Tunity:

Tunity allows you to hear a muted TV’s audio directly to your mobile device. It acts just like a wireless headset – no need to purchase an expensive set.

Scan the TV and let Tunity locate and match the audio and stream it straight to your iPhone or iPad.

I used this app on New Year’s Day during ESPN’s broadcast of the Rose Bowl game (GO DUCKS!) and it worked great. I can see it being very useful in a sports bar with dozens of TVs set to different game broadcasts but no audio to listen to.

Boing Boing:

Marriott is fighting for its right to block personal or mobile Wi-Fi hotspots—and claims that it’s for our own good.

The hotel chain and some others have a petition before the FCC to amend or clarify the rules that cover interference for unlicensed spectrum bands. They hope to gain the right to use network-management tools to quash Wi-Fi networks on their premises that they don’t approve of. In its view, this is necessary to ensure customer security and to protect children.

If Marriott’s petition were to succeed, we’d likely see hotels that charge guests and convention centers that charge exhibitors flipping switches to shut down any Wi-Fi not operated by the venue. The American hotel industry’s trade group is a co-filer of the petition, and Hilton submitted a comment in support: this isn’t just Marriott talking.

I don’t travel often but when I do, I won’t be staying in a Marriott any more.

I love finding a diamond in the rough. This list is from Rotten Tomatoes.

[Hat tip to Stu Mark]

The Old Fashioned is my drink of choice. With a single, large ice cube if you please. Via DF.

Happy New Year.

Mental Floss:

If you can’t check out these places in person, you can at least visit them virtually—no flights or long road trips required.

Do not go to this site unless you’ve got an hour or more to kill. Spectacular imagery. I’ve been to eight of the fifteen but this is an entirely different perspective of the places.

Johnson & Johnson:

Donate a Photo, the free donation app from Johnson & Johnson takes your photos and turns them into a way to do good. For every photo you share through Donate a Photo, Johnson & Johnson will donate $1 to the charity of your choice.

Your photos can do things like help a newborn breathe with Save the Children, get school supplies for a girl in Guatemala with Girl Up, or help a deployed service member call home with the USO.

The web site says your photos won’t be used “to sell any products or for any other commercial purposes.” This looks like a great way to donate to some of the associated charities.

The Atlantic:

Mission Control in Houston literally never sleeps now, and in one corner of a huge video screen there, a counter ticks the days and hours the Space Station has been continuously staffed. The number is rounding past 5,200 days.

It’s a little strange when you think about it: Just about every American ninth-grader has never lived a moment without astronauts soaring overhead, living in space. But chances are, most ninth-graders don’t know the name of a single active astronaut—many don’t even know that Americans are up there.

A long but fascinating article about the ISS. It’s a shame it has become so “ordinary” that most of us never think of or hear about what is going on and why it is so important to mankind’s future.

What are Samsung Experience Stores? Why, they’re a dying species, if the latest development in Samsung’s efforts to establish its own retail empire are any indication. The flagship Samsung store in London, occupying a large and prominent spot at the Westfield Stratford City shopping center, has now been “permanently closed,” ostensibly in response to the company’s slumping smartphone sales.

As much as Samsung tries to copy Apple, they prove time and again that they really don’t understand the market.

Everyone needs a Zamboni!

iMore:

Apple has introduced a new cancellation feature for digital content in several European countries, including the UK, Germany, and France. The new policy allows customers in applicable countries to essentially “return” digital purchases from iTunes, including apps, music, and books, for a refund within 14 days of purchase.

For those of you who want to ask, “When is this coming to the US/Canada?”, keep in mind this is mandated by Europe wide consumer protection policies and directives. It may never be available to those of us in the US and Canada.

Great to see Avid add Yosemite support to the latest release.

To be clear, I don’t think that people who work for Facebook are evil. Instead they are part of a corporate machine whose job is to control all of our attention, for as long as possible. On the other hand, Facebook having empathy would mean a wholesale cultural graft towards a different way of thinking, developing and interacting with people.

Great read here from Om Malik.

This is a funny story from Brad Reed at BGR. For what it’s worth, it does look like a crappy gadget.

It’s clear that Santa is no longer into cookies – he prefers Apples. It was a banner Christmas for the Apple, the company that started the mobile revolution with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007. Seven years later, Apple accounted for 51% of the new device activations worldwide Flurry recognized in the week leading up to and including Christmas Day (December 19th – 25th). Samsung held the #2 position with 18% of new device activations, and Microsoft (Nokia) rounded out the top three with 5.8% share for mostly Lumia devices.

That’s a pretty substantial gap between first and second.

Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Live and Sony Corp’s PlayStation Network, Internet services that video gamers use to play online, were hit by connection failures on Christmas Day, with the hackers Lizard Squad claiming responsibility.

That would really piss me off.

Bored Panda:

We all know that movie and TV producers use VFX (short for visual effects), but you’ll be surprised to learn just how extensively they’re used to create movie magic! These photos reveal just how much your favorite shows and movies rely on the magic of VFX.

These effects shots always fascinate me. I’m a sucker for any DVD that includes “here’s how we do it” extras.

Macworld:

I have 10 solid suggestions that will make your life better by shaving off the little irritations that remain in Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite and in Apple’s bundled software. A new Mac user will be happier than otherwise, and a veteran user looking to refresh a system will find the time and effort savings quite rewarding as well.

I use about half of these every single day. 1Password and TextExpander? I probably use once every few minutes.

Storehouse:

Sonja Hinrichsen is an artist who welcomes working outdoors–her tools are not pencil and paper, instead, they are her own feet and a layer of fresh snow. Her collaborators are the sun, shadows, and teams of hardy volunteers in snowshoes.

Imagine the effort that goes into the planning and execution of such large scale art. Beautiful, ephemeral stuff.

Open Culture:

Santa left a new Kindle, iPad, Kindle Fire or other media player under your tree. He did his job. Now we’ll do ours. We’ll tell you how to fill those devices with free intelligent media — great books, movies, courses, and all of the rest. And if you didn’t get a new gadget, fear not. You can access all of these materials on the good old fashioned computer.

I’ve used this site to grab a bunch of the classics of literature. I’ll get around to reading them eventually.

CNN:

Starting Wednesday afternoon, you can watch the controversial Sony Pictures comedy “The Interview” via YouTube, Google Play, the Microsoft Xbox video game console and a special Web site.

The movie will cost $5.99 to rent and $14.99 to buy. Sony said in a statement that it will become available at around 1 p.m. ET on Christmas Eve.

For those of you who absolutely need to see it.

Pixelmator for Mac and Pixelmator for iPad. Two powerful image editing apps that give you everything you need to create, edit, and enhance images. You can work seamlessly between Mac and iPad and even work effortlessly with Photoshop images.

In addition, Pixelmator for iPad is the sole and extremely proud winner of the App of the Year award, as a part of Apple’s Best of App Store 2014 selection.

The Next Web:

Another year, another great set of new apps that hit the iOS store.

Lots of great software in this list.

It’s hard to grasp exactly how big these waves are until the first surfer arrives about 45 seconds in. Then you mouth drops open.

I’ve heard good things about this software. Something to look at if you’re in the market.

Apparently-Amazon-doesn’t-like-hyphens. They-have-since-seen-the-error-of-their-ways-and-let-the-book-back-in.

Auto-Tune is a great app and one that I’ve used for many years. Sometimes it get used improperly, but that’s not the fault of the app.

Reuters:

Apple Inc has pushed out its first-ever automated security update to Macintosh computers to help defend against newly identified bugs that security researchers have warned could enable hackers to gain remote control of machines.

When Apple has released previous security patches, it has done so through its regular software update system, which typically requires user intervention.

When I got to my Macbook Pro this AM, I saw the “Security Update Installed. A new security update was installed on your Mac” message. I understand why Apple did this but, given how much crappy software Apple has released, I’m not happy about the company “reaching into” my computer and installing software without my permission or knowledge.

The Oatmeal:

Human beings are terrible drivers.

We drink. We doze. We text. In the US, 30,000 people die from automobile accidents every year. Traffic crashes are the primary cause of death worldwide for people aged 15-24, and during a crash, 40% of drivers never even hit the brakes. We’re flawed organisms, barreling around at high speeds in vessels covered in glass, metal, distraction, and death. This is one of Google’s “moonshots” — to remove human error from a job which, for the past hundred years, has been entirely human.

I love the idea of self-driving cars. As a motorcycle rider, it would be great to get “all the other half-lucid orangutans on their cell phones” out from behind the steering wheel.