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You can choose how much you would like to pay for the digital edition of this book.

Beacons installed inside retail stores like Saks or grocery outlets can send proximity-based alerts to shoppers at the precise moment — and location — that they’re enabled to make a decision on a purchase. This is the holy grail of retail advertising, which normally takes a scattershot approach to ‘pre-advertising’ shoppers or tries to guesstimate when they’re in the vicinity of a product.

I’m not convinced this is something I want when I go shopping. Admittedly, when I do shop, I tend to know exactly what I want and where it is, so maybe I’m not the target market.

Wow!

But the district and Dell, its partner in the project, have failed to develop a customized platform that could serve students and teachers “directly enough or quickly enough,” Silva said. That work has been halted — with Dell agreeing to refund the $665,000 it has been paid in the form of future technology upgrades.

This happened a couple of weeks ago, but I’m just getting caught up. Just horrible for Dell. Hopefully other school districts will learn a lesson from this.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Starbucks is teaming up with Arizona State University on an exclusive program that could send thousands of its baristas, store managers, and other employees to ASU Online for their undergraduate degrees, with the coffee company picking up about three-quarters of the tuition tab.

The unusual program, the Starbucks College Achievement Plan, will be available to more than 100,000 of its employees. The partnership, which could cost Starbucks hundreds of millions of dollars a year, is likely to add luster to the company’s reputation for corporate social responsibility.

While it’s not the “Starbucks pays for college!” story some media outlets portray it to be, it’s still a great perk of working for the company and a way for employees to get or complete a degree.

Daniel Eran Dilger:

A new profile of Apple’s chief executive, titled “Tim Cook, Making Apple his own” actually says little about Cook and virtually nothing noteworthy about how he is leading Apple. Instead, the New York Times simply recounts more predictions of doom for the company in a piece filled with fictions and fallacy.

Another Apple hit-piece from the New York Times, but without anything to really say. Tim Cook and Apple are coming off one of the most successful WWDCs in its history, but the Times has decided to make shit up because Tim wouldn’t give them an interview. Apple is fighting to change entire industries, while the New York Times fights for relevancy—Apple is doing the better job.

ScreenCrush: In 1984, music videos were still a fairly new phenomena and on the day of the soundstage shoot all the pieces were in place. The song was finished. Actress Cindy Harrell would play the female lead opposite Parker. But, … Continued

Happy Father’s Day from all of us to all of you fathers out there!

My thanks to Many Tricks for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. Many Tricks offers a number of apps to make using your Mac easier, more productive, and even more fun. Check out Moom, their impressive window moving and zooming tool; Name Mangler, which makes renaming tens of thousands of files a snap; Witch, a tool to let you quickly switch to any open window; or any of their other apps at Many Tricks.

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Computerworld:

Samsung has now announced 11 different Android tablets since the start of 2014. Here’s the thing: Choice is beneficial only when it means something. Flooding consumers with a billion overlapping variations of the same basic concept does little more than cause confusion and dilute your brand.

Put another way, when faced with that menagerie of confusingly named and difficult to distinguish options, what’s a typical consumer going to do? You guessed it: Buy an iPad.

Amazing – and not in a good way.

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Chicago Tribune:

A motorcyclist who shot video of himself speeding away from police was sentenced to four years in prison Friday.

The charges stem from an October, 2012, incident in which Hamza Ali Ben Ali tried to goad a Westmont police officer into a high-speed chase after the officer tried to stop him along Cass Avenue. A seven-minute video shot from a camera affixed to Ali’s Honda CBR 1000 shows a police car with flashing lights following the motorcycle into a gas station before the motorcycle zooms away.

Two weeks later, footage of the pursuit was uploaded to YouTube.

This guy can only be described as the stupidest person in the world right now.

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Daring Fireball:

“Only Apple” has been Tim Cook’s closing mantra for the last few Apple keynotes.

Is this true, though? Is Apple the only company that can do this? I think it’s inarguable that they’re the only company that is doing it, but Cook is saying they’re they only company that can.

I’ve been thinking about this for two weeks.

I spoke at a MUG group this evening and made a similar point and there’s no doubt this is Tim Cook’s Apple.

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TechCrunch:

App developers know that having good ratings and reviews means more users will be wiling to download their app. And thanks to ratings’ influence on Apple’s ranking algorithms, it will help their app be better discovered via the App Store’s Top Charts as well. Because of this, some — okay, many — developers manipulate their apps’ positions by posting fake ratings and reviews. It’s sort of common knowledge these days, in fact. Any brief, glowing, five-star review is immediately suspect.

As it turns out, it’s suspect to Apple, too. And now the company is doing something about it.

This is one of the reasons why I never pay any attention to ratings on the App Store. The only ratings I care about are from friends or trusted sources.

. Politico:

Sports are a reflection of national character and aspirations, and it is no coincidence, I think, that soccer has had a hard time catching on in the United States. Simply put, soccer—call it “football” if you must—is a tragic game, and thus it cuts deeply against the grain of the American ethos.

Americans are an optimistic people. We like scoring too much to enjoy a game that is more about preventing success than achieving it.

We go through this conversation every four years.

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MoMA:

Biophilia is a software app and music album with interactive graphics, animations, and musical scoring that reflects Björk’s interest in a collaborative process. It’s also the first downloadable app in MoMA’s collection.

This app looks fascinating and weird, just like Björk.

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The Guardian:

One holiday snap has been manipulated thousands of times on thousands of computers. Here’s how a woman on a beach in Bora Bora taught the whole world to tinker with pictures.

If there’s a “Photography App Hall of Fame”, Photoshop would be the first inductee.

I live here. It’s really a spectacularly beautiful part of the world.

Everyone knows by now that Amazon is evil – except Amazon itself, it seems. That’s why I took the fight directly to amazon.co.uk, creating a fake book for sale called Living Wages for Amazon Workers.

Interesting way to get the word out.

I still remember being absolutely blown away by the movie and its special effects and wanting to turn right back around and watch it again.

. NPR:

Jack White celebrated the release of his latest solo album, Lazaretto, with this live concert at the historic Fonda Theater in Hollywood, Calif.

I’ve always been a big fan of White. I’ll likely never see him in concert so this video is the next best thing for me.

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The Guardian:

Before the live-music industry became a billion-dollar behemoth, being on the road was, for many bands, a wild west of sex, drugs and even some rock’n’roll. Hedonism was rife, and it wasn’t just the musicians who pillaged. Their road crews were right there with them, benefiting from a macho atmosphere where the expectation was that after they had unloaded the gear they would match their employers in debauchery.

But that era has long passed, and with it the idea of roadies as folk legends. They have since osmosed into “techs” – low-key professionals who often have degrees and treat the job as a job.

I was a roadie for one weekend. Damn near killed me.

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CNET:

Do you love noodles? Could you eat them every day? Well, it looks like you now can with the Philips Noodle Maker.

As the name suggests, this kitchen appliance creates fresh noodles from scratch and takes about 15 minutes to make around 500g. All you need to do is toss in the egg, flour and water or more exotic ingredients such as carrot juice and the machine will take care of kneading the dough and then automatically extruding the noodles through a noodle-making cap.

OMG I would absolutely love this thing.

In another example of “Apple opening the kimono” (see what I did there?), here is a video that, while typical of many other “Grand Opening” videos, shows a little of the behind the scenes efforts that go into one of these store openings.

The Isle of Man TT is an insane motorcycle race held every year on a tiny island in the Irish Sea. It concluded last week. Last year, the record for the average speed was set at 131+mph. Average. On city streets and backroad country lanes. With spectators literally an arm’s length away.

“In its 104 years, 234 riders have died. In the week I was there, seven people lost their lives. Three riders and four members of the public.”

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Scott Hurff:

If you build products for a living, there’s a lot to learn from iOS 8’s iMessage changes — both on the user interface side and on the customer development side. Let’s examine iOS 8’s changes, and let’s compare them to the status quo in iOS 7.

Some interesting info here from the POV of a designer who thinks about this stuff all day long.

Every four years, the world spins off its axis for this spot of fun. Brazil vs. Croatia. Let the games begin.

Amid criticisms that it has failed to innovate, Apple is increasingly taking marketing into its own hands. It’s madly building an internal agency that it’s telling recruits will eventually number 1,000.

It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this.

I love this song.

I’m a fan of this app.

There’s so much wrong and so much right with this video.