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Car rental service Avis has acquired car sharing service Zipcar in a $500 million deal.

The age of the netbook is over. Or is it?

I wanted to take a minute and thank all the readers of The Loop in 2012. You are the most incredible group of people and I really appreciate the fact that you take the time to read the site and offer your feedback. […]

Want great press for your startup, app or company? EZPR specializes in getting great stories written about what you’re working on.

“Dirty Harry” made it.

Americans suffer with slower, more expensive Internet access than other first-world nations like South Korea. Why?

Gizmodo: It seems like only yesterday we were planning for the Mayan apocalypse, but like so many other products, the 14th b’ak’tun (next era) has been delayed due to bugs and lack of pre-orders. No doubt, in 2013, several long-rumored … Continued

Ars Technica: Let us take a moment to remember a few of the companies, brands, and products that went to the great electronic recycling center in the sky in 2012. Some you may still have traces of in your sock … Continued

The New Yorker magazine has posted what they call “The Hundred Best Lists of All Time”. Leaving aside the impossibility of this actually being true, it’s an interesting “list of lists” nonetheless. It includes everything from the obvious (The Ten … Continued

Thanks to Macroplant for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop with iExplorer.

iExplorer makes a great gift this holiday season for any iPhone or iPad owner. The app’s one-touch music transfer seamlessly copies all your music and playlists from your device back into iTunes. Its messages feature allows you to search and export all your messages to PDF files or other formats. The app also offers access to your device’s voicemails, photos, and much more.

For while Liverpool has John Lennon Airport and New York JFK, the record company boss who discovered Black Sabbath is calling for Birmingham Airport to be named after Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne.

This has to happen.

Gerry Anderson, creator of “Supermarionation” TV shows like the Thunderbirds and live action SF entertainment like Space: 1999, has passed away.

Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook’s founder, doesn’t understand how Facebook privacy settings work either.

Unfortunately, not every crowdfunded project lives up to expectations. Often, these projects ship later than expected (roughly 75%) and sometimes the actual product doesn’t quite match what you’re shown in the pitch video. Why is that?

Some good advice.

Some of the best of the year.

The lawsuit, filed by San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, says customers who do not agree with Instagram’s terms can cancel their profile but then forfeit rights to photos they had previously shared on the service.

“In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us,'” the lawsuit says.

I’m not sure that this is worthy of a lawsuit, but clearly Instagram did not think through these changes.

The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows from home, Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said. Such devices range from gaming consoles like the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 to Blu-ray DVD players.

It’s amazing how often I find myself at GitHub these days. Whether it’s a WordPress plugin or a developer’s app, more people are using it all the time.

Made from scrap broadcast equipment. That looks like a happy kid.

Microsoft plans to open more retail stores in 2013, and has announced the locations.

I always liked Klugman. He was 90.

A new article on Ars explains how to move your iTunes library to a network attached storage device. Useful if you’re hitting the storage wall on skimpy SSD devices.

iExplorer makes a great gift this holiday season for any iPhone or iPad owner. The app’s one-touch music transfer seamlessly copies all your music and playlists from your device back into iTunes. Its messages feature allows you to search and export all your messages to PDF files or other formats. The app also offers access to your device’s voicemails, photos, and much more.

Ken Case gives some insight into what will be happening with Omni’s product line in 2013.

Fascinating.

Have you ever been outside in minus 40 degrees? Trust me – DON’T. But just in case you are, try this “fun” trick before you freeze to death.

Mashable:

For 62 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command has been tracking Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, as he makes his way around the world delivering gifts to all the good boys and girls.

This year, the tradition will continue, and now there are even more ways that you and your little ones can follow Father Christmas’ progress. A stunning 25 million people from around the globe are predicted to follow Santa in real-time online, on mobile phones and tablets, by email and phone.

Apparently, NORAD has dropped Google Maps and is now working with Microsoft Bing to follow Santa’s worldwide progress. Insert your own Apple Maps joke here.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between “Holland” and “The Netherlands” is? Of course you haven’t – not many have.

But just in case you have even a mild interest, this video by C. G. P. Grey does an amazing job of explaining this odd little quirk of geography. And, for even more explanation of geographic and historical anomalies, check out his “The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained”.