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Amplified: Crowdsurfing with Katy Perry

Jim and Dan talk about Jim’s so-called “Apple-centric” stance, the upcoming iTunes Festival in London, the gold iPhone 5S, hacking Facebook, the Samsung watch, and Katy Perry. Also, Dan’s eviscerates the new Jobs movie.

Sponsored by Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME8 for 30% off), Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME8 for 10% off).

Staying relevant

Daniel Jalkut is talking about his profession as a software developer, but the lessons could be applied to many occupations.

Al Jazeera sues AT&T

AT&T Inc. has been sued by Al Jazeera for refusing to carry the Qatar-based broadcaster’s new U.S. cable-news channel as part of its pay-television service.

BusyCal 2

BusyCal’s unique and powerful features include customizable calendar views, scrolling Month and Week views, an integrated Info Panel for quickly viewing and editing events, integrated To Dos that display in the calendar and carry-forward until completed, custom font sizes and styles, graphics, live weather feeds and moon phases, and a menu bar app for quick access to the current day’s events and weather.

BusyCal supports iCloud, Exchange, Google Calendar, and other CalDAV servers, enabling you to sync and share your calendars through the cloud with other Macs running BusyCal or the built-in Calendar app on OS X, as well as iPhones and iPads running the built-in Calendar app on iOS.

New version just released.

Finish 2.0

This is a great app. I don’t like to-do apps, but I like Finish.

Moving groceries online

The Good Eggs “farm-to-fridge” business model turns the supermarket model on its head. Instead of having one or several physical locations stocked with a standard, unchanging inventory, the Good Eggs storefront is online, and calls on local farms to deliver only what customers have ordered that day. Good Eggs essentially stocks and empties a grocery store every day, and because its inventory is based entirely on what each customer is ordering, it’s a different grocery store every day, too. The company has created an efficient new food system that’s elegant in its simplicity.

Due to their perishable cargo, grocery stores are notoriously difficult to migrate to an online model. The first attempt, Webvan, founded in the late 1990s, was considered one of the largest dot-com flops in history. Much has changed since then, including a stronger push for locally sourced goods. Interesting article. Will be interesting to see if Good Eggs and the like can overcome the inherent problems with shipping perishable goods in a cost-effective manner.

New Tivo boxes with built-in iOS streaming

Jason Snell:

In its first major hardware upgrade in three years, TiVo introduced its fifth-generation hardware DVR series on Tuesday. On sale now with the odd nickname of “Roamio,” the new boxes promise a faster user interface and built-in streaming to iOS devices. At first glance, this new generation of TiVo looks like a big step up for cable TV subscribers who want to ditch their generic cable DVR.

Canadian military testing $620K stealth snowmobile

The Canadian military has been secretly test-driving a $620,000 stealth snowmobile in its quest to quietly whisk troops on clandestine operations in the Arctic.

Clearly the stealth sled dog experiment didn’t work out.

Elmore Leonard, RIP

Elmore Leonard passed away on Tuesday after suffering a stroke earlier this month.

Amazon Down for 25 Minutes

The retail giant’s main U.S. site went offline at approximately 3 p.m. ET on Monday. The cause of the outage remains unclear, but Amazon Web Services (AWS), including EC2, remained up and working on the most part unaffected, according to its status page.

However, after we first published this post, at 3:14 p.m. ET, the AWS Management Console was experiencing elevated error rates across all regions of the world, including North America and Europe. There was also a flagged issue with a North Virginia data center that was quickly resolved.

Affected sites were restored about 25 minutes later, as was the AWS Management Console, though it was still experiencing “elevated error rates” during its recovery. Amazon said it experienced “an increased error rate for CreateTags and DeleteTags APIs in the US-EAST-1 region.”

The cause of the outage is not clear. Interesting that Amazon-owned Audible.com was down as well.

F-Sim Space Shuttle [Sponsor]

F-Sim Space Shuttle is a fun and highly realistic flight simulator for iOS. Your goal is to land one of the most amazing aircrafts ever built: the Space Shuttle Orbiter. Flight dynamics and the head-up display are simulated in great detail and accuracy. During descent the orbiter is an extremely heavy, unpowered glider, so there’s only one chance to get it right. Air speeds two times faster and glide slopes seven times steeper than a typical airliner approach make for a unique challenge.

Landing a space shuttle is not easy, but there are several landing aids and tutorials that will help you make your first safe landing. Every landing is rated, and more experienced pilots can try a perfect landing or add more challenges (night approaches, crosswind landings, system failures, and much more). A landing analysis screen shows how you performed and how you can improve future landings. You’ll also get a score that can be uploaded to Game Center. You can watch breathtaking replays of your flight from different camera angles and even record your replays to the camera roll in full HD.

Federico Viticci’s Editorial review

Federico often posts some of the most comprehensive app reviews on the Internet, but he really outdid himself this time—he basically wrote a book on this new app. I’m not joking. Much respect Viticci.

Bad ass dog

I love Jason Kottke’s description of this video:

Meet Jumpy the dog. This dog can jump higher than you, skateboard better than you, dive better than you, walk on its front paws better than you, surf better than you, catch a Frisbee better than you, do a backflip better than you, and ride a scooter better than you. Jumpy is better than you.

Windows 8 Banned by Top Benchmarking Site

In an odd turn of events, Windows 8 has been banned from HWBot, one of the world’s top benchmarking and overclocking communities. All existing benchmarks recorded by Windows 8 have been disqualified. This is due to a fault in Windows 8′s real-time clock (RTC), which all benchmarking tools use as a baseline.

This seems fixable, but to have your flagship OS banned from one of the top benchmarking sites is a remarkable turn of events.

Dave Mark Reporting for Duty…

Happy to help keep the ship running straight and true while Jim is on the road. Beard growth in progress.

Dave Mark will be helping me out on The Loop

iOS and Mac developer, Dave Mark, will be helping me post some things on The Loop over the next couple of months, as I begin my fall travels for speaking engagements and events. Dave is the author of Learn C on the Mac, as well as some other development books. You can follow Dave on Twitter.

Bitcoin thieves expose Android flaw to steal currency

Fans of the fledgling cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin got quite a shock in recent days as some clever thieves worked out yet another method to swipe virtual cash from unsuspecting users. The source of the theft was traced to a bug in Android, and now Google has acknowledged the flaw exists.

Another day, another Android flaw.

Bill Gates helping patent trolls

Gates has been prolific in filing patent applications over the past few years, mostly through a partnership with friends at Intellectual Ventures (IV). That’s one of the world’s largest patent holding companies, typically described as a patent troll because of its practice of acquiring patents and using them to file lawsuits (notably against Motorola), despite not using the patents to make technology of its own.

It would be funny if the company sued Gates.

Storm Sim

I’d like to thank Storm Sim for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. Storm Sim is the audio experience of a thunderstorm in your pocket. The app is more than a pre-recorded loop; it dynamically generates storms in real-time so it’s always unique and it never repeats.

It supports nearly infinite customization. Add more lightning, dial back the rain, or include a splash of freight train; get that perfect night’s sleep or just relax after a busy day.

Includes sleep and wake timers, AirPlay, LED Clock, add-on packs, and more. It’s a Universal app for iPhone and iPad that supports iOS 5 or higher.

Jim’s note: I showed this app to my wife and not only did she like it, she said she wished she had when the kids were smaller.