Wired:

Street View, which launched in 2007, was conceived as a way to improve the user experience by letting people see what the area around their destination looked like, says Brian McClendon, Google Maps VP. “But we soon realized that one of the best ways to make maps is to have a photographic record of the streets of the world and refer back to those whenever there’s a correction,” McClendon said.

And as the data collected by Street View grew, the team saw that it was good for more than just spot-checking their data, says Manik Gupta, group product manager for Google Maps. Street View cars have now driven more than 7 million miles, including 99 percent of the public roads in the U.S. “It’s actually allowing us to algorithmically build up new data layers from information we’ve extracted,” Gupta said.

Those algorithms borrow methods from computer vision and machine learning to extract features like street numbers painted on curbs, the names of businesses and other points of interest, speed limits and other traffic signs. “Stop signs are trivial, they’re made to stick out,” McClendon said. Turn restrictions—which directions you can turn at a given intersection—are a big deal for navigation, but they’re trickier to capture with algorithms. Sometimes the arrows that tell you which turns are legal are painted on the road, sometimes they’re overhead. They can be different colors and sizes. “Lane markers are harder because they’re not consistent, but we’re getting much smarter about that,” McClendon said.

Beyond the algorithms is an application called Atlas that lets an army of Google map workers fine tune the data.

It’d be interesting to learn about Apple’s approach, see how far down this road that team has travelled. I’m wondering if Apple has learned from Google’s approach or if they created their own methodology from scratch.

What a great question. I know people that hate Uber, but I’m not convinced they actually know why. I think it’s probably the company’s business practices and the fact they have been creepy, more than anything.

For fuck sakes, the plaintiffs didn’t even own eligible iPods to bring the $350 million lawsuit.

Yes, I am breaking the gift guide by putting this here. Why? Because as you’ll notice, none of us recommended the Nexus 9 (edit: Cameron recommended it, but don’t listen to him), because it’s not exactly great. In fact, I’d argue no Android tablet is. The Shield Tablet is a lot of bang for your buck, but the screen kind of sucks and the battery life isn’t spectacular (standby is bad in particular) and it’s heavy, thick, and kinda ugly.

Much respect Android Police people.

As a user, when sites put text on an image, I like the blur or using the out-of-focus techniques. I always feel like contrast makes the text much easier to read, which makes my interaction with the site or app much better.

An interesting post from John Martellaro. I’ve wondered about this myself after using Apple Pay recently. Sometimes, I need to sign, while other times they just wave me on without any other interaction.

Photographer Brooks Kraft has been covering the White House since 2000, and over the years, he’s had plenty of opportunities to document the unveiling of Christmas decorations at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This year, however, he decided to mix things up a bit — and shot the event with Apple’s new iPhone 6.

Great story.

The tone-creation possibilities are now virtually infinite with BIAS. Download artists’ signature amps, or try out the latest and most popular matched amp models created by your fellow guitarists.

The new version of BIAS Desktop really is amazing. You can match a real amp using the software and then recall it whenever you want. The company made some new amp match models available to download from within the app.

PDFpen 2 is fully optimized for iOS 8 with an all new look and feel which runs on both iPad and iPhone. The enhanced toolbar and new editing bar make popular writing and highlighting features easy to access, with minimal taps. Import and export documents via iCloud Drive, making it easy to share cloud-based documents not just with the Mac, but with other apps on an iPad or iPhone. Use AirDrop to quickly send documents to other devices. PDFpen 2 supports palm and wrist protection when writing and highlighting. Documents can be secured with a password. Number pages automatically, including Bates numbering. All this and more make PDFpen 2 the perfect solution for all of your mobile PDF editing needs.

In short, we’re told that while Transmit iOS can download content from iCloud Drive, we cannot upload content to iCloud Drive unless the content was created in the app itself. Apple says this use would violate 2.23 — “Apps must follow the iOS Data Storage Guidelines or they will be rejected” — but oddly that page says nothing about iCloud Drive or appropriate uses for iCloud Drive.

I really don’t understand some of these decisions.

During an appearance before a U.S. appeals court on Thursday, lawyers for Samsung sought to have vacated the $930 million judgement awarded to Apple earlier this year in a landmark patent infringement lawsuit, saying the sum was “absurd.”

No, what’s absurd is that Samsung made so much money from copying Apple’s design. The judgement against Samsung should have been much more.

This is great, I love it.

Mashable:

The Calgary Hitmen held their 20th annual Teddy Bear Toss on Sunday, which allowed fans to throw 25,214 stuffed animals onto the ice in a heartwarming and entertaining display of charity.

The bears, which are bagged prior to tossing, are gathered up by the team and donated to more than 60 charities for the holiday season.

The Hitmen do this every year and it’s heartwarming and funny every time I see it.

Darrell asked Eddie to make him a replica of his famous black and yellow striped guitar a few months before he died.

When Van Halen arrived at the viewing, he had the guitar, but it wasn’t what Rita expected. He brought his original 1979 Bumblebee Charvel Hybrid VH2 to be placed inside Dimebag’s casket and buried along with him.

Much respect to Dime and Eddie.

Andy Ihnatko had the chance to visit the war room at NASA Goddard’s space weather lab. Take a look at this picture he snapped of what he calls “the single greatest browser tab ever rendered”. These three screens are processing a tremendous amount of data, all driven by a single Mac.

The funny thing is that these three huge HD screens, put together, have fewer than half of the 14.7 million pixels of the Retina iMac.

That’s astonishing.

Austin Mann is a noted iPhone photographer. You can check out his work here.

Mann put his experience to work to build a list of gifts for the iPhone photographer in your life.

Back in October, Jean-Claude Biver, president of LVMH’s watch division (makers of high end brands such as TAG Heuer and Hublot), had this to say about the Apple Watch:

“A smartwatch is very difficult for us because it is contradictory,” said Mr. Biver. “Luxury is supposed to be eternal … How do you justify a $2,000 smart watch whose technology will become obsolete in two years?” he added, waving his iPhone 6.

Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note:

At the medium to low end, the impact of Moore’s law was nearly lethal. Smartphone cameras have become both so good and so convenient…that they have displaced almost all other consumer picture taking devices.

And:

The biggest question is, of course, Moore’s Law. Smartphone users have no problem upgrading every two years to new models that offer enticing improvements, but part of that ease is afforded by carrier subsidies (and the carriers play the subsidy game well, despite their disingenuous whining).

There’s no carrier subsidy for the AppleWatch. That could be a problem when Moore’s Law makes the $5K high-end model obsolete. (Expert Apple observer John Gruber has wondered if Apple could just update the watch processor or offer a trade-in — that would be novel.)

We’ll see how all of this plays out with regard to sales. I’ll venture that the first million or so AppleWatches will sell easily. I’ll certainly buy one, the entry-level Sports model with the anodized aluminum case and elastomer band. If I like it, I’ll even consider the more expensive version with a steel case and ingenious Marc Newson link bracelet — reselling my original purchase should be easy enough.

Regardless of the actual sales, first-week numbers won’t matter. It’s what happens after that that matters.

I have a different set of expectations for a watch than I do for my iPhone. Fair or not, I expect my watch to last forever, or until it breaks beyond a reasonable cost of repair. I think it is key that Apple find a way to keep my first generation Apple Watch usable longer than my first generation iPhone. Perhaps that’s just old school thinking.

The New Yorker:

High oil prices would force governments, corporations, and consumers to find another way to power the world. It was a nice dream, but it’s over now. We are awash in cheap oil. Propelled largely by a boom in domestic production, due to hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,’’ and horizontal drilling, oil prices fell below $70 a barrel on Thursday—from a high in June of $112.12. Prices have fallen nearly every day for the past two months, and some economists predict that we will soon see oil selling for less than fifty dollars a barrel.

Domestic production isn’t the only reason prices are falling but it’s certainly true that cheaper oil just delays the inevitable.

Peter King:

The sight of players going into contact without helmets is jarring to observers accustomed to standard football drills. Players dive at tackling dummies, or push into blocking sleds, or wrap up a live runner without helmets. Their heads are bare, and so by instinct, they don’t lead with their heads.

“At first, tackling without a helmet doesn’t seem like the best idea, with the size of the guys we have around here,” says Cameron Shorey, a 6-5, 252-pound sophomore defensive end. “But when we started doing it, it made more sense to keep our heads out of the contact zone. We use our chests, use our legs, and absorb most of the force with our bodies, not our heads.”

I love football – I played it in high school – but I definitely believe we have to find ways to make it safer for the players’ brains.

Ever hear of Bill Fernandez? Maybe not, but his importance to Apple’s early success is undeniable. And it makes for a great Sunday read.

“When Woz designed something, most of the design was in his head,” said Fernandez. “The only documentation he needed was a few pages of notes and sketches to remind him of the overall architecture and any tricky parts. What the company needed was a complete schematic showing all the components and exactly how they were wired together.”

This is where Bill Fernandez comes in. This is his story.

This is for math geeks and musicians. From Scientific American:

When we tune an instrument, we would like for all our octaves and fifths to be perfect. One way to tune an instrument would be to start with a pitch and start working out the fifths above and below it it. We start with some frequency that we call C. Then 3/2 times that frequency is G, 9/4 times that frequency is D (an octave and a step above our original C), and so on. If you learned about the “circle of fifths” at some point in your musical life, then you know that if we keep going up by fifths, we’ll eventually land back on something we’d like to call C.

The same is true with circle of fourths. You should, logically, end up where you started, albeit an integer number of octaves higher or lower. But sadly, the math doesn’t work, and you end up tweaking those tunings to create perfect octaves. Read the article to follow the math. It’s enlightening.

My thanks to Algoriddim for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Algoriddim, creators of the world’s best selling DJ app with over 15 million downloads on iOS, has partnered with the AppStore and (RED) to bring you an exclusive (PRODUCT)RED version of djay. Available for a limited time only, djay 2 for iPhone and iPad contains a free (djay)RED skin as well as an exclusive (djay)RED sample pack available via In-App Purchase. From now through December 7, 100% of the proceeds when buying djay 2 or any of the (djay)RED In-App Purchases go to (RED)’s fight against AIDS.

Stand with Algoriddim, App Store, and (RED) to fight for an AIDS FREE GENERATION.

Get djay 2 on the App Store today: Mix Tracks. Save Lives.

Photofocus:

The folks at Duke University’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has produced a (free) comic book that explains copyright in both a clear and interesting way. Learn about the delicate balance between intellectual property and the public domain – the realm of material that is free to use without permission or payment.

Every “content creator” should understand the basics of copyright and this comic book is a clever and visually interesting way to do it.

Wired:

At a space shuttle launch, a front row seat is 3 miles away. If you want to get closer, you have two options: Be an astronaut, or be a camera. Photographer Dan Winters got a rare chance to explore the second option.

In 2011, after NASA announced it would be ending the shuttle program, Winters received permission to document the final launches of the space shuttles Discovery, Endeavor and Atlantis. He’s compiled that work in the book Last Launch. A shuttle launch is a violent event, yet Winters captured them with the same stunning intimacy found in his portraits. And while he had unparalleled access to make that happen, the logistics were tremendous. At WIRED by Design, the photographer explained how he got the shots.

Both the above video and the Wired article are fascinating looks at both the technical and emotional side of photographing these last moments of history.

This is Colossal:

The game units have been designed and approved for use by the city of Hildesheim, Germany where they were installed two weeks ago. Rebranded as the ActiWait, the devices aren’t just a clever way to pass the time while waiting for cars, hopefully they disuade impatient pedestrians from darting through traffic.

Who said Germans don’t have a sense of humour and fun?

Six Colors:

Apple’s getting its lunch eaten by competitors, and the hits just keep on coming. The most recent numbers have Google’s Chromecast and Amazon’s Fire TV pulling ahead of Apple’s set-top box, and you know what? They should be. Right now, they’re better products: they have support for more services, they have more flexibility, and they’re cheaper.

The Apple TV, on the other hand, hasn’t gotten a meaningful upgrade since 2010.

He’s not wrong. I used to recommend the Apple TV wholeheartedly but it’s far too long in the tooth now.

Have you ever walked by a restaurant and seen various dishes in the window, designed to give you a visual sense of the menu? Now imagine that hyper-realistic fake food as a necklace, earrings, hair clip, etc.

Just go to the web page. The default language is Japanese, but there’s a language popup menu in the upper left corner that will run everything through Google Translate.

I will be ordering some of these things for my secret Santa gifts.

This is a thoughtful, non-judgmental analysis of the design of Apple Maps and Google Maps, running on iOS.

Millions of people have done 3rd party application design. If you expand the pool to people who have sketched out app ideas, the number is probably closer to tens of millions. But how many people have designed 1st party apps? Ones that come on the device rather than being a download? I’d wager the number is less than a thousand.

To count this number, you count Google, Apple, Microsoft, plus companies like Blackberry and Samsung, each with their own design teams. And even at large companies, the design teams aren’t very large. No where near as large as the engineer corps. There’s just not that many of us. And as someone who’s been in this tiny club, let me tell you, it’s absolutely nuts.

See, as a first party designer, you don’t get to do whatever you want. Because everything you do is imitated (whether explicitly or implicitly) by potentially millions of other designers and developers. And you need apps on your platform to be coherent and follow certain rules of the road.

Fantastic read.