Mobile phone analysts said that, while packed full of hundreds of features and many of the latest hardware specs, there is little in the Note 4 to excite new users.
Jokes aside, this is a serious issue for Samsung, and one that couldn’t come at a better time for Apple. With disappointing sales of the Galaxy S5, the last thing Samsung needed was another failure, especially with Apple announcing new products next week. It certainly doesn’t sound like the Note 4 will be a blockbuster success.
Netflix speeds became so slow in December 2013 and January 2014 that customers grew irate, Netflix said in its petition. Calls made to Netflix’s customer support center about slow-loading videos more than quadrupled during those months.
It’s sad when people are forced to cancel their subscription to Netflix because the Comcast speeds were so slow. No wonder Netflix decided to pay Comcast; they really had no other choice.
I need one of these.
BoingBoing:
Twitter opened its analytics platform to every user on August 27, allowing all of us — not just verified users and those with advertising accounts — to track how many people viewed and acted upon our tweets. But the “Followers” section, revealing demographics, provoked the most discussion. Alongside breakdowns in followers’ interests and location is a gender bar that splits followers into male and female.How can Twitter offer this information when it doesn’t ask for you to indicate a gender when you sign up for an account?
My Twitter account is 86% male and 14% female. But how does Twitter deal with the (not insignificant) percentage of folks who don’t fall under traditional genera roles?
This is remarkable to watch. Unlike traditional “pub pool”, Snooker play is very specific – you have to sink a red ball and then a coloured one and then a red and so on. In a perfect game, you sink a red then the black, then a red then the black until all the reds are gone. Then you sink the colored balls in order. A perfect game in Snooker is an example of amazing ball control and skill.
I spent an hour on Sunday speaking with Matt Dusenbury and Chris Domico about Web publishing and a few other topics.
Whereas the prior album “Apocalyptic Love” was recorded live with virtually no overdubs, “World on Fire” is a layered slab of Marshall riffs, acoustic and electric 12-strings and even a rare slide performance. On songs like the title track, “Stone Blind” and “Too Far Gone,” Slash brings down the hammer with huge guitar riffs while on “Bent to Fly” and “Battleground” he picks clean guitars over the most haunting melodies Kennedy has ever sung.
I love that Slash is willing to try anything to make a great song. He is a phenomenal guitar player, but he’s also an incredible songwriter.
There is a lot more to the new icons than just a fresh coat of paint — the visual language extends far beyond just the gradients.
Fascinating article by Nick Keppol as he takes an in-depth look at Apple’s new OS X icons.
KOMPLETE KONTROL S-Series keyboards unite the world of KOMPLETE software with a perfectly-integrated and luxurious hardware controller. Built to harness the full potential of the brand-new KOMPLETE 10 and KOMPLETE 10 ULTIMATE, these keyboards offer pure creative flow and a whole new way to play KOMPLETE. This is truly the komplete instrument – available October 1, pre-order now.
Native Instruments continues to push digital software and hardware forward.
This is Colossal:
Over the last three months photographer Thomas Herbrich snapped some 100,000 individual photographs of smoke, looking for unexpected anamalies and fortuitous coincidences where familiar shapes emerged.It’s fascinating to see how the brain tries to create order out of chaos, just like looking up at the clouds, suddenly familiar patterns seem to stand out: faces, hands, or scrolls of paper.
He’s created some absolutely beautiful images.
Re/code:
Apple just issued a statement on the disclosure of celebrity photos said to have come from its iCloud storage service.“We wanted to provide an update to our investigation into the theft of photos of certain celebrities. When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilized Apple’s engineers to discover the source.”
Apple very specifically pointed out in their statement to media outlets that “None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud or Find my iPhone.”
Gigaom:
An eye doctor says he’s recently seen a few 35-year-old patients whose lenses, which are typically clear all the way up until around age 40, are so cloudy they resemble 75-year-olds’. A sleep doctor says kids as young as toddlers are suffering from chronic insomnia, which in turn affects their behavior and performance at school and daycare. A scientist finds that women who work night shifts are twice as likely to develop breast cancer than those who sleep at night.What do all these anecdotes have in common? Nighttime exposure to the blue light emanating from our screens.
Considering I’ve spent the last 20 years staring at a computer screen for 10 hours a day, I read this article with great interest and a lot of worry.
BlackBerry’s still in business? That’s so cute.
AV Club:
Star Trek is more than pop culture; it’s 20th century mythology with its own complicated mythos. “Beam me up” and “live long and prosper” may have invaded the cultural lexicon, but Star Trek is particularly intimidating for the uninitiated. Where to start and what to skip are up for debate even among the most hardcore Trekkies and Trekkers (the fandom can’t even decide on a name for itself).
I’m sure there’s little in this guide for the Star Trek fans reading this but if you know of someone who has just arrived on our planet, this is a helpful primer.
Vox:
Today is the anniversary of noteworthy event. Exactly 100 years ago — on September 1, 1914 — the passenger pigeon was driven to extinction.You may not have heard of this species. But there were once incomprehensibly huge numbers of these birds. When Europeans first arrived to North America, there were somewhere between three and five billion of them in existence. (In comparison, there are now around 10.8 million common pigeons on the continent today.) At the time, they were probably the most numerous bird species on the planet.
Kind of scary to think that, if we can kill off a population of this size in a short period of time, what other damage can we do to the other species on our planet?
Re/code:
Apple said it was “actively investigating” the violation of several of its iCloud accounts, in which revealing photos and videos of prominent Hollywood actresses were taken and posted all over the Web.“We take user privacy very seriously and are actively investigating this report,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.
To quote Penn Jillette, the magician: “Anyone has the right to take all the pictures they want, naked or otherwise and unless they want me to see them, I have no right to see them.”
Apple announced on Monday that Plácido Domingo will be the closing act for iTunes Festival London. Apple’s choice of Domingo to close out the festival shows the true diversity of iTunes Festival with headliners ranging from Rock, Electronic, and Opera/Classical. […]
BBC:
An American academic is creating a searchable database of 12 million historic copyright-free images.Kalev Leetaru has already uploaded 2.6 million pictures to Flickr, which are searchable thanks to tags that have been automatically added.
The photos and drawings are sourced from more than 600 million library book pages scanned in by the Internet Archive organisation.
Do not go to the linked Flickr page unless you have a lot of time on your hands. I just lost an hour of my life to it.
The Guardian:
Apple has tightened its privacy rules relating to health apps ahead of next month’s product launch, which is expected to see the unveiling of an updated iPhone and could include new wearable technology.The technology firm has told developers that their apps, which would use Apple’s “HealthKit” platform on the forthcoming products, must not sell any personal data they gather to advertisers. The move could stave off concerns users might have around privacy as Apple seeks to move into the health data business.
This is one of the ways and reasons why Apple has a leg up on other developers. While I wouldn’t trust them implicitly, I certainly trust them to take care of my data more than any other technology company.
Wired:
When you drop $3 million on a special-edition Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse, you want everything to be perfect. That’s why, before it leaves the factory, Bugatti wraps the car more carefully than royal nurses swaddle the future King George.
Is it just me or does that engine sound awful?
My thanks to Creative Labs for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. The Sound Blaster Roar is the epitome of audio quality, features and great looks combined into one device.
Musicality, accurate timbre, tonality, with deep, tight bass within a portable Bluetooth wireless speaker shouldn’t be a pipe dream. Creative Labs boasts of defying these laws of acoustic engineering with their Sound Blaster Roar.
Through their innovative acoustic chamber design with an impressive 5-driver speaker setup consisting of 2 amplifiers and 1 built-in subwoofer, the Roar proves that it is possible to have powerful, balanced, and well-defined sound with heart-thumping bass from a device no larger than a booklet. All this, without sacrificing battery performance.
Not just a wireless speaker, the Roar also comes integrated with a whole host of useful features:
The #1 Amazon bestselling Sound Blaster Roar has received consistent 5-star reviews on Amazon since its launch. Now available, at an attractive price of $149.99 via Creative.com and Amazon.com.
Rich Tozzoli has some great advice on ways to make your acoustic guitars stand out in the mix of a song. He doesn’t just get into panning, but also talks about when to record as well. For instance, he says to record the acoustic part as soon as you’re done with the electric guitar recording. Smart piece of advice simple because you’re going to play it the same way, capturing the little nuances in the strumming.
Polygon:
After 10 minutes of working with Hale, Ernst and Pobst noticeably relax. It’s working. The new character, voiced by the veteran Hale, sounds better than they’d hoped. Stitched together after the fact with the voices recorded by the other actors, it will somehow feel perfectly in place. Even though Hale had never heard those voices, and hadn’t read the script until today.Ernst and Pobst celebrate with pastries and warm smiles, while Hale continues to rocket through the script, laying down lines, adding life to the game that’s still being made hundreds of miles away, in a completely different state.
This is game development.
I don’t know if voice work can make or break a game but I definitely notice it and it can affect my enjoyment of the play.
An interesting piece from Om Malik on what he thinks Google could do to help the news and media industry.
Slate:
The whale that Joe George and Velma Ronquille heard was an anomaly: His sound patterns were recognizable as those of a blue whale, but his frequency was unheard-of. It was absolutely unprecedented. So they paid attention. They kept tracking him for years, every migration season, as he made his way south from Alaska to Mexico. His path wasn’t unusual, only his song—and the fact that they never detected any other whales around him. He always seemed to be alone.So this whale was calling out high, and he was calling out to no one—or at least, no one seemed to be answering.
What a sad and remarkable story.
The Computer Graphics Society:
In the summer of 2004, IKEA decided to change the way they produced their product images. They made the first tentative moves toward CG rendered, rather than photographic, images.
Wow. I figured the catalog images were “photoshopped” but I had no idea so many of them were straight up CGI.
Contact Center is from the same people that developed Launch Center Pro. I had a look at the video on the Web site and this looks like a solid app. Great idea bringing what they learned in Launch Center over to this new app.
With 100 icons available in multiple colors and resolutions, our set will let you add a touch of personality to your OmniFocus 2 custom perspectives. Whether it’s for work or play, team management or that trip to Italy you need to organize, Perspective Icons 2 has the right icon for the right context.
These look really well done and the price is definitely right.
For many people the Flint Center for the Performing Arts is not a familiar venue for Apple events, but Apple has held previous events at this location. […]
When I saw that Apple was going to hold their Sept. 9 event at the Flint Center for Performing Arts, I thought I would take a drive over and see if anything was happening. To be honest, I didn’t expect much because all of the work would be going on inside—I was wrong. […]