The “Bing Image Widget,” released on Aug. 22, gives publishers the ability to create a panel on their websites that displays digital images supplied by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, according to the lawsuit.

Rather than draw from a pool of licensed images, the lawsuit claimed, the product grants access to the billions of images that can be found online, without regard to whether the photos are copyrighted.

According to some recent comments from chief financial officer Anthony Noto, however, the company is doing a lot more than not ruling it out — it sounds like a done deal.

Sigh.

Daily Dot:

Basically, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was too good to mock. And as it turns out, there’s a reason for that. The film’s directors are fans of Honest Trailers, and they purposefully engineered the film so it would be harder to parody.

In a recent interview with Collider, Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo were asked how they felt about achieving a positive Honest Trailers review.

I’m a huge fan of Honest Trailers and love the fact they had a positive influence on a summer blockbuster.

But in a statement, a spokesman for Twitter appeared to dispute Everett’s version of events, saying the company has no problem with Twitpic’s name.

“We’re sad to see Twitpic is shutting down,” the spokesman said. “We encourage developers to build on top of the Twitter service, as Twitpic has done for years, and we made it clear that they could operate using the Twitpic name. Of course, we also have to protect our brand, and that includes trademarks tied to the brand.”

So, Twitter would let them keep the name, but not the trademark? That’s how it seems to me.

In a note to investors on Thursday, White, of Cantor Fitzgerald, used the words “underwhelming,” “rushed,” and “half-baked” to describe Samsung’s announcements, which also included the Gear VR partnership with Oculus, a Gear S smartwatch, and the new Note Edge handset with a side-facing display. White said he believes Samsung’s announcements were a subpar attempt at garnering buzz for its products before Apple holds its own presentation next Tuesday, Sept. 9.

Analyst Brian White isn’t the only one saying this about Samsung’s announcements. As I said yesterday, things could get rough for Samsung in the coming months.

With Sonic Port™ VX, it’s finally possible to record complete songs anywhere inspiration strikes. The guitar/bass input features 120dB of dynamic range for incomparable tone and best-in-class dynamics. A stereo line input lets you record keys, drum machines, DJ mixers and other sources. Zero-latency monitoring means you can record without distraction. And with professional-level 1/4” stereo outputs, you can easily connect studio monitors and perfect your mixes. With Sonic Port VX, the world is your studio.

Sonic Port VX brings three built-in professional condenser microphones to the party. Matched stereo mics let you record live performances with remarkable clarity.

This is an impressive looking device. I haven’t heard it yet, but I have one of the original Sonic Ports and love it.

If you’re worried at all about the security of your Apple ID, you should have two-step verification enabled. Allyson Kazmucha does a great job of explaining what it is and how to enable it.

We can’t share the full list of developers yet (we just cracked 100!). But we can show you nearly 20 apps that are already working on integrating 1Password’s iOS 8 App Extension for fast, one-tap logging in and even updating your passwords!

The 1Password extension is going to be one of the most important extensions on iOS 8. Security and having safe passwords are always a pain in the ass, but having easy access to 1Password through this extension will make things much easier. I’m looking forward to it.

There you have it, you can watch the event for yourself. No need for any live blogs for this one.

With Dan still out, Shawn King and Jim talk about Apple’s upcoming September 9th event, the large scale celebrity iCloud hack, how to keep your passwords safe with 1Password, Marshall amps, and more!

Sponsored by Iconic by Ridgewood Publishing (visit iconicbook.com/5by5 for 20% off select editions of this beautiful coffee table book all about Apple).

Looks like there are a lot of great changes to WordPress 4.0. I’ll test it out before installing it on The Loop, but the video shows some nice new features.

A few weeks ago Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. This came as a shock to us since Twitpic has been around since early 2008, and our trademark application has been in the USPTO since 2009.

Damn Twitter.

This is a great list of things to do on World Beard Day like bar-b-q, change a tire, build an all-bearded human pyramid and other fun activities us bearded men do.

Justin Perkins:

There is much more to mastering than just the sonic aspects and it varies between different release formats. It’s also gotten more complex as digital distribution evolves, CDs become the minority, and vinyl makes a comeback.

What a great resource Justin put together. A few tips you may not have known about mastering songs for all the different audio formats available.

Quartz:

Whoever is the first to develop reusable rockets will have a huge advantage in the business of putting things into space: It could chop tens of millions of dollars off the cost of a launch, instantly putting the company with the technology miles ahead of its competitors.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the leader when it comes to actually building these devices: It’s tested a vertical take-off and landing of a small-scale rocket numerous times, and has begun including a vertical landing gear on its satellite launches. While the company hasn’t landed a full-size rocket yet, each experimental attempt teaches the company more about the challenges of landing a rocket.

But someone else has the patent on this kind of technology: Blue Origin, the space exploration company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. While the company hasn’t developed its technology as far as SpaceX, which already is launching satellites for commercial and government clients, it has been proceeding with a contract from NASA to develop a rocket-and-spacecraft combination. But before it launched a single rocket, it obtained a business method patent for a reusable launch vehicle, which is what’s pictured above.

Now they’re going to duke it out in court. SpaceX is challenging the Blue Origin reusable rocket patent. Big stakes here.

Amazing. It’ll be interesting to see how big this line gets. If anyone is in NYC and happens by the 5th avenue Apple Store, please tweet me (@davemark) with the current line count. I’ll retweet.

First, there’s this nugget:

According to a designer who works at Apple, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, in bragging about how cool he thought the iWatch was shaping up to be, gleefully said Switzerland is in trouble — though he chose a much bolder term for “trouble” to express how he thought the watchmaking nation might be in a tough predicament when Apple’s watch comes out.

If anyone can change the perception of wearables and ugliness, it’s definitely Apple. The company’s iPod turned the once-geeky MP3 player into a fashion accessory, the iPhone made smartphones into a status symbol, and the iPad took tablet computers, once the nerdiest gadget of all, and made them coveted and sexy accessories.

And this one:

Last year Credit Suisse issued a report that estimated the wearable industry could become a $30 billion to $50 billion industry over the next three to five years. But yet another report, by Beecham Research, warned that in order for wearable tech to become sought-after by consumers, tech firms need to figure out the fashion side of the equation.

“Unless there is a holistic morphing of technology and aesthetics, we will not harness the full potential of wearable tech innovation,” Claire Duke-Woolley, Beecham’s fashion technology analyst, said in the report.

This is one of Apple’s hallmarks. Enter a business still trying to invent itself (MP3 players, digital music sales, smart phones) and bring aesthetics and simple focused functionality to the mix.

If that designer’s leak is to be believed, Jonathan Ive might be right on the money here. Fine watches are a passion for many people. It’ll take something really special to get those people to turn away from Tag Heuer and the like. If Apple does indeed deliver the goods here, the traditional watchmakers may well be in trouble.

This is more than a passing collaboration; it’s a long term project with long term goals. Marshall and Softube already have several new products under development.

Okay, this is exciting news for fans of Marshall amps. Softube is great at making software plugins, so I expect them to do a really good job at producing some Marshall sounds.

Mobile phone analysts said that, while packed full of hundreds of features and many of the latest hardware specs, there is little in the Note 4 to excite new users.

Jokes aside, this is a serious issue for Samsung, and one that couldn’t come at a better time for Apple. With disappointing sales of the Galaxy S5, the last thing Samsung needed was another failure, especially with Apple announcing new products next week. It certainly doesn’t sound like the Note 4 will be a blockbuster success.

Netflix speeds became so slow in December 2013 and January 2014 that customers grew irate, Netflix said in its petition. Calls made to Netflix’s customer support center about slow-loading videos more than quadrupled during those months.

It’s sad when people are forced to cancel their subscription to Netflix because the Comcast speeds were so slow. No wonder Netflix decided to pay Comcast; they really had no other choice.

Apple released an updated version of their App Store review guidelines in preparation for the release of iOS 8. Whoever wrote the prose for these guidelines deserves a pat on the back. They are clear and written for humans. For example, here are the main bullet points:

• We have lots of kids downloading lots of Apps. Parental controls work great to protect kids, but you have to do your part too. So know that we’re keeping an eye out for the kids.
• We have over a million Apps in the App Store. If your App doesn’t do something useful, unique or provide some form of lasting entertainment, or if your app is plain creepy, it may not be accepted.
• If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you’re trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don’t want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
• We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, “I’ll know it when I see it”. And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
• If your App is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.
• If you attempt to cheat the system (for example, by trying to trick the review process, steal data from users, copy another developer’s work, or manipulate the ratings) your Apps will be removed from the store and you will be expelled from the developer program.
• This is a living document, and new Apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your App will trigger this.

If your app is creepy (see “I’ll know it when I see it“), no need to apply.

Brings to mind this quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt [h/t Kyre Lahtinen]:

“Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

There are a number of sections added to the guidelines, including those for Extensions, HomeKit, HealthKit, and TestFlight.

Thinking about getting into the HealthKit business? Be sure to read that section completely, as well as the referenced sections of the iOS Developer Program License Agreement (by the way, Apple, that link is broken). I think it’s a matter of time before the App Store collides with HIPAA, Title II of which concerns itself with “maintaining the privacy and security of individually identifiable health information as well as outlining numerous offenses relating to health care and sets civil and criminal penalties for violations”.

Great explanation of lossless compression from Kirk McElhearn:

“Imagine that you have a text file with, say, the complete works of William Shakespeare. This text file contains 908,774 words, and takes up 5.6 MB on disk. If I compress the file using OS X’s built-in Zip compression, the same file takes up just over 2 MB, or about 36 percent of the original file size.

“Lossless compression for audio works in a similar way. Unlike, say, AAC or MP3 files—where psychoacoustic models are used to determine which parts of the audio can be removed without affecting what you hear—lossless compression formats simply compress all of the data in a file. When played back, these files are decompressed on the fly, so the compressed data becomes audio data again, in a bit-perfect equivalent to the original. Nothing is lost, just as none of Shakespeare’s words are lost when I decompress the zipped file.”

There’s value to storing your music files in a lossless format. Considering it? Read the article.

This is a postmortem, lessons learned from a sequence of attempts to build a promo video for a specific iPhone app. Some terrific insight into the process. My favorite:

I used a chroma keyed hand that I found on YouTube rather than filming my own.

BoingBoing:

Twitter opened its analytics platform to every user on August 27, allowing all of us — not just verified users and those with advertising accounts — to track how many people viewed and acted upon our tweets. But the “Followers” section, revealing demographics, provoked the most discussion. Alongside breakdowns in followers’ interests and location is a gender bar that splits followers into male and female.

How can Twitter offer this information when it doesn’t ask for you to indicate a gender when you sign up for an account?

My Twitter account is 86% male and 14% female. But how does Twitter deal with the (not insignificant) percentage of folks who don’t fall under traditional genera roles?

I spent an hour on Sunday speaking with Matt Dusenbury and Chris Domico about Web publishing and a few other topics.

Whereas the prior album “Apocalyptic Love” was recorded live with virtually no overdubs, “World on Fire” is a layered slab of Marshall riffs, acoustic and electric 12-strings and even a rare slide performance. On songs like the title track, “Stone Blind” and “Too Far Gone,” Slash brings down the hammer with huge guitar riffs while on “Bent to Fly” and “Battleground” he picks clean guitars over the most haunting melodies Kennedy has ever sung.

I love that Slash is willing to try anything to make a great song. He is a phenomenal guitar player, but he’s also an incredible songwriter.