Eager to seize this promotional opportunity, Samsung Mobile Arabia’s verified Twitter account decided to tweet its best wishes for two stars of the company’s Galaxy 11 campaign, Cristiano Ronaldo and Landon Donovan, and their teams to its 106,000 followers. The only problem, of course, is that Landon Donovan was left off of the U.S.’s World Cup squad a month ago.
Come on Samsung, seriously?
Great article by Dan Frommer. People seem to forget that Apple did not create the iPhone and iPad in a few days or even years, for that matter. Apple is methodical in perfecting its new ideas to make sure they measure up to its demanding standards. That’s what Tim Cook is doing. The company is profitable behind belief and Tim is well respected by shareholders, consumers and the industry. Apple’s future is in good hands.
I use my iPhone as my only camera and it does quite well for me. Om Malik recently tried a new app that specializes in black & white photos and has posted some samples as well. I do like the simplicity of the app, but I think I may just use the iPhone camera for the same results.
Winclone is a great way to make a complete backup of your Boot Camp partition so that you can quickly restore back to Windows in Boot Camp. Boot Runner provides an easy way to switch between OS X and Windows on dual boot Macs. Works great for both individuals and dual boot labs.
When you get a new Mac or have issues with your Windows installation in Boot Camp, re-installing Windows is time consuming and difficult. Winclone makes it easy to make a complete copy of the Boot Camp partition, and restores it back to the exact same state on your existing or new Mac. Winclone supports migration of Boot Camp partitions between Macs, moving your Boot Camp partition to an external drive to free up space, and more. It works great for mass deployment. Boot Camp can be deployed as an OS X installer package and you can also use it with existing Windows tools such as SCCM and Sys Prep for easy mass deployment.
If you manage lots of dual boot Macs, Boot Runner provides a great way to manage the OS selection. You decide which OS by selecting OS X or Windows prior to logging in. It works great in labs. Administrators can fully customize and manage the selection screen, and can remotely select the OS through network policy. Boot Runner includes a scheduling feature to make sure that the Mac is booted into Windows for important system and virus updates. Check out the intro video to learn more.
Winclone and Boot Runner are available for purchase and download today at twocanoes.com and both have full phone and online support options.
My thanks to Many Tricks for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. Moom is Many Tricks’ window moving and zooming app. If you find the behavior of the green zoom button mysterious and thus avoid using it, you’ll love Moom—hover over the green button, and a pop-up palette appears, letting you quickly choose from five built-in size/location options. But you can also create custom commands that will move windows to other displays, size and position them exactly as you wish, or perform many other actions, including centering. Finally, if you use one display at one location, but multiple displays elsewhere, Moom can memorize your open windows for both setups, and automatically switch to the saved layout when the display setup changes. Check it out at Many Tricks.
New York Times:
Nest Labs, a maker of digital thermostats, announced Friday evening that it planned to buy another fast-growing producer of home devices, Dropcam, for $555 million in cash.The deal is another sign of the industry optimism that the emerging market for Internet-connected smart devices in the home is poised for rapid growth. The most striking sign of such enthusiasm is Nest itself, which Google bought this year for $3.2 billion.
In a brief interview, Matt Rogers, co-founder of Nest, said, “This is a Nest Labs deal, not a Google deal.”
It will be interesting to see how these two companies/devices will fit together going forward.
Computerworld:
On June 23, we will publish the last print issue of Computerworld.It was 47 years ago, almost to the day, that Computerworld’s very first issue rolled off the presses: June 21, 1967. The newspaper’s first publisher was the late Patrick J. McGovern, who was the founder and chairman of International Data Group (IDG), Computerworld’s parent company.
It’s sad to lose anything that has endured so long. But we are merely taking part in the natural evolution of the media industry, like so many great publications before us. Trains, after all, were once powered by coal and steam; Computerworld is moving from paper to electrons.
I think Macworld magazine is IDG’s last that still appears in print form. Anyone think the print edition of Macworld will be around in five years? I don’t.
New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced police data revealing a that iPhone robberies in San Francisco dropped by more than a third (38 percent), while New York City has seen robberies and ‘grand larcenies from a person’ involving an iPhone drop by 19 and 29 percent. In London, Apple-targeted thefts were down by 24 percent.
Those are significant numbers.
A Surface Pro 3 user manual that can be downloaded directly from Microsoft’s site lists the Surface Mini four times, proving the mention of the smaller tablet isn’t just an accident. The mentions also make it clear that the Surface Mini will come with a Surface Pen, just like its bigger brother.
It won’t help.
The way things are going, every kid is going to go to school wearing bubble wrap and a helmet. Back in the 1970s (and earlier), parents didn’t stress about our health and safety as much as they do today. It’s not that they cared less – they just didn’t worry compulsively about it.Parents of 2014 need to be reminded of how less restricted, less supervised, less obsessively safety-conscious things were… and it was just fine.
Tthese stories are always kind of amusing to those of us old enough to remember these dangers. And to be clear, a lot of the things this article is nostalgic about were actually bad for us.
John Mayer: Someday I’ll Fly chronicles the musical evolution of one of the most influential solo artists of his generation. Featuring rare demos, interviews and live performances; it is told in it’s entirety from Mayer’s perspective. Explore the full story and creative process of acclaimed, Grammy Award winning, guitarist and singer-songwriter John Mayer.
A leading scientist was ejected by fellow audience members during a performance of Handel’s Messiah after he took the director’s invitation to “clap and whoop” to the music a step too far by attempting to crowd-surf.
Love it.
Grantland:
There are two things that make Diplomacy so unique and challenging. The first is that, unlike in most board games, players don’t take turns moving. Everyone writes down their moves and puts them in a box. The moves are then read aloud, every piece on the board moving simultaneously.The second is that prior to each move the players are given time to negotiate with each other, as a group or privately. The result is something like a cross between Risk, poker, and Survivor.
I played this game in college and loved it. The key is you can’t win the game without cooperating with at least one other player but you also can’t win without screwing over at least one other player. The “when do I screw over my friend?” is the most fraught part of the game.
The very mention of that word—the single-most offensive name one could ever call a Native American—has always made my blood boil.Non-Natives may never quite understand how deep the term “redskins” cuts into ancient wounds that have never quite healed, and maybe it’s not reasonable to expect them to. But every time Dan Snyder refuses to change his NFL team’s name, even with tribes paying for powerful ads in opposition like the one that recently aired during the NBA Finals, Snyder plunges a long, twisted blade into our hearts.
For any numbers of reasons enumerated here and elsewhere, it’s time to change the name of the team.
The Center for Reading Research:
Some words are better known to men than to women and the other way around. But which are they? On the basis of our vocabulary test, we can start to answer this question. These 24 words should suffice to find out whether a person you are interacting with in digital space is male or female.
I knew all twelve of the “men’s words” and all but two of the “women’s words”. If you have the time, be sure to take their vocabulary test, too.
In a strongly worded statement issued to international media yesterday, the Department of Finance said that Ireland was “confident that there is no state aid rule breach in this case and we will defend all aspects vigorously.” It signalled its intent to fight the ruling in the European Court of Justice should the commission find against the State.
Good for Ireland.
Farad Manjoo spent some time with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Nieh and Viennot discovered all kinds of new information about the content in Google Play, including a critical security problem: developers often store their secret keys in their apps software, similar to usernames/passwords info, and these can be then used by anyone to maliciously steal user data or resources from service providers such as Amazon and Facebook. These vulnerabilities can affect users even if they are not actively running the Android apps. Nieh notes that even “Top Developers,” designated by the Google Play team as the best developers on Google Play, included these vulnerabilities in their apps.
Android isn’t secure? I’m shocked.
Stanford Magazine:
Lipreading, which makes one sense do the work of another, is a skill daunting to describe. Rachel Kolb, deaf since birth, shares its mysteries.
Interesting article from the point of view of a deaf person. I’m sure I’ve made the same mistake – assuming if a deaf person can read lips, it’s easy for them.
Jim returns from his well earned vacation to talk to Dan about the potential for an Amazon phone, WWDC two weeks later, the new iMac’s importance as a serious production machine, operating systems as a product, Apple’s veil of secrecy, and more.
Sponsored by HostGator (use code DANSENTME for 50% off VPS) and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME for 10% off).
Moom is Many Tricks’ window moving and zooming app. If you find the behavior of the green zoom button mysterious and thus avoid using it, you’ll love Moom—hover over the green button, and a pop-up palette appears, letting you quickly choose from five built-in size/location options. But you can also create custom commands that will move windows to other displays, size and position them exactly as you wish, or perform many other actions, including centering. Finally, if you use one display at one location, but multiple displays elsewhere, Moom can memorize your open windows for both setups, and automatically switch to the saved layout when the display setup changes. Check it out at Many Tricks.
Macworld:
Mix looks to be yet another example of Adobe pushing to expand the technologies it developed for Photoshop into non-desktop areas like the cloud and, by extension, mobile devices like the iPad. I suspect that artists, designers, and hobbyists who like creating compositions or who want an image editor that ties directly into some of Photoshop’s editing tools and Creative Cloud are going to like Mix. A lot.
I like that Mix doesn’t require a paid Creative Cloud subscription (although it does require an Adobe ID). Makes it more likely I’ll try it out.
New York Times:
Amazon on Wednesday introduced its own smartphone — a device optimized to allow customers to consume great amounts of video, books and music, preferably from Amazon.Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, announced the new phone, Fire, here in Seattle, the company’s headquarters.
Amazon executives asked themselves, Mr. Bezos said, only one question: “Can we build a better phone for our most engaged customers?”
“Our most engaged customers” seems to be the key here. What do you think? Is there anything compelling in the “AmaFone” for you?
From the 1950s until the 1970s Bell Labs spent over $500 million developing the videophone. But the technology failed to achieve mainstream success. Why?The story of the Bell Labs videophone — from the experiments of the mid-50s, to the expensive and ultimately failed consumer trials of the 1970s.
This always seemed like one of those technologies forever searching for a problem for it to solve – a problem average consumers really didn’t have or want solved. The irony is now most of us carry around this technology in our pockets every day. But how many of us use it on a regular basis?
Ken Segall:
We all know that things are different in the post-Steve Apple.However, there’s something about the current move to build an in-house marketing agency that’s really, really different. Unlike previous changes, this one isn’t driven by Tim Cook.It comes from a new place, deeper inside the company — from those who long played a part in Steve Jobs’ marketing machine.
The industry and the press seem to be surprised by this development. To many others, it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.
Some fascinating insights into what may be going on behind the scenes at Apple Marketing. Whether this works out for Apple in the long run will be very interesting to see.
Employees of Apple’s retail stores in Australia have reached agreement with the company on a four-year contract that covers pay, benefits and working conditions, but retail observers say Apple’s offer was barely over the retail industry’s current averages, and includes just two percent annual raises.When the agreement becomes effective this November 1st, starting pay for full-time Level 1 employees will be $20.95 per hour (all rates in U.S. dollars), and Level 2 will start at $25.26. Casual employees will receive 25 percent more per hour to offset fewer benefits. Level 3 employees are management, and will receive a base annual pay of $72,779.
It’s impossible to compare the new Australia pay rates to other regions or countries.
While that’s true and standards of living are different in different countries and cities, it certainly seems, on the face of it at least, that store employees in Australia can make a decent living.
iMore:
There are a lot of cool features coming to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite this fall. One of the most hotly anticipated is Handoff, which enables you to pick up where you left off in an email, a document and other work between iOS and OS X devices. Handoff is elegantly choreographed dance between devices, operating systems and protocols. It’s partly dependent on Bluetooth 4.0, the most recent widespread deployment of the popular short-distance wireless communication protocol, which includes Bluetooth Low Energy (BT LE). So, how can you tell if your Mac is properly equipped to take advantage of it?You can check for yourself if you’re not exactly sure which Mac model you have. It’s a little convoluted, so bear with me and follow these instructions to find out.
Sadly, mine isn’t “Handoff-compatible”.
In an unprecedented ruling, a B.C. court has ordered Google Inc. to block a group of websites from its worldwide search engine – a decision raising questions over how far one country’s courts can exert their power over the borderless Internet.
On the surface, it sounds utterly ridiculous but reading the judge’s reasoning, it makes a little bit of sense. It still likely will get overturned on appeal and might even be unenforceable.