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The Surface tablet isn’t the first Microsoft product to be called Surface. But why recycle the name?

Staffers for Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, met with Google officials on Monday to discuss privacy issues related to the camera-equipped planes. They plan to meet with Apple on Friday.

Parislemon:

I’m just now catching up on the news about the new Microsoft Surface. Reactions seem mixed, tilting slightly positive or at least hopeful. People seem to want to believe Microsoft can pull this off and that’s understandable — competition is good, and right now, the iPad has no competition. My hunch is that whatever tablet Google announces shortly will be more of a Kindle Fire competitor than an iPad competitor. This Surface is a full-on iPad competitor.On the surface — see what I did there? — the thing seems compelling. It’s a tablet that runs Windows, and Office, and has a keyboard. There’s no denying that the keyboard/cover hybrid is a smart thing to try.Two years ago, I think this thing would have been pretty competitive. Today? Color me very skeptical.

Everyone, especially the tech media, should be skeptical about this tablet. Microsoft? Shut up and ship.

MG Siegler:

Most are stories written with little or no research done. They’re written as quickly as possible. The faster the better. Most are just rehashing information that spread by some other means. But that’s great, it means stories can be written without any burden beyond the writer having to read a little bit and type words fast. Many are written without the writer even having to think.

I am glad that I don’t make my money based on pageviews. I say what I want, when I want because I believe it to be true. That’s it.

io9:

Check out this elegant infographic by Invader Xan, molecular astrophysicist and master of ceremonies at astronomy blog Supernova Condensate. Here, silhouetted in colors that correspond to their present state of operation, you’ll find twenty iconic spaceships and space stations situated beneath the only fictional spacecraft of the bunch: the U.S.S. Enterprise.What’s great about this image is that all the spacecraft have been drawn to scale. This gives you a real sense of perspective.

I love that he has listed the Starship Enterprise as “in development”.

This is the first video I’ve seen online, so I thought I’d post it. I was playing an EVH Wolfgang guitar through an Avid Eleven Rack. I was very pleased with the tone from the Eleven Rack. […]

Michael Fey was kind enough to post some pics from the beard WWDC party last week.

They are late to their own gigs and often disappoint when they do show up.

With Microsoft news today, I thought we could take a look back at this gem. […]

Sidecar re-imagines the traditional phone call for your smartphone.

Sidecar lets you call and share:

• See What I See Video: Share amazing real-time videos.

• Photos: Snap brilliant pictures, or share photos from the phone’s gallery.

• Locations: See where you are in relation to others, and share locations.

• Contact: Information: Pass along and integrate contacts from their phone’s address book.

• Whisper Text: Send a private text message to another Sidecar user during a call.

And the price is unbeatable:

• Sidecar users can call each other anywhere in the world for free

• Sidecar users can call regular phones numbers in the US or Canada for free over Wi-Fi.

Download the app for free in the App Store:

This is hilarious. Joseph Rooks made a Tumblr blog where people can download my beard and put it on other people.

Much respect Joseph.

Linux progenitor Linus Torvalds has strong words of condemnation for Nvidia’s support (or lack thereof) for Linux with its “Optimus” GPU switching technology.

This is Piezo:

Piezo helps you record any audio on your Mac. Whether you want to record a Skype conversation, save a streaming radio program, or just record a quick voice memo, Piezo can do it. It runs on Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 and it can capture audio from any application (yup, even sandboxed App Store apps).

Download Piezo free, then buy it in the App Store or directly through our store.

TIME:

It’s one of the many great things about the NHL’s Stanley Cup: Every member of the winning team gets to keep the trophy for a full day. What they do with it is for the most part their business, so long as they stay on the right side of the law.So it’s hard not to watch this video of Los Angeles Kings captain Dustin Brown’s children, Jake and Mason, drinking chocolate milk out of the gigantic trophy’s cup without imagining the gigantic awwwws going up from all corners of the Internet.

There’s great history and tradition that goes along with the Stanley Cup (did you know players whose names aren’t on the Cup won’t touch it or be photographed with it?) and the idea each player gets the Cup for a day to share with friends, family and fans is certainly one of them.

A recent CIO Journal post at the Wall Street Journal has us wondering just how stupid some bloggers at mainstream tech pubs really are.

Philiip Elmer-DeWitt takes a look at Mark Gurman, an 18-year old wunderkind writing for 9to5Mac.

For the first time, The Beard got in on the WWDC party action by putting on his own bash. And what a bash it was. Imagine several hundred developers, open bar, live band…AND KARAOKE! Yes, it was just as much … Continued

This is Piezo:

Piezo helps you record any audio on your Mac. Whether you want to record a Skype conversation, save a streaming radio program, or just record a quick voice memo, Piezo can do it. It runs on Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.7 and it can capture audio from any application (yup, even sandboxed App Store apps).

Download Piezo free, then buy it in the App Store or directly through our store.

PandoDaily:

When HBO does come around to breaking free of cable, how late will it be? Clearly the ideal time to make this move is right this minute. Or, actually, it was two weeks ago, just before the Game of Thrones finale. In addition to the immense popularity of that nerd-bait show, HBO currently benefits from a struggling Netflix and Hulu, and a TV industry that hasn’t yet been completely remade by Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. If it had booked a few million non-cable subscribers now, and then slowly expanded on that effort over the next few years, the company could well have set itself up as a leading player in the new, many-device, multi-payment model TV world.But instead HBO is dithering, playing chicken with an unyielding future. How disastrous will this course prove? When HBO finally, inevitably decides to offer non-cable subscription plans, will it be just fashionably late, at a point where it can salvage its future? Or will it be so perilously tardy that it can’t catch up? At the moment, when it comes to streaming, the men who lead HBO seem bent on sticking with this second strategy—better never than late, as they see it.

Thanks to Meechu for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.

Headed to WWDC next week? Leave your business cards at home for shimming tables. Take Meechu with you on your iPhone and connect to all the cool people you meet quickly and easily.

When you meet someone, open Meechu and tap the broadcast button. Anyone else running Meechu will automatically exchange information with you. There’s no ceremony, no extra services to sign up for. It’s quick, easy and simple.

Meechu is on sale for $1.99 in the App Store through the end of WWDC.

Matt Alexander is the owner and editor of ONE37.net, a writer, a technology enthusiast and a contributing writer for The Loop. Last week, amidst the furor of competing announcements, Microsoft unveiled its latest innovation in the living room: Smart Glass. … Continued

It’s hard to believe, but three years ago today I started The Loop. We’ve gone through a lot of changes since then, many of the biggest in the last year.

I suppose the most significant change the site has seen was moving from a cluttered ad-filled design to a clean, mostly text site. I removed 99 percent of the ads on the site and joined The Network, which allowed the site to run with only one small ad.

Peter Cohen, my best friend and colleague of the last 20 years, has continued to help a great deal on the site with his writing and advice. I can’t thank him enough. This year we also added Your Mac Life’s Shawn King to The Loop, bringing a different perspective to the posts you see on everyday.

With the site design changes I also launched a membership option for readers. I know that $3 a month doesn’t sound like a lot, but it helped me buy new servers and have the site on one of the best content delivery networks in the world. These changes brought page load times down from over 10 seconds to 1 second in many parts of the world.

A membership doesn’t offer you fancy gifts or coupons, but it’s not about that. It’s about supporting independent writing. Thank you for your support.

My biggest thanks goes out to you, the reader. By helping to spread the word about what we do here at The Loop, traffic has increased, sponsorships from companies and independent developers have increased and we are successful.

Thank you.

Jim

CNET: While the Intel representatives wouldn’t allow us to hold the unannounced device or talk about in-depth specs, we were able to pry out some information. How, and in what goddamn world, is that a ‘Hands On’?

Dan and Jim discuss next week’s WWDC, the LinkedIn password leak, MacBook Air copycats, and much more!Sponsored by Appsfire, Squarespace (coupon code DANSENTME6), and Hover (coupon code DANSENTME for 10% off).

Legendary SF writer Ray Bradbury has passed away at 91 years old.

Nathaniel Beard, of the world’s premier beard-faced band The Beards, has hit back at Victorian top cop Ken Lay who wants to ban beards and ponytails. Mr Lay is facing an investigation into whether his campaign to defoliate the entire police force is a breach of human rights.

Get ’em beard-faced Aussie.

During Airtime’s launch event, Parker and Fanning said they wanted to recapture the excitement and energy of the popular AOL chat rooms of the 1990s – which strikes me as a dubious goal at best – but still provide some safety for users.