwarted competition, but also made Apple’s products less useful since customers could not as easily use purchased music or jukebox software from other companies with the iPod.

Good. These stupid lawsuits have to stop.

Someone at Apple has a sense of humor this holiday season. iTunes on Monday released three curated lists of movies, TV shows and books in the categories: Pop Culture Junkies, Millennials, and Gadget, Gizmos & Geeks. Good stuff Apple.

Mashable:

Your tree has a complicated backstory, one that includes daredevil helicopter pilots, 18-hour days battling Oregon sleet and, of course, the fickle hibernation habits of squirrels.

Here is how (and where) an American Christmas tree comes to life.

We posted a story with video last year about the use of helicopters on these Oregon Christmas Tree farms.

Gedeon Maheux:

The following list was generated by a manual App Store (iPhone) search on Nov 15th, 2014 for the term “Twitter”. The official app from Twitter is naturally the first result, but the next actual Twitter client (Hootsuite) doesn’t appear on the list until #20 and the next one after that comes in at #62. Even the mega-popular Tweetbot isn’t returned in the results until position #81 and even then, the older v2 of Tweetbot (for iOS 6) comes first.

Where’s Twitterrific? Although it contains the word “Twitter” in the app’s name, Twitterrific isn’t seen in the list until you scroll all the way down to #100.

I’ve seen this many times, in particular when searching for podcasts and dozens of completely unrelated ones intrude on your search. Makes for a frustrating waste of time.

Doxie Go Wi-Fi is the tiny, rechargeable document and receipt scanner that scans anywhere — no computer required — then syncs wirelessly to your Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Doxie scans your paper: simply and automatically. Battery power, built-in Wi-Fi, and new SmartMemory let you scan anywhere, then tuck Doxie away when you’re not using it.

Doxie’s elegant Mac and iOS apps handle any workflow — save scans to your desktop, share with your favorite apps, or send to cloud services like Evernote and Dropbox. Doxie’s new open developer API lets you build Doxie support into your service, software, or personal paperless workflow.

The Loop readers get free U.S. shipping and Guaranteed Christmas Delivery for all orders placed through December 21st. Order your Doxie today and give the gift of paperless.

It’s beautiful. As someone who designs consumer electronics and watches, the more I looked at it the more impressed I was. It’s got Marc Newson’s fingerprints all over it.

It’s clearly something he designed rather than Jony Ive. It’s funny they announced he was working with them after the watch. But to me that was the Apple way of underhandedly giving him credit for the design without actually saying he designed it. But it seemed to me very Marc Newson.

A fascinating story.

Vox:

Some 60 years ago, during the era of McCarthyism, comic books became a threat. The panic culminated in a Senate hearing in 1954. This, of course, isn’t to say that McCarthyism and the comic book panic were comparable in their human toll. But they share the same symptoms of American fear and a harsh, reactive response to it.

What adults thought was best for children ended up censoring and dissolving away years of progress and artistry, as well as comics that challenged American views on gender and race. Consequently, that cemented the idea that this was a medium for kids — something that we’ve only recently started disbelieving.

Fascinating history of what comic books used to be and how we got to where we are now.

The helicopter shot makes it look insane. The GoPro shot had me tighten up every orifice in sympathy.

My thanks to Smile Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. PDFpen 2 is fully optimized for iOS 8 with an all new look and feel which runs on both iPad and iPhone. The enhanced toolbar and new editing bar make popular writing and highlighting features easy to access, with minimal taps. Import and export documents via iCloud Drive, making it easy to share cloud-based documents not just with the Mac, but with other apps on an iPad or iPhone. Use AirDrop to quickly send documents to other devices. PDFpen 2 supports palm and wrist protection when writing and highlighting. Documents can be secured with a password. Number pages automatically, including Bates numbering. All this and more make PDFpen 2 the perfect solution for all of your mobile PDF editing needs.

Atlas Obscura:

Located in Pittsburgh’s historic St. John the Baptist Church, a deconsecrated but still beautifully ornate building, the Church Brew Works has turned a former holy sanctuary into a hip brewery

When I lived in Pittsburgh, this church was my favorite place of worship.

Great collection of links. Not all of these clicked for me, but lots of them did.

Ann and Nancy Wilson are amazing.

Rick Mueller solicited comments from people on how important the Oxford Comma really is.

A 15 minute tutorial from my favorite video trainer, Kenny Gioia.

It’s amazing how much photos have changed over the years. At one time, they were a specific memory of a specific period in time, but these days we take pictures every second and upload them for everyone to see. You could argue that they are the same thing, but just more of them, but there was something different about pictures years ago.

I think Marcus Mariota has this one wrapped up.

I love compressors, but multibands are a bit more complicated. This is worth reading.

Panic announced on Twitter that Apple is allowing them to keep the feature they previously had to remove.

Differences in what they can do, differences in syntaxes, different technologies involved, the new and the deprecated, and browser support differences.

And sadly there is quite a bit of outdated information out there. Let’s see if we can sort it out.

It’s the outdated information that gets me sometimes.

Financial Times:

This year has seen Apple’s chief step out of the shadows of his predecessor and imprint the company with his own set of values and priorities: bringing in fresh blood, changing how it manages its cash pile, opening Apple up to greater collaboration and focusing more on social issues.

There’s no doubt that this is now “Tim Cook’s Apple”.

Wired:

Pre-game presentations have long been excuses to trot out special effects. Indoor pyrotechnics, giant inflatable helmets, live wild animals running the field, and bone-rattling sound systems have been around for years.Turning a hockey rink into a lake of fire? That’s new.

The tech behind all of this is pretty cool but it seems like pointless eye candy to me.

This is an interesting read. I’ll admit, I expected there to be more of a smoking gun in the story, but I can see why the DAs want Uber to stop saying they have the “safest rides on the road.”