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Slate:

This Sunday, the eyes of millions of Americans will turn to a fetid marsh in the industrial hinterlands of New York City for the country’s most important sporting event—and some would say the key to understanding its proud but violent culture.

Slate has been running this series for a while and it’s funny to read how American events might be reported through the eyes of others.

Wall Street Journal:

“The Lego Movie” gathers characters who don’t normally hang around together, coming from separately owned franchises and studios. These include Warner movie characters like Batman, Superman, Gandalf, Dumbledore and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle; but also Han Solo, Shaquille O’Neal, and Milhouse from “The Simpsons”.

I’m going to borrow a nine year old and go see this movie.

I love this.

[Via Brett Terpstra]

The magic of Tumblr is that it sits between Twitter (short form) and WordPress (long form) and fills a gap in the world of blogging that nobody else has managed to capture. There are elements of Facebook and Instagram in it as well. So it’s a lot like all of these apps but in the end it is like nothing else. It has a soul and pulse and a vibe that other social apps don’t have. At times, it is simply magic.

That’s a really good way to describe Tumblr.

John Gruber:

For one thing, they sweated the details. The greatest testimony to their genius is just how much of that original design is recognizable in today’s Mac OS X 10.9. A Mac user from 1984 could sit down in front of an iMac or MacBook today and recognize it as a successor to that original machine. That’s simply amazing.

John is so right. Apple sweated the details and they still do—that sets them apart from every other company.

Another great find by Tina Roth Eisenberg.

Google will keep the Nest group intact inside the company. The new division will still work on hardware devices, but not necessarily thermostats or smoke detectors. In fact, Google would like Fadell to work on gadgets that make more sense for the company. Will it be a phone or a tablet? It’s unclear for now.

We suspected that Google wanted Fadell. Makes perfect sense.

In this issue, Christopher Jennings takes a look at the history of Yellowstone National Park; Alex Saretzky talks about where designers should focus their time and skills; Bryan Irace discusses CocoaPods and Objective-C; Scot Olsen is a photographer taking beautiful pictures with his iPhone 4s; and Darren Murph looks at T-Mobile’s free international data.

Co.Create:

New York-based artist Jon Burgerman has responded to both the violent ads in subway movie posters and the rising scores of public shootings by playing the victim.

In a new series of interventions, called “Headshots,” Burgerman documents himself donning fake blood and other props to portray the potential target of whoever in the poster is pointing a gun (or bow and arrow.)

Hilariously subversive.

Flag allows anyone (within the US to start) to print and mail a pack of 20 photos each month for free. You can keep the prints yourself, or send them to the people you love. If you want more than 20 a month you can buy as many as you need.

To make photo printing fun – for the first time by our reckoning – we’ve designed a photo finishing system ready for the 21st century. Museum quality (Giclée) printers, German 220 gram photo paper from sustainable sources, laser cutters, and robots with carbon fiber arms will allow Flag to deliver prints, for free, that are better than any you can pay for today. We want to turn your memories into mementos you can be proud of.

Our secret to making photo printing free? An advertisement on the back of each print. It will always be tasteful, and we are steadfast in our commitment to never sell or share your personal information with advertisers.

This is something I would use. I’m okay with an ad on the back of the photos. Samuel Agboola really came up with something interesting here.

You can sign-up for the MacTech BootCamp III, MacTech Conferences and Microsoft Office for Mac Accreditation programs right now. There is a special savings on the page for readers of The Loop.

TechCrunch has confirmed reports that Lenovo is buying Motorola Mobility from Google. This is the division within Google that the company purchased in 2011 for $12.5 billion. Motorola Mobility will go to Lenovo for $2.91 billion.

First Google Reader, now this. Seriously, Google got what they wanted out of Motorola—the patents.

Fast Company:

The era of the pre-game Super Bowl strategy kicked off in earnest in 2011, when Volkswagen pre-released its excellent spot “The Force” before Super Sunday. The monster success of that spot spurred others to follow suit and this year the trend continued unabated, with teasers and entire bespoke ads created to stoke buzz before game day.

Here, all the spots (and accompanying content) released so far.

Some fun ads here but I gotta say, the Lawrence Fishburne ad for Kia was the most disappointing, the “Doberhuahua” the funniest and the Newcastle “The Teaser For The Trailer For Newcastle’s Mega Huge Football Game Ad” the most clever. Thanks to reader David Mark for the link.

I hate the beer but I love some of the ads.

Medium:

I had a rare Twitter username, @N. Yep, just one letter. I’ve been offered as much as $50,000 for it. People have tried to steal it. Password reset instructions are a regular sight in my email inbox. As of today, I no longer control @N. I was extorted into giving it up.

The article includes several good suggestions on how to protect yourself online. But the biggest thing that needs to happen is companyies who need our sensitive information need to be more vigilant about keeping that information safe.

ESPN:

If our children or our children’s children ever dig up a time capsule from the beginning of the new millennium, they will find that in February 2004, America collectively lost its damn mind.

For better or worse, America can be a remarkably puritanical society.

This is just incredible. When I first looked at the pictures, I thought he just did the outside of the plane, but no. He also has a YouTube Channel.

President Obama on Tuesday gave his 2014 State of the Union Address to the American people. In it, he praised a number of technology companies, including Apple, for helping with his ConnectED program, which aims to connect 99 percent of schools to the Internet via high speed connections. […]

USA Today:

Johansson is the face of SodaStream’s newest commercial, which the company’s CEO says is too risqué for Fox. The television network isn’t banning the commercial because of any sexual innuendo or objectionable content. Rather, because of a parting shot to Coke and Pepsi.

Lame. Not the controversy. The commercial itself.

Huffington Post:

It’s not easy coming back home to America when your name is Ahmed.

I want to look forward to returning home from a trip abroad, but thanks to my name or as the TSA officer put it — my “profile” — I’ve come to dread it.

“Security Theater” at its finest.

I call bull. That’s a 35 year old midget in a diaper.

Being a dog lover, I had to post this. These companies put poison in the dog food and they are some of the most well-known brands in the world.

Jim and Dan talk about profiling amps, Fender guitars, Apple’s first quarter results, Samsung and patent settlements, Bitcoin, and 30 years of Mac.

Sponsored by lynda.com (visit lynda.com/quit to try it free for 7 days), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME114 for 25% off), Squarespace (use code DANSENTME1 for 10% off), and Hover (brand new customers use code IGLOO for 10% off your first purchase).

For more than 50 years, Mr. Seeger roamed America, singing on street corners and in saloons, migrant labor camps, hobo jungles, union halls, schools, churches and concert auditoriums. He helped write, arrange or revive such perennial favorites as “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” and popularized the anthem of the civil rights movement, “We Shall Overcome.”

Tall and reed-thin, Mr. Seeger was a recognizable figure for generations of listeners. And with dozens of top-selling records and albums, he became one of the most enduring and best-loved folk singers of his generation. He also was one of the few remaining links to two of the 20th century’s early giants of American folk music: Huddie Ledbetter, the black ex-convict from Texas and Louisiana better known as Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie, the minstrel songwriter from Oklahoma.

Tough, tough news. He was a giant.

The Company sold 51 million iPhones, an all-time quarterly record, compared to 47.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple also sold 26 million iPads during the quarter, also an all-time quarterly record, compared to 22.9 million in the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4.8 million Macs, compared to 4.1 million in the year-ago quarter.

Holy shit, what a quarter.

Scouting NY:

On March 29, 1971, The Godfather, considered by many to be one of the greatest films ever made, began principal photography in New York City.

Because the film is a period piece, The Godfather actually presents a fascinating record of what 1940s-era New York City locations still existed in the early-1970s. Sadly, many of them are now gone. What still remains? Let’s take a closer look.

I’m a complete junkie for these kinds of “before and after” stories. I use to date a woman from Greenwich Village and whenever we’d watch TV shows set in New York, I was constantly stopping the show to ask her, “Is that real? Do you know where that location is? Have you been there?” Drove her nuts.

Wall Street Journal:

All you need to know about multibillionaire Carl Icahn is how he describes himself on his Twitter page: “Some people get rich studying artificial intelligence. Me, I make my money studying natural stupidity.”

He has purchased billions worth of Apple and eBay stock. But he’s not making a bet on these companies; he’s making a bet he can get these companies to do what he says.

He is smarter than the people who run them, you see, even though he has never produced much more than harassment and misery for most of his life.

Icahn’s moves are very obvious and easy to predict and understand.

Bloomberg:

MillerCoors…(will)…unveil the beer, Miller Fortune, over the next two months. The brew, with a more malty, complex flavor hinting at bourbon.

Developed with guys aged 21 to 27 in mind, the flavor is moderately bitter with hints of sweetness.

Just like guys that age.

Here’s an idea, MillerCoors. Instead of asking, “How would Jack Daniels or Maker’s Mark do a beer?”, why not make the beer you already make simply taste better?

Wynken de Worde:

For months now I’ve been stewing about how much I hate @HistoryInPics and their ilk (@HistoryInPix, @HistoricalPics, @History_Pics, etc.) – twitter streams that do nothing more than post “old” pictures and little tidbits of captions for them. And when I say “nothing more” that’s precisely what I mean. What they don’t post includes attribution to the photographer or to the institution hosting the digital image. There’s no way to easily learn more about the image (you can, of course, do an image search through TinEye or Google Image Search and try to track it down that way).

Alexis Madrigal recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic revealing that @HistoryInPics is run by a couple of teenagers who are savvy at generating viral social media accounts to bring in money.

In the pas few months, dozens of these Twitter accounts have popped up, all RT’ing each other for money.