Uncategorized

ScreenCastsOnline

Written by

Many thanks to ScreenCastsOnline for sponsoring The Loop this week. Established in 2005, ScreenCastsOnline is acknowledged as one of the primary online training resources for the Mac and iOS, publishing two brand new video tutorials each and every week. ScreenCastsOnline … Continued

Is Google Drive worse for privacy than iCloud, Skydrive, and Dropbox?

Written by

The Verge:

The Google Drive cloud storage service launched yesterday to much fanfare, but as with any new Google product, there are important questions about how the company will actually use personal data uploaded to the system. Google sells ads against your data, after all, and the more data you give the company, the more opportunity it has to screw up. That means the Google Drive terms of service and privacy policy are critically important, and there’s been a lot of selective interpretation floating around the web in the past 24 hours — and a lot of comparisons to the privacy policies of competitive services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.That’s great — all web services should be subject to harsh scrutiny of their privacy policies — but a close and careful reading reveals that Google’s terms are pretty much the same as anyone else’s, and slightly better in some cases. Let’s take a look.

You might be surprised to see the answer.

Google’s Andy Rubin on the hot seat

Written by

Dan Farber:

In 2006 email thread, Rubin said that Sun owned the intellectual property and brand for Java and that the Java.lang APIs were copyrighted. Over the next several years his thinking changed.

Your thinking may change, but the truth remains constant.

State of Creativity

Written by

Research firm StrategyOne conducted surveys of 5,000 adults, 1,000 per country, in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan.The research was designed to identify attitudes and beliefs about creativity and provide insights into the role of creativity in business, education and society.

ScreenCastsOnline [Sponsor]

Written by

.

Established in 2005, ScreenCastsOnline is acknowledged as one of the primary online training resources for the Mac and iOS, publishing two brand new video tutorials each and every week.

ScreenCastsOnline members automatically receive a new Mac or iOS video tutorial (or both) each week, as well as access to a huge video library of over 340 Mac tutorials and 50 iOS tutorials, covering the latest Apple and third party software.

Special offer for all “The Loop” readers – 20% discount off the first payment for any monthly, quarterly or annual membership.

More recently, ScreenCastsOnline has launched a number of low cost tutorial apps in both the Mac and iTunes App Stores.

SCOtutor for Lion – For Mac users upgrading to Lion SCOtutor for Mac – For new Mac users wanting to learn about the Mac from scratch. SCOtutor for iPad – For new iPad users – all about the iPad and iOS from first principles. SCOtutor for iPhoto on iOS – Learn all about the new iPhoto app for the iPad and iPhone.

All SCOtutor apps include an optimised video player, full chapter navigation, English subtitles and many other unique features. All apps are available on both the Mac and iOS devices.

More information about the special ScreenCastsOnline membership discount or the SCOtutor tutorials apps is available on the Web site.

The Border Collie

Written by

This is an old article, but it’s really funny. And true. I have a pair of one-year-old Border Collies and everything in this article describes them perfectly. Luckily my last dog was a Border Collie too, so I know what I’m in for as they get older.

Border Collies have a trait called, “THE EYE.” The eye is a hypnotic stare that the BC turns on anything it wants to control. BC owners talk about “THE EYE” with reverence and love to expound on the way the dogs use it to control sheep. It would be fine if these dogs used “THE EYE” only with sheep, but the BC turns “THE EYE” on anything it might engage to produce fun or work.Recently I dog-sat a BC for the weekend. Two days. Forty-eight hours of being stared at. No blinking. Unwavering scrutiny. In human culture, staring is wrong. Parents invest incredible energy teaching children not to stare. Being stared at briefly is uncomfortable. Try an hour with a Border Collie if you want to experience serious discomfort.

Facts, 360 B.C.- A.D. 2012

Written by

Chicago Tribune:

To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are communists.Facts held on for several days after that assault — brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.

A funny, if sad, commentary on our “Post-Facts Era”.

Scoople

Written by

Many thanks to Scoople for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. It’s an app I’ve been using for some time.

Cast your vote on the most relevant Apple stories of the day. Predict how others in the community will vote. Win when you’re right. Get the free Scoople app.

The quietest place on Earth

Written by

They say silence is golden – but there’s a room in the U.S that’s so quiet it becomes unbearable after a short time.The longest that anyone has survived in the ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is just 45 minutes.

As the newspaper industry falls

Written by

Bryan Larrick: The downfall of newspaper publishing is not something to shrug one’s shoulders at, like with Blockbuster falling apart. It is a genuine tragedy.

Mandatory “Big Brother” black boxes in all new 2015 cars

Written by

Infowars:

A bill already passed by the Senate and set to be rubber stamped by the House would make it mandatory for all new cars in the United States to be fitted with black box data recorders from 2015 onwards.Although the text of legislation states that such data would remain the property of the owner of the vehicle, the government would have the power to access it in a number of circumstances.Given the fact that the same bill also includes a controversial provision that would empower the IRS to revoke passports of citizens merely accused of owing over $50,000 in back taxes, stripping them of their mobility rights, could the mandatory black boxes or a similar technology be used for the same purpose?

The story gets a little hyperbolic with nightmare scenarios but some will still find this bill worrisome – I do.

Anticipating Space Shuttle’s arrival, old warplanes ship out

Written by

New York Times:

On Wednesday morning, three vintage warplanes were trussed up and hoisted over the port side of the ship for a barge ride up the Hudson River to a museum near Schenectady, N.Y. They had to go to make way for the new star attraction: Enterprise, the prototype for the space shuttles that is due to arrive in New York City next week.

Those lucky enough to live in Washington DC saw the Shuttle Discovery fly over earlier this week. The Enterprise will do her own New York City fly over on Monday, weather permitting.

At London Olympics, NBC says, ‘If cameras are on it, we’ll stream it”

Written by

New York Times:

All 32 sports at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London will be streamed live at nbcolympics.com.“The hot topic is always, ‘Why don’t you show all your sports live?’” said Rick Cordella, vice president and general manager of NBC Sports Digital Media. “We wanted to take care of that.”During the London Games, nbcolympics.com will be able to handle as many live streams as there are live events. “Whatever is on schedule that day,” Cordella said, “if cameras are on it, we’ll stream it.”

Great news for those of us who like sports that aren’t considered marque events. I’m a big fan of little or never shown Summer Olympic sports like Fencing, Judo and Velodrome Cycling.

Fake Instagram app infects Android

Written by

Tempted to try out the much talked about Instagram app? Well, be careful where you get it from – as malware authors are distributing malware disguised as the popular app.

It’s great to be open.

RIM says YouMail missed its opportunity to be relevant

Written by

Alec Saunders, Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry, talking to YouMail CEO, Alex Quilici:

Alex, one (former) CEO to another, one entrepreneur to another – I think it’s time to hang up the spurs cowboy. From where I sit, it looks like YouMail needed to pivot five years ago to remain relevant, and you missed the window.

Nobody at RIM can ever talk to any company about missing the opportunity to be relevant.

[Via Curious Rat]

The most ridiculous slow motion footage ever

Written by

The Next Web:

This video is from the Danish TV show Dumt & Farligt. It takes a Phantom Flex, a camera that can run anywhere from $50k-$150k, and applies it to some of the silliest and most awesome 2500 Frames-per-second slow-motion footage I’ve seen.

Talk about “fun with explosives and a high speed camera”!

Austrian village to vote on name change

Written by

The Telegraph:

The 104 residents of the village will cast their votes later this week on whether to alter the name.“People are now willing to discuss changes to the spelling of the name,” Franz Meindl, the village’s mayor, said in a television interview. “But first all Fuckingers have to agree on whether want to change it or not.” For centuries the tiny village in northern Austria lived life in happy obscurity, but life changed when US troops, stationed in the area at the end of the Second World War, discovered it, and since then the village’s name has been a constant source of amusement for tourists and irritation for locals.At least 13 £250 road signs bearing the village’s name have been stolen, and the sight of semi-naked women posing for photographs beside signs has become a common sight.

Brings to mind the “interestingly” named Canadian town of Dildo.

Sizzling Bacon Candles

Written by

ThinkGeek:

Short of whipping out a skillet and doing a quick fry-up, how can we enjoy that wonderful meaty sweet and smokey aroma without the temptation and subsequent belt-busting and heart-clogging richness of actual cured-pork ingestion? Bacon scented candles, of course!These premium scented candles are long-lasting and made from actual rendered bacon fat using a top-secret process that preserves bacon’s natural aromas and essential oils.

Mmm…Bacon. I have to imagine the only people who would buy these would be single guys. Would any woman allow you to fill up her home with the smell, however delicious, of bacon?