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I always felt bad for HTC. I think they made a good product, but didn’t have the marketing budget to compete with Samsung, which meant people didn’t pay much attention. I’m not sure the new phone will change that.

Jim and Dan talk about Google Glass and its myths, escaped water buffalos, Peter Gabriel and his flute, Pandora, Spotify, and iTunes Radio (now with NPR), “The Techtopus”, wage suppression, and more.

These are good tips.

The new related search suggestions mark one of Apple’s first attempts to augment App Store search results with visual semantics for apps. In testing the feature, I was able to get suggestions for specific sub-categories such as “business news” and “video game news”, “writing” and “story ideas”, or “healthy cooking” and “food recipes”; each set of related searches included new results that were more specific and relevant to the suggested search.

I like this. Anything Apple can do to show more relevant results will help them and the user.

You can’t make this shit up.

This is incredible. We often talk about how the possibilities of what we can do with an iPad seem endless, but this is a step above.

Matt Gemmell has a really nice piece explaining why he doesn’t post on sites like Medium and instead writes for his own site.

Digital streams of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and hourly newscasts will be available on a new 24-hour streaming NPR channel on iTunes Radio.

Great news for everyone.

Record anything on your screen, edit it with powerful yet efficient tools and share them with just one-click!

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Voila is especially useful for educators, students, designers, corporates and the like who need brisk, high-performance and solid screen captures without breaking a sweat. Creating tutorials, training manuals, lessons, DIY videos etc. is now super easy and you also get to manage them expertly with Voila’s smart organizational abilities. It’s that simple!

Go ahead and give it a Try! Download Voila now and enjoy 15 day Free Trial.

My thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Pixelmator is one of the apps that I use every day and have for years. It’s very powerful, but yet approachable, allowing new users to instantly manipulate their images. There is no better image editor.

A riveting, first person essay about concussions.

The grass and goals are spinning when I stand up. My vision is laced with black spots. It is alarming, but I make an athlete’s calculus, measuring these symptoms against the need to show some grit to this skeptical audience. After a brief break, I rejoin practice. Passes and players ricochet past me and I can’t get anywhere quick enough. I can’t read plays as they unfold. The black spots linger. I’ve slammed my brain hard against my skull.

A fascinating read. Here’s just a taste:

Jane Austen asked that a certain squeaky hinge never be oiled, so that she always had a warning when someone was approaching the room where she wrote. William Faulkner, lacking a lock on his study door, just detached the doorknob and brought it into the room with him.

Perfect for fans of John Bonham, Simon Phillips, Alex Van Halen, and Dave Grohl, this is the groove inspiration you’ve been looking for – a powerful source of rock drum loops inspired as much by the classic grooves of rock as much as more contemporary rock styles. Just pure, live rock drums. No beat detective. No sequenced samples. This is live, steaming, sweaty, raw rock and roll – the way it was meant to be.

Sounds perfect.

The Google Glass team posted “The Top 10 Google Glass Myths” trying to stem the tide of bad press. They didn’t mention how creepy the company is—perhaps that’s for another “Top 10” list.

CNBC:

Apple needs an iWatch sooner rather than later, or the company will risk losing its innovative edge to rivals, analysts say.

“They only have 60 days left to either come up with something or they will disappear,” said Trip Chowdhry, managing director at Global Equities Research.

The single stupidest thing ever written about Apple. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you’ll know that’s saying something.

Microsoft went through a blogger’s private Hotmail account in order to trace the identity of a source who allegedly leaked trade secrets.

A March 17 court filing by federal prosecutors reveals that Microsoft’s Office of Legal Compliance approved the decision after confirming that the leaked data in question included proprietary Microsoft code.

Wow.

I usually don’t link to concepts, but these ones for the Apple TV and remotes that go along with it are pretty good.

This is really cool. I wish they had some for hockey, I’d get one for the Boston Bruins.

I can’t say I disagree. Tim has done a tremendous job running Apple in the last few years.

I met Pat a number of times during my 10 years working at Macworld. He built an empire with IDG and will be missed.

This is so true. It drives people crazy.

Ars Technica:

Screen protectors: don’t use ’em, don’t want ’em, don’t need ’em. I’ve been rocking a naked smartphone since 2007, and I don’t ever anticipate changing. And yet the screen protector PR pitch that landed in my inbox last week proved difficult to resist:

Subject: Preview the bulletproof iPhone? On March 18, Sir Lancelot’s Armor will announce the first reusable screen protectors for iPhones and iPads made of bulletproof glass….If interested in getting a sample to use or test, please let me know the model and color of your iPhone.

The only word I needed to hear was “bulletproof.”

I got the same PR email and thought, “Bull.” Glad to see testing proved me right.

This is a nice app, I like it.

Pixelmator is one of the apps that I use every day and have for years. It’s very powerful, but yet approachable, allowing new users to instantly manipulate their images. There is no better image editor.

CNBC:

Apple CEO Tim Cook has issued a statement about a new book about the tech giant called, “Haunted Empire,” saying it is “nonsense” and fails to capture Apple or former CEO and Co-Founder Steve Jobs.

Very interesting that Cook released a statement like this.

Minimally Minimal:

The only thing people seem to love to talk about more than Apple’s success are their failures. The iPod Hi-Fi is considered one of the classic Apple failures. Apple discontinued it just a year after its launch and it received universally lukewarm reviews. I’ve always had a crush on it though. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware and I’ve always loved the idea of having a speaker that pairs perfectly with my iPod.

This is one of those products I wish I could sit down with Ive over a beer and ask, “What were you thinking!?”

Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin talk about Jim’s visit to Austin for SXSW and his interviews at the iTunes Music Festival, buying and listening to albums vs. songs, the new iPads, the 8GB iPhone 5c, Steve Jobs and Apple making televisions, iOS 7.1, CarPlay availability, and more.

Sign outside a Dublin barbershop. I just could not not link to this.