If I read this right, Bare Bones Software will take all of TextWrangler and fold it into the demo version of BBEdit. When your free 30-day demo expires, you’ll still have basic BBEdit features and ALL of the TextWrangler features.
Smart move, and respectful of the user base. And it still doesn’t suck.
Spotify this afternoon announced that it has hit a new milestone, reaching a total of 50 million paying subscribers. That’s up from 40 million in September, suggesting Spotify is growing at a rapid pace despite the surging popularity of Apple Music.
I wonder where all of these people are coming from. Are the Tidal and Pandora users or are they new users that have never used streaming services before? Clearly, there’s still a lot of growth in the streaming business.
Spotify is preparing to launch a lossless audio version of its streaming service, according to multiple sources. The offering, which is currently called Spotify Hi-Fi, will offer lossless CD-quality audio to users — similar to what Tidal offers in its Hi-Fi service.
I’m interested to see what the response will be to this service. Lossless isn’t something Apple ever seemed to be keen to offer users, but they may be forced into it if Spotify’s becomes popular.
The Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) team was debugging an issue causing the S3 billing system to progress more slowly than expected. At 9:37AM PST, an authorized S3 team member using an established playbook executed a command which was intended to remove a small number of servers for one of the S3 subsystems that is used by the S3 billing process. Unfortunately, one of the inputs to the command was entered incorrectly and a larger set of servers was removed than intended. The servers that were inadvertently removed supported two other S3 subsystems.
It’s good that Amazon got to the bottom of this and let all of its customers know exactly what happened.
Film School Rejects:
When filmmakers and other folks in the know make mention of “pure cinema,” they are referring to films that rely heavily on their imagery for storytelling. Cinema is, after all, a visual medium, not just a place for dialogue to come alive, and as such to distinguish itself from other storytelling media cinema must take advantage of its particular facets.
Alfred Hitchcock was perhaps the most significant purveyor of pure cinema in his time, he was a filmmaker that infiltrated your senses and emotions more often on a visual level than a written one.
I’ve been a huge Hitchcock ever since I found out one of my relatives worked with him in the 1950s. As the article points out, we think of him as a director of suspense films but his visual artistry and manipulation of your emotions through images was incredible.
CBC:
More than two million people have watched an eight-year-old goalie from Brampton bust a move — right on the ice.
A Facebook video of Noah Young dancing in his skates and goalie pads to the Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCall song ‘Juju On That Beat’ has gone viral in less than 24 hours.
Noah’s mom, Paige Rowswell, says the footage is from his novice AAA team’s last game on Saturday and was posted by someone on Monday.
Hockey isn’t the only thing we Canadians do on ice. We can bust a move, too.
DIY Photography:
2016 wasn’t exactly the best year ever, and it appears it was also pretty bad for photography. LensVid has issued a report on the camera industry facts from 2009 to 2016. When you compare camera manufacturing, sales, and shipment, you will get pretty unexpected and drastic differences. 2016 seems to be the worst year for cameras so far, with the drop of whopping 81% when compared to 2010? So, what happened? What caused these enormous drops?
If you are a camera manufacturer, these are absolutely brutal numbers. While the camera on your iPhone may not have killed the DSLR market (yet), it has certainly decimated the point and shoot and consumer DSLR segments. The industry had hoped mirrorless cameras would take off but the numbers show no evidence of that.
Microsoft:
Today, Outlook 2016 for Mac is adding support for Google Calendar and Contacts—available first to our Office Insider Fast community. We’re excited to be delivering on these highly-requested features for Mac users and matching our Outlook apps for iOS and Android, providing Google accounts with a more powerful way to stay in control of the day ahead.
With these updates, Outlook will now also sync your Google calendars and contacts. The experience will be very similar to what you are familiar with in Outlook today, with support for all the core actions—such as add, delete, edit time and location. All changes will update back and forth with Gmail or Outlook for iOS and Android, so everything is in sync across all your devices.
This additional interoperability can only be good for users and it’s great to see Microsoft opening up to other services like this. Gone are the days when all their customers used their products exclusively and helping users integrate “third party” services helps everyone.
AppleInsider:
The new iOS Home app webpage now boasts a layout consistent with other recently updated Apple web assets, notably pages dedicated to hardware products.
A video takes viewers through a day in the life of a HomeKit user. Waking up to her iPhone alarm, the actress says, “Good morning Siri,” invoking a scene that turns on a ceiling fan and raises house blinds. She taps on a Home app scene labeled “Breakfast Time,” which triggers an iHome smart plug connected to a coffee maker.
I love that Apple is doing this and I hope they do much more to promote HomeKit. People have endless frustrations in trying to create this kind of automation in their home and HomeKit promises to make things much simpler — in theory.
NYTimes:
Dozens of companies, including Amazon, Apple, IBM and Microsoft, have signed on to a Supreme Court brief supporting a transgender boy’s fight against his school district over which school bathrooms he may use.
The businesses, 53 in all, joined a brief that the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit organization supporting gay rights, planned to file on Thursday. The advocacy group is urging the Supreme Court to side with Gavin Grimm, a transgender student represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, in his case against the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia.
Very interesting to see the list of companies who have signed this brief.
Curiosity:
When you think about Paralympic sports, you probably imagine events identical to the Olympics but altered, maybe even made easier, to ensure people with disabilities can compete. That’s a common misconception—many disabled athletes compete in both the Olympics and Paralympics and outperform their able-bodied peers, no special accommodations required—and its absurdity is perhaps best symbolized by a single brutal sport: wheelchair rugby, which also goes by its original name of murderball.
You probably know it as “wheelchair rugby” but that name doesn’t do it justice. It really can be awfully, wonderfully brutal.
A federal appeals court has thrown out a jury verdict that had originally required Apple Inc to pay $533 million to Smartflash LLC, a technology developer and licenser that claimed Apple’s iTunes software infringed its data storage patents.
Not only did they win the appeal, the judge said the patents should have been ruled invalid.
Popular Mechanics:
Bootlegging gangsters of the 1920s and 30s firing a barrage of bullets at the G-men in pursuit—that’s the mental picture you might have of the Tommy gun. But while the Thompson submachine gun was designed for the trenches of World War I and gained notoriety as a gangster’s weapon, it was the battlefields of World War II that saw it win its place in history alongside the other best-known firearms of all time, with as many as two million made.
I loved old gangster movies as a kid (and even still) and you always saw the bad guys with a Tommy Gun. I had no idea of the history behind it.
Jalopnik:
Quick—which side of your car is your fuel filler on? No running outside to look, that’s cheating, and you might get hurt pulling your pants on. Chances are most of you at the very least had to take a moment to think about this. I suspect you won’t think long about what side your steering wheel is on. That’s because, unlike other crucial parts your car, there is no standardized place for what side you pump fuel into your car. Why not?
This is one of those things you don’t think about but, when it gets explained, makes a lot of sense.
Uber Technologies Inc Chief Executive Travis Kalanick on Tuesday said it was time for him to “grow up” and get help after a video was published showing him getting into an argument with a driver for the ride service who complained about pay rates.
Uber has certainly been in the hot seat of late.
This is truly one of those Apple Pencil accessories you never knew you needed until you see it in action. No more hunting for lost lightning caps, that pesky charging cap stays put, even when plugged in. No more rolling away from you when you set it down or storage difficulties, the custom pen clip keeps your Apple Pencil in place on the table and in the pocket. And no more slippery fingers, the leather grip provides a sturdy tactile feel while letting you be as precise as you want.
I do love Pad & Quill’s products.
Daily Dot:
Lego’s latest fan-designed collectible set is a team of five female NASA scientists.
Lego accepts idea proposals from fans every year, creating a shortlist of options based on support from the internet. The latest winner is a “Women of NASA” set designed by Maia Weinstock, featuring Lego minifigures of astronauts Mae Jemison and Sally Ride, astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, and mathematician Katherine Johnson.
This is pretty cool. Congratulations to the women honoured and to Lego for creating this set.
Try naming an iconic Canadian designer. You can’t? Here are three: Allan Fleming, who created the Canadian National Railway logo. Georges Huel, the guy behind the symbol for the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal. And Burton Kramer, whose work includes branding the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
I’m embarrassed to say, but I couldn’t have named three designers.
AppleInsider:
Revealed in early February, and launched on Tuesday, Facebook Video is a free app for the fourth generation Apple TV, with an emphasis on video shared across the social network. The app pulls videos from user feeds presented mostly without user commentary beyond emoticons.
In our testing, Facebook’s Video app works well, and wasn’t impaired by lengthy buffering. However as far as quality goes, what you see is restricted by how and when the video was sent to Facebook.
I’m not a heavy Facebook user but I can see how this could be very popular among those who like watching videos on and from the site.
Fast Company:
YouTube TV—a streaming service that will offer conventional TV channels streamed across the net to phones, tablets, PCs, and TVs. The company is only saying it will be available in “the coming months.”
But it’s disclosing most of the other vital facts about what the service will offer, and on paper, at least, they sound like a serious rival to existing services such as Sling TV, DirecTV Now, and PlayStation Vue.
This might be a good deal for some but no CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and the other channels from Time Warner and Viacom might be a dealbreaker for many.
Objective-See:
OverSight monitors a mac’s mic and webcam, alerting the user when the internal mic is activated, or whenever a process accesses the webcam.
OverSight constantly monitors a system, alerting a user whenever the internal microphone is activated, or the built-in webcam is accessed. And yes, while the webcam’s LED will turn on whenever a session is initially started, new research has shown that malware can surreptitious piggyback into such existing sessions (FaceTime, Sykpe, Google Hangouts, etc.) and record both audio and video – without fear of detection.
It’s free and offers a little peace of mind for the paranoid among us.
MIC:
You negotiate your starting salary, your rent and your raises. Why stop there? In fact, companies are taking advantage of the fact that customers are averse to conflict — and have started using “no haggle” pricing for products like cars, which consumers have historically been able to bargain for. Alas, even if these set prices make shopping less stressful, you’re likely paying more than you would have after haggling.
Here are three items you should always bargain for — and how to do it.
We don’t have a “haggling mentality” in North America but I’ve haggled on all three of the items mentioned in this piece and have literally saved thousands of dollars off the sticker price.
Alysha Tsuji posted this video on Twitter. Can you imagine this happening to you? It’s like if Michael Jordan showed up at your local hoop and called, “I got next….”
MIC:
Do you ever fantasize about a big move? Do you dream of a new city or state, a more exciting (or less stressful) new job and a beautiful new house or apartment? Indeed, a change of scenery is correlated with a boosted bottom line: One study found that people who relocate upon completing their education earn a median salary that’s $10,000 more per year than those that stay put after graduation.
If you’re thinking of making a move, a good place to start is U.S. News and World Report’s best states ranking, published Tuesday, which ranks the 50 states based on several key livability factors, including education, health care, economics, opportunity and infrastructure.
Different U.S. geographic regions were represented in the list of winners, from coastal New England to the plains of the Midwest. Here are the top 10.
This is an interesting list. Do you live in one of these ten states? Do you agree with their inclusion or placement?
I attended Apple’s shareholder meeting at the company’s Cupertino, California headquarters this morning as a member of the media. Apple CEO Tim Cook kicked off the meeting and received a standing ovation before giving a few brief remarks, including a look at next year’s meeting.
“This will be the last shareholder meeting in this room,” said Cook. “Next year, we will invite you out to the Steve Jobs Theater and we hope you can join us there.”
Of course, the Steve Jobs Theater is part of Apple’s new campus, Apple Park, which is scheduled to open in April.
As with all shareholder meetings, this one was about business first. There were a number of proposals that make up the formal part of the meeting. For example, the election of Apple’s board of directors, approval of executive compensation, and approval of Ernst and Young as the accounting firm. All of these were passed by shareholders.
There were a couple of shareholder proposals including a call for mandatory diversity on the board of directors and senior management of the company. There was also a proposal for Apple to disclose to shareholders all of the organizations it donates money to during the year. Both of these proposals were voted down by shareholders.
Moderated by Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Government Affairs, the formal part of the meeting came to a close after about 40 minutes.
The most entertaining part of the shareholder’s meeting was when Tim Cook came back for an informal Q&A with shareholders.
Cook started by giving a few remarks on the company’s products, noting the iPhone sold 78 million units last quarter, becoming the top selling smartphone.
“Our goal has never been to sell the most, but sell the best,” said Cook. “But we did sell the most last quarter.”
Cook also noted that Apple Watch had its best quarter ever and, if Services were its own company, it would be a Fortune 100 one. Apple has over 20 million Apple Music subscribers but Apple sells subscriptions to other services like Netflix. Cook said there were 150 million subscribers that interacted with Apple.
Once Cook’s remarks were finished, he invited shareholders to ask questions.
Rev. Jesse Jackson thanked Cook and Apple for protecting customer’s privacy and standing up for citizens.
One woman asked Cook for a “really smart dumb phone” and she wanted it to be round.
When asked about its commitment to the pro community, Cook noted how important those people were to Apple.
“There’s still a ton of revenue outside of iPhone,” said Cook. The Mac, Watch, services, iPad are all essential to Apple’s growth. You will see us do more in the pro area. The creative community is very important to us.”
One interesting question was about whether or not Apple had plans for a touchscreen Mac. At first Cook responded with, “We don’t like to talk about future products,” but he then made his position clear.
“Expect us to do more and more where people will view it as a laptop replacement, but not a Mac replacement—the Mac does so much more.”
The best quote I’ve ever heard from Cook on the argument for making a touchscreen Mac instead of, or in conjunction with, an iPad, came at the end of the shareholder’s meeting.
“To merge these worlds, you would lose the simplicity of one and the power of the other.” said Cook.
Well said.
Reuters:
The last time the entire Sistine Chapel was photographed for posterity, digital photography was in its infancy and words like pixels were bandied about mostly by computer nerds and NASA scientists.
Now, after decades of technological advances in art photography, digital darkrooms and printing techniques, a five-year project that will aid future restorations has left the Vatican Museums with 270,000 digital frames that show frescoes by Michelangelo and other masters in fresh, stunning detail.
The new photos were taken for inclusion in a new three-volume, 870-page set that is limited to 1,999 copies and marketed to libraries and collectors. The set, which costs about 12,000 euros ($12,700), was a joint production of the Vatican Museums and Italy’s Scripta Maneant high-end art publishers.
And people thought Apple’s $300 coffee table book was expensive.
April 7-9, Ellefson Coffee Co., the boutique Coffee brand of Grammy-Winning Megadeth bassist David Ellefson will hold a GRAND OPENING for its first brick and mortar ELLEFSON COFFEE CO shop in David’s hometown of Jackson, MN. In addition to Ellefson himself, who will be in attendance, the event will be co-hosted by special guest comedian, and THAT METAL SHOW co-host, Don Jamieson.
I have to order some of this coffee. The blend names are amazing.
Today, we’re continuing our commitment to give you more options to diversify and expand your library of games with Xbox Game Pass, a new gaming subscription service coming later this spring. Xbox Game Pass gives you unlimited access to over 100 Xbox One and backward compatible Xbox 360 games – all for $9.99 per month.
I’m betting this will be popular.
Daniel Dourvaris:
One afternoon as I was lying on my bed browsing the internet, my MacBook Pro suddenly turned off. I turned it back on and within a few seconds there was weird hissing sound, followed by white smoke and thin flames coming out of from the back.
I got up and ran with the laptop for the bathroom where I could put it on the ceramic tiles. Not more than ten seconds had passed and already the heat from the bottom of the laptop burnt my middle and ring fingers so badly I had to let it drop.
And:
There was a bang as I backed away causing the back to pop and smoke kept pouring out. It kept sizzling for a few minutes and then finally it stopped.
The house had filled up with smoke everywhere, the acidic stench of melted plastic made my eyes water.
Look at the pictures. Amazing. Looks like melted modeling clay.
This is scary.
It’s long been known that Lithium batteries can swell up inside a computer case, causing problems with, for example, the trackpad in some older designs, as they are being pressed from beneath. But that’s nothing compared to the danger of a situation like this.
[Via DF]
Nice find by Chance Miller. Got AirPods? Read this post.