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It’s been an incredible year for The Loop—we launched The Loop Magazine this year and the Web site is doing better than ever. I really couldn’t ask for anything more. […]

NBC World News:

Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer. They fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church.

It’s easy for some of us to dismiss this as silly but the story has a great quote in it from an Icelander. He says, “I got married in a church with a god just as invisible as the elves, so what might seem irrational is actually quite common.” So who are we to say Icelandic Elves don’t deserve protections?

Nasa:

In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.

It can be argued the picture, “Earthrise”, was the one photo that changed the earth the most. It expanded our understanding and concern for the planet we live on.

Take that Van Damme.

Yamaha Corporation and Line 6, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement for Yamaha to acquire Line 6, a leading manufacturer of innovative solutions for musicians. The acquisition expands Yamaha’s portfolio of modeling guitar processing products as well as pro-audio equipment, and offers new and exciting opportunities for accelerated growth for both companies.

Holy shit, that’s big news.

Great idea for a magazine on the iPhone. We are all photographers in some ways these days.

Nice little collection of apps at a discount.

Lessonator is a tool for creating beautiful music slideshow presentations on your Mac. It’s like a mashup between Apple’s Keynote and Garageband, where each slide is an animated music score. Lessonator creates and plays interactive slideshows containing 3d instruments, audio, video, notation (standard & tabs), images, diagrams and text. These slideshows are interactive because they can animate, ask questions, receive answers and track your musical progress.

Very cool looking app and a great idea.

In this issue Jim Dalrymple looks at how Apple is able to capture the essence of our lives and touch us with its TV ads; Darren Murph argues that it’s time for the phone number to die; Alex Vollmer tells us all about tube amps, including a wonderful video; Kirk McElhearn looks at collecting music and how it has changed; and Nathan Snelgrove explains how a $600 guitar means so much.

Jim and Dan talk about the new Mac Pro’s, the Universal Audio Apollo, Nokia’s latest commercial, how to get better at guitar without practicing, and more.

Sponsored by Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME1213 for 25% off), Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME12 for 10% off).

If you’re going to get a lens for your iPhone 5c, it might as well be a cool color. I’ve been meaning to try these lenses out.

Photos+ can replace the built-in Photos app for viewing, organizing, and sharing your pictures. It looks prettier, it has more sharing options, and it shows you more info about where, when, and how each photo was taken.

Nice looking app.

Clearly they post production did a great job replacing the igloo with a real house.

Kids, this is why you don’t do drugs while making a TV ad.

Lyve Minds’ answer to the problem is to recreate the cloud in your living room. The company’s apps will let phones, tablets and computers talk to each other and access personal media on each of them. Lyve supports iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OS at launch, with plans to add more platforms down the road. The company’s apps will back up photos from a mobile device to other devices in the network, free up and reallocate space and always keep multiple copies of each file.

It will be interesting to see how Tim Bucher pulls this off.

A lot has been written about the National Radio Quiet Zone.

The United States National Radio Quiet Zone is a large area of land centered between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia and the Sugar Grove Research Facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia. The Radio Quiet Zone is a rectangle of land approximately 13,000 square miles (34,000 km2) in size that straddles the border area of Virginia and West Virginia. It includes all land with latitudes between 37° 30′ 0.4″ N and 39° 15′ 0.4″ N and longitudes between 78° 29′ 59.0″ W and 80° 29′ 59.2″ W.

Great tip from Gabe Weatherhead. I didn’t know you could do this.

The iPhone 5s came in in third place overall, behind Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker. Among smartphones, though, Apple’s iPhone 5s took the top spot, beating out the Galaxy S4 for the most searched-for handset. The iPhone 5c took third place, followed by the HTC One and Google’s Nexus 5.

Impressive.

I hate when companies do stuff like this.

Dustin Curtis:

The best way to predict the future is to think about desire. The problem with desire is that it tends to be bounded by what’s actually possible; as we grow older, our imaginations seem to develop artificial caps that limit our ideas to things that are reasonably achievable in the short term. But who cares about what is reasonable? Here’s what I want.

Yes, far fetched, but if you’re going to dream, dream big.

Samsung is said to be planning its own Apple-like retail push across the U.S., as the company recently hired an ex-Apple senior store designer, according to a new report.

Why the fuck not, they copied everything else Apple did.

Steven Aquino:

From a pure design perspective, aesthetically speaking, it’s perfectly reasonable to criticize the new shapes. They are indeed ugly, but the overall importance of this new addition trumps the way in which they’re presented. That is to say, regardless of how the buttons look, the sheer fact that they add a level of desprately-needed contrast makes the buttons a huge usability win, and likely — rightfully — will garner much praise from the visually impaired segment of the accessibility community.

Designers need to remember this when criticizing the new button shapes.

The Loop Magazine 2.1 was released today with a few significant changes including:

• Push notifications for new issues including background download
• App now remembers your previous location
• Improved sharing
• Cover art will change with each issue on your device
• Bug fixes

The update is free and is available from the App Store.

Looking Up:

There’s something special about the quality of sound when it snows. Those who live in parts of the world that experience snowfall know it well — an eerie, muted stillness that you hear from your bed, which betrays the season’s first snowflakes before you fling open the curtains in excitement.

Thos of us lucky enough to live where it snows are familiar with this phenomenon. Knowing why it happens doesn’t detract from the wonder of it. Thanks to Jeff Carlson for the link.

The Verge:

“At Target we focus on offering our guests a wide assortment of physical CDs, and when a new album is available digitally before it is available physically, it impacts demand and sales projections.” a spokesperson said to Billboard.

Waah…

Buzzfeed:

In early 2014, a series of devastating catastrophes bring about Armageddon. Papers of record like the New York Times soberly report this news.

Utterly hilarious. Thanks to Ian Betteridge for the link.

Apple released released its “Best of 2013” list this morning, naming the top apps, music, podcasts, TV shows and movies in the App Store. I’m very proud to say that The Loop Magazine was chosen as one of the top magazines in Newsstand.

Thank you.

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