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Marco nailed this one.

Om Malik:

“Pico” is a prefix in the metric system denoting one-trillionth. It is also a small corner of the ever-growing web where I keep a record of my conversations with interesting people. Some are famous, some are young. Some are unknown, and some are wise and old. These conversations are not about technology. Instead, they are about transformation through technology as observed by those who are living through it.

Typically, these are the types of stories I enjoy reading the most.

The Essential Watermarking App for Professionals, Business and Personal Use. A new breed of iOS 8 app that works as a standalone app or photo editing extension. As an extension it can be used directly/quickly from within Apple’s Photos and other apps.

There’s versions for iPad, iPhone, Mac and other platforms too.

Algoriddim, creators of the world’s best selling DJ app with over 15 million downloads on iOS, has partnered with the AppStore and (RED) to bring you an exclusive (PRODUCT)RED version of djay. Available for a limited time only, djay 2 for iPhone and iPad contains a free (djay)RED skin as well as an exclusive (djay)RED sample pack available via In-App Purchase. From now through December 7, 100% of the proceeds when buying djay 2 or any of the (djay)RED In-App Purchases go to (RED)’s fight against AIDS.

Stand with Algoriddim, App Store, and (RED) to fight for an AIDS FREE GENERATION.

Get djay 2 on the App Store today: Mix Tracks. Save Lives.

Make your days more productive with this bundle of awesome Mac apps! Name your own price for Paperless, Data Backup 3 and Pixa, and if you pay more than the average price you’ll receive all the apps in the bundle plus an e-learning course that’ll teach you to master them all.

Looking at the page, the average price is pretty low for these 10 apps.

Bono was recuperating from his bike accident, so he got Chris Martin, Carrie Underwood, Kanye West, Bruce Springsteen, and Bill Clinton to fill in. Not too shabby. The band was brilliant.

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Issue 30 of The Loop Magazine posted yesterday on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. We have nine stories available in the latest release, including a couple on iTunes Festival London that took place in September; Nathan Barham looks at tools for education; Johannes Zhou tells us what memory athletes do; Darren Murph talks about what he learned from buying his mother an iPhone; Rob Annese looks at his experience being an iPhone convert; Brock Winstead looks at real estate and Zillow; Alex Davies delves into Google search and advertising; and finally Darren Murph takes us on vacation… for a tenth of the price it would normally cost in “Travel Hacking.”

The Loop Magazine cost $1.99 per month and you get about nine articles to read. There is a preview of each article in this month’s issue, so you can try before you buy.

Tekrevue:

So, what does this mean? At best, it means only very modest improvements for some models, certainly less than most would expect from a system as old as the 2012 Mac mini. At worst, it means a dramatic decrease in performance, with some 2012 configurations absolutely destroying their 2014 counterparts in multi-core workflows.

The good, bad and downright ugly of the latest Mac mini. Not a machine I have a lot of faith in recommending.

The Independent:

Turn off the spine-tingling music and forget everything you thought you knew about this solitary, “mindless killing machine”. Sharks have individual personalities. They socialise, choose best friends and create social networks of unusual complexity. They can be trained by humans to complete simple tasks, much more quickly than rabbits or cats, for instance, and retain the knowledge for much longer.

Sharks also teach each other new tricks: how to find food, identify predators and charm mates. Like sea turtles, some travel huge distances to return to their own birthplace, again and again, to give birth themselves. Most don’t need to swim continuously to survive. And rather than being near-blind and reliant on smell, which is the general perception, they in fact have advanced sight. They feel pain. And the boldest sharks face a greater risk of dying before adulthood.

Why does any of this matter? Well, we’re killing about 100 million sharks every year, 11,000 an hour.

Like many of us, I have been fascinated by sharks since first seeing the movie “Jaws” as a kid. But, far from giving me nightmares, it instilled a lifelong fascination with these amazing animals.

Animagraffs:

Speakers push and pull surrounding air molecules in waves that the human ear interprets as sound. You could even say that hearing is movement detection. So what makes a speaker travel back and forth at just the right rate and distance, and how does that make sound?

I thought I knew how speakers worked. After watching this cool web page, I realized I had no clue how speakers worked.

More tech deals for today. Go get ’em.

The Roosevelts:

2014 is coming to an end and if you didn’t get all the majestic locations checked off your travel bucket list this year we have 50 photos that inspired awe and wonderment in 2014.

Spectacular images showing the awesome beauty of our planet.

The Passion of Former Days:

A terrific set of cigarette cards depicting a flight from London to Amsterdam in the early days of commercial air travel. The images (each “from an official photograph supplied by Imperial Airways”) are accompanied by text detailing “our” flight, from check-in and take-off, to views over the Channel, France, and Brussels (where we land for lunch), to the final landing in Amsterdam.

I’ve included the backs with the text, as the little details are fascinating insights into a time when planes held “as many as” 20 passengers, reached cruising altitudes of 3,000 feet, and got from London to Brussels in “only” two and a half hours.

For the vast majority of us, flying is an awful experience but, in the 1920’s, if you could afford it, flying was a lot more genteel. The descriptions on the backs of these cigarette cards are also wonderful insights in to how writing has evolved and how information was presented to customers of the day.

Oregon Live:

With emotions running high as speakers were addressing the crowd, he noticed a young man with tears in his eyes holding a “Free Hugs” sign among a group of people.

After talking to Devonte about such things as school, art and life, Barnum said he pointed to the sign and asked, “Do I get one of those?”

I’d seen the picture all over but the stories of the event and the people behind it, in particular Devonte, are amazing. Don’t read without a tissue or two handy.

The New York Times:

Thanksgiving weekend in 1990, I spent two hours at the loneliest place in the world for an obscure novelist — the book-signing table at a Waldenbooks in a suburban New Jersey mall.

I sat at the table smiling like a game show host. Store patrons scurried past me, doing all they could to avoid eye contact. I kept smiling. I straightened out my pile of free bookmarks for the umpteenth time, though so far none had been taken.

A lovely story about perspective.

Jim and Shawn talk about trading in your iPhone, Tim Cook, Google replacements, AC/DC, Rush and The Tragically Hip!

Sponsored by Audible (Visit the link to get a free audiobook of your choice and a free 30-day trial membership)!

My thanks to Pad and Quill for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. I have one of these bags and I love it.

Pad and Quill, a Minneapolis based company, began as an idea on a napkin in 2010. Starting with 4 prototypes, a barter to paint our web designers deck and a Paypal account to track orders, Brian and Kari began shipping cases from their basement and since they have grown to a business selling tens of thousands of unique hand crafted products a year.

Initially riding the Apple iOS wave, Brian and Kari (Mr and Mrs PQ) sought to bring to market iPhone and iPad cases crafted from organic materials such as leather, Baltic birch wood and buckram linen book cloth. Over time, the celebration of the craftsman, the accentuation of natural beauty and the delight of their customers solidified as the core values of the company, driving the creation of an expanded line of iPhone cases, iPad cases, sleeves, and tech bags.

With each product being constructed by hand, by craftsmen and women skilled in the century old trades of woodworking, bookbinding, and leather craft every customer receives a product that was essentially made for them. While they’ve come a long way from passing packages to the mail guy through their basement window, both Brian and his wife Kari enjoy the day to day interactions with their customers and dreaming up new ideas for future hand crafted products.

New York Times:

Want the best deals on electronics, but don’t feel like camping out for two weeks in front of Best Buy? Stay home on Friday, but don’t wait too long after that to shop online.

The Wirecutter:

The holiday season is approaching once again, and that screaming you hear is the sound of Internet users everywhere becoming inundated with holiday “deals.” Thousands of deals. Tens of thousands of deals. And, as you may know from experience, most of those deals don’t actually result in any kind of savings.

In fact, they are often a waste of money due to marketing trickery or just plain bad products. In fact, according to our research so far only 0.6% of the 42,000 deals we’ve studied since early November are actually a good deal on a good piece of gear. Our attitude is dictated by a general idea: if we wouldn’t buy it ourselves or tell our friends and family to do so, we won’t list it. If the price or the item itself is not good, we won’t list it.

This time of year, we are inundated by “deals”. The folks at The Wirecutter do a great job of separating the wheat from the chaff. It’s also a great list if you are looking for gift ideas.

Vox:

I write about economics for a living, so I understand concepts of deadweight loss and depreciation and inefficiency.

That said, I still ask my parents for gift cards for Christmas every year. And I buy them for people, too.

I know this is a sacrilege, and you might, too — there are all sorts of articles out there about how gift cards are sincerely a terrible, horrible gift. And yet I keep wanting them. It could be because I’m just a bad decision-maker, but I think there are excellent reasons to get a person a gift card … provided you buy it for the right kind of person.

I think gift cards can have their place for certain people. Do you give gift cards? Do you like to get them?

For those who celebrate Thanksgiving today, here’s hoping you travel safe, end someplace warm, and have a wonderful day.

Vanity Fair:

I am afraid of the cops. Absolutely petrified of the cops. Now understand, I’ve never been arrested or held for questioning. I’ve never been told that I “fit the description.” But that doesn’t change a thing. I am afraid of cops the way that spiders are afraid of boots. You’re walking along, minding your own business, and SQUISH! You are dead.

Simply put, I am afraid of the cops because I am black.

I’m not as Black as Bell but I am the same height and weight and I know the feelings he describes.

Mental Floss:

What do Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, Toy Story, Reservoir Dogs, Titanic, Anchorman, 22 Jump Street, and more than 200 other films and TV shows have in common? Not much besides the one and only Wilhelm Scream.

The so-called Wilhelm Scream is the holy grail of movie geek sound effects, a throwaway sound bite that had inauspicious beginnings and was revived in the 1970s and made into the best movie in-joke ever.

Once you recognize the scream, you’ll be amazed at how many movies use it.

The opt-out feature, available on both iOS and Android, is a periodically updated list of the apps on your phone, which Twitter says it will use to serve you a more “tailored experience,” including “who to follow” suggestions, relevant tweets, and other content it adds to your timeline, as well as its promoted content.

Um, no thanks.

AMPLIFi TT is a tabletop multi-effect that transforms any room into a jam space so you can play, practice and record guitar more easily than ever. Launch the AMPLIFi Remote app and start jamming to the music you love—in your home, office, dorm room or anywhere in between.

This looks like another great product from Line 6. It’s compatible with the Mac and iOS and outputs to any sound system.

A great article from Om Malik on Silicon Valley.

Twitter:

Starting today (in the U.S. only), we’re beginning to test a new way for advertisers to connect with consumers on Twitter and convert them to loyal customers in their stores, on their websites and in their apps. This feature, Twitter Offers, enables advertisers to create card-linked promotions and share them directly with Twitter users.

There is zero chance I would ever use this. Anyone else interested in giving your credit card info to Twitter?

iMore:

AC/DC’s new album is coming out next week, but you can listen to it now for free through iTunes. Rock or Bust, the fifteenth studio album from the group, can be streamed in its entirety through the iTunes Store and iTunes Radio.

The album has 11 new tracks and clocks in at a little more than half an hour and you can pre-order the album.

Listening to AC/DC brings me back to memories of junior high and high school.

Blackberry:

Trade in your iPhone 6 to a Passport and BlackBerry will give you up to $400 in trade-in value, plus an extra $150 “top up” for U.S. residents.

They’re not paying enough.

Nerdwallet:

Each year, millions of Americans head for retail stores to take part in that famed post-Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza—Black Friday—with some even cutting their holiday short to get a jump on the seasonal deals.

Maybe they shouldn’t bother.

As always, shop carefully and shop smart this holiday season.