My iPhone is a bit of a mess. My front page contains the apps I use the most, but the rest of my pages are in a random order that slightly resembles the order in which I purchased the apps, shuffled in my attempts to move apps to my front page. Sound familiar?

The linked article talks you through the relatively simple process of sorting all your apps in alphabetical order. This might not work for all people, but it does make it much easier to home in on an app when you have 9 pages of apps. Searching helps you launch an app, but it does not help you locate the app’s icon, in case you want to move or delete the app.

One thing I’d add to the discussion is the evolution of iTunes’ ability to organize your iOS device. If you haven’t plugged your iPhone or iPad into your Mac for a while, take a few minutes to plug in and see what you can currently do with iTunes. You can easily create new pages and drag pages and apps around. You can even use iTunes to transfer files between your iOS device and computer.

As the blog suggested, I would take a snapshot of my home screen, then put my apps in alphabetical order. I would then use iTunes to create a new blank home screen (click the plus sign on the Apps page, drag the new page to be first) and repopulate the new empty page with my favorites.

Any other suggestions or favorite technique? Leave a comment.

James Kendrick writes for ZDNet. He is currently using an Android phone and writes about the logic behind his decision to by pass the Windows Phone, which he was considering, and move to whatever phone Apple releases next.

Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. In a nutshell, Apple replaced last year’s winner, Berkshire Hathaway. Apple won the award two years ago as well.

Barron’s covers financial markets and is pretty well respected. It’s owned by Dow Jones and Company, who also publish the Wall Street Journal. Down Jones is owned by News Corp.

What a beautiful guitar.

Much respect Tim and the rest of the folks at Apple.

This past Friday, this article appeared on AVClub.com and caused quite a stir.

Scientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. The paper, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” was published in The Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. It shows how Facebook data scientists tweaked the algorithm that determines which posts appear on users’ news feeds—specifically, researchers skewed the number of positive or negative terms seen by randomly selected users. Facebook then analyzed the future postings of those users over the course of a week to see if people responded with increased positivity or negativity of their own, thus answering the question of whether emotional states can be transmitted across a social network. Result: They can! Which is great news for Facebook data scientists hoping to prove a point about modern psychology. It’s less great for the people having their emotions secretly manipulated.

My guess is, the folks at Facebook who authored this study were surprised by the outpouring of criticism. Yesterday, one of those people, Adam Kramer, posted his response to this criticism.

The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product. We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out. At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends’ negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook. We didn’t clearly state our motivations in the paper.

Note that if you follow the headline link to read Adam’s response in full, you’ll be taken to a Facebook page, with all that that entails.

In the hands of a master, hand-drawn animation can bring complex emotions to life. The embedded video is stylish and elegant, drawn by one of the best, Glen Keane. Keane is the son of Family Circus creator Bill Keane and has created a number of classics for Disney, including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, and Tangled. Not a bad resume.

In the linked article, Harry McCracken points out that the video below was created by Keane for Google’s “Spotlight Stories” project and that animation tools are no match for a master of the craft.

But the thing which makes it interesting and moving isn’t the technology: It’s the fact that it consists of a series of drawings by a human being who happens to be a master draftsman, rather than the digital stop-motion puppetry that is computer animation.

Keane may have used more modern tools than his counterparts at Disney did in the 1930s and 1940s, but the basics of his craft haven’t changed at all.

I agree that the human in the equation is, at least currently, irreplaceable. But I do think that automation tools make it possible to create incredibly sophisticated and complex animations that would not have been possible even 20 years ago. To me, the seminal year was 1995, the year Toy Story was released.

I think McCracken is right, the basics haven’t changed, but I think the tools have evolved beyond belief. I did enjoy Keane’s animation Duet, shown below, but my all-time favorite remains the first 7 minutes of Pixar’s Up. To me, that is emotional storytelling without peer.

My thanks to Twocanoes Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Winclone is a great way to make a complete backup of your Boot Camp partition so that you can quickly restore back to Windows in Boot Camp. Boot Runner provides an easy way to switch between OS X and Windows on dual boot Macs. Works great for both individuals and dual boot labs.

When you get a new Mac or have issues with your Windows installation in Boot Camp, re-installing Windows is time consuming and difficult. Winclone makes it easy to make a complete copy of the Boot Camp partition, and restores it back to the exact same state on your existing or new Mac. Winclone supports migration of Boot Camp partitions between Macs, moving your Boot Camp partition to an external drive to free up space, and more. It works great for mass deployment. Boot Camp can be deployed as an OS X installer package and you can also use it with existing Windows tools such as SCCM and Sys Prep for easy mass deployment.

If you manage lots of dual boot Macs, Boot Runner provides a great way to manage the OS selection. You decide which OS by selecting OS X or Windows prior to logging in. It works great in labs. Administrators can fully customize and manage the selection screen, and can remotely select the OS through network policy. Boot Runner includes a scheduling feature to make sure that the Mac is booted into Windows for important system and virus updates. Check out the intro video to learn more.

Winclone and Boot Runner are available for purchase and download today at twocanoes.com and both have full phone and online support options.

Words to live by:

So here is our appeal to you: As you leave Stanford, take your genius and your optimism and your empathy and go change the world in ways that will make millions of others optimistic as well.

You don’t have to rush. You have careers to launch, debts to pay, spouses to meet and marry. That’s enough for now.

But in the course of your lives, without any plan on your part, you’ll come to see suffering that will break your heart.

When it happens, and it will, don’t turn away from it; turn toward it.

That is the moment when change is born.

Dan Frommer on Google’s smart watch demo at I/O:

While it’s impressive how small today’s computers can get, Google and its partners have still failed to demonstrate truly compelling use cases—let alone “rich user experiences”—that will create a mass market for $200+ smartwatches. In almost every example during Singleton’s presentation, simply accessing a smartphone—an activity Google says its one billion Android users already do an average of 125 times a day—seems like it would be a more capable and comfortable solution. (And there’s no either/or option here—today’s smartwatches must be paired to a phone in the vicinity to access the internet.)

Never mind the watches themselves, which seem awkwardly large, must be charged daily, don’t handle sunlight very well, and simply aren’t cool.

This last bit, “simply aren’t cool” says a lot. It’s hard to master cool, hard to create cool. Apple may not always get it right, but their commitment to a cool design aesthetic runs very deep.

This is a heartbreaking story, made harder by the fact that I met one of the principals of this story, Marcin, when I was in New York visiting another startup. I liked Marcin and I liked the concept. Unfortunately, the business model was just not strong enough. Lessons here for everyone.

Apple announced a 16GB iPod touch with a 5 Megapixel camera for $199. Not too shabby. Though it’s clearly not a replacement for the iPhone, if you have regular WiFi access, this is a pretty nice alternative, one that doesn’t come with a monthly contract.

From Apple’s web site:

CUPERTINO, California—June 26, 2014—Apple® today announced its 16GB iPod touch® is now available in vibrant colors and equipped with a 5 megapixel iSight® camera for just $199. The entire iPod touch lineup features the 5 megapixel iSight camera with 1080p HD video recording, brilliant 4-inch Retina® display, Apple’s A5 chip and FaceTime® camera. iPod touch features an ultra-thin and light anodized aluminum design and is available in pink, yellow, blue, silver, space gray and (PRODUCT) RED. iPod touch comes in a 16GB model for $199, 32GB for $249, and 64GB for $299.

iPod touch comes with iOS 7, offering more than 200 features including Camera app filters that let you easily add real-time photo effects. Additionally, the Photos app offers ways to automatically organize your photos based on time and location. With iCloud® Photo Sharing, it’s simple to share photos and videos with exactly the people you want to see them and your friends and family can comment and access their shared streams from any iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch, Mac® or PC at any time. This fall, iOS 8 will be supported on the entire iPod touch lineup.

With the revolutionary App Store℠ on iPod touch, users in 155 countries have access to over 1.2 million apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, including hundreds of thousands of games. More than 75 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store. Customers also have the iTunes Store® at their fingertips, giving instant access to an incredible selection of music, TV shows, movies and books to purchase and download directly to their iPod touch.

Pricing & Availability
iPod touch 16GB is available starting in the US today and worldwide in the coming days, in pink, yellow, blue, silver and space gray through the Apple Online Store (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested price of $199 (US). Starting today, the 32GB and 64GB models have been repriced worldwide, at a suggested price of $249 (US) for the 32GB model and $299 (US) for the 64GB model. iPod touch requires a Wi-Fi connection or a Mac with a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 port, Mac OS X v10.6.8 or later and iTunes® 10.7 or later; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 3 or later and iTunes 10.7 or later. An Apple ID is required for some iPod touch features.

Larry Page is Google’s CEO and Sundar Pichai is Google’s Senior VP, Android and Chrome.

An interview with the top players in any major company is going to be interesting, but I thought this interview lacked vision. Worth reading, but there was far more breadth than depth.

One exchange that stood out for me, this discussion on privacy:

Q: Do you worry that the more devices we have that are connected to Google, there’s not just a privacy question but also something like creepiness?

Page: I think that the Internet and mobile devices in general is changing people’s lives a lot. And we’re feeling that. Everyone can tell that their lives are going to be affected, but we don’t quite know how yet, because we’re not using these things — and because of that there’s a lot of uncertainty. I think we’ll figure that out and we’ll get products, services and technologies that really benefit people a lot, and that make their lives significantly better. And as we do that people will understand those — and then there’ll be the next set of things.

Q: You’re saying the usefulness of the products will change how people feel about them?

Page: Yeah, and we know that if we talk about things before people see them, there’s a much more negative reaction. That’s one of the things we learned. It’s really important for people to be able to experience products; otherwise you fear the worst without seeing those benefits.

I’m not trying to minimize the issues. For me, I’m so excited about the possibilities to improve things for people, my worry would be the opposite. We get so worried about these things that we don’t get the benefits. I think that’s what’s happened in health care. We’ve decided, through regulation largely, that data is so locked up that it can’t be used to benefit people very well.

Right now we don’t data-mine health care data. If we did we’d probably save 100,000 lives next year. I’m very worried that the media and governments will try to stoke the people’s fears and we’ll end up in a state where we could benefit a lot of people but we’re not able to do that. That’s the likely outcome.

There are also laws to consider, laws put in place to protect the privacy of medical records. There’s a certain amount of hubris in the claim that you’d save 100,000 lives next year if you could only data-mine health care data. I don’t like where that thinking is going.

You’ll need to activate the phone in-store.

Huge audience, especially for today’s matches.

According to AppShopper, there are currently 1.17 million iOS apps available on the App Store. And according to AppBrain, there are 1.27 million Android apps. I take these numbers with a grain of salt, since these are two different sources, with two unverified data collection methods. But for the sake of argument, let’s accept these numbers, move on.

Here’s the point:

Most promising app startups with venture capital investments that we analyzed are either building apps for iOS and Android simultaneously or are still iOS-only. Looking at 119 recent Y Combinator incubator participants and Google Ventures seed investments, of those offering apps, more than 90% had iOS apps, about half had both iOS and Android apps, and fewer than 10% only had Android apps. Among those with both, their iOS app typically launched several months ahead of their Android app.

In my VC wanderings, these numbers seem to ring true.

As to why, there’s the much-discussed fragmentation of the Android market, but more interestingly, there seems to be a “dog food” issue that drives this trend.

Indeed, among the startup founders we interviewed, their personal familiarity with iOS came up repeatedly as the reason they built for Apple first.

Most startups build things that they test internally for some time before they release even an alpha build to a more public test group. Developers refer to living with your own product as eating your own dog food, or dogfooding. You make it, you live with it. This makes you intimately aware of the apps benefits, features, and shortcomings before you move to the next release level.

Is it possible that entrepreneurs who reach the point of releasing an app tend more likely to be iOS users than Android users?

I came across the linked article on commonly mispronounced words. Pretty good list. The first one really surprised me.

Children’s writer Theodor Seuss Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, pronounced his middle name (and pen name) as soice, not soose.

From his Wikipedia page:

Geisel’s most famous pen name is regularly pronounced /ˈs(j)uːs/, an anglicized pronunciation inconsistent with his German surname (the standard German pronunciation). He himself noted that it rhymed with “voice”. Alexander Liang, one of his collaborators on the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, wrote of it:

You’re wrong as the deuce
And you shouldn’t rejoice
If you’re calling him Seuss.
He pronounces it Soice (or Zoice)

Geisel switched to the anglicized pronunciation because it “evoked a figure advantageous for an author of children’s books to be associated with—Mother Goose” and because most people used this pronunciation.

Live and learn.

Jim and Dan discuss Google Glass streaming live video, Google TV, Apple TV, HBO Go and cable companies, Apple’s iCloud strategy, The New York Times and Walmart, placing trust in news organizations, Dropcam, Nest and privacy limits, the MacBook Air to Surface Pro 3 upgrade path, Bono’s (Red) rant, and more.

Sponsored by HostGator (use code DANSENTME for 50% off VPS) and Shopify (visit shopify.com/5by5 for 3 months free).

It makes me want to pull my hair out just looking at this mess.

Levy has been part of many great publications, but at Medium he will be starting a tech hub “that strives to bring well-reported, lively, and meaningful reporting and writing to what is already shaping up as a terrific platform for the written word.”

Interesting.

The Daily Dot:

Where Google I/O keynotes of years past have included huge reveals like the Chromebook notebook line and Nexus tablet, this year’s event was different…but that didn’t stop it from being crazy in its own right.

It’s not really the “only thing you need to read” but it might just be one of the most amusing things you read about today’s Google I/O keynote.

Back in January, we posted about a lawsuit brought by the four major US TV networks against Aereo. Aereo uses antennae to capture the local broadcast signals of the major networks, then places the recorded programs on-line.

Today, the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo. Looks like that’s the end of the line for this experiment. It also looks like a major loss for its investors, as the business model was based entirely on avoiding retransmission fees.

Here’s the decision.

Macworld:

Corporations generally limit their altruism to charity, not to core product and business decisions. Apple likely sees a competitive advantage in privacy, especially when its biggest direct competition comes from advertising giant Google and the enterprise-friendly Microsoft. Apple believes consumers not only desire privacy, but will increasingly value privacy as a factor in their buying decisions.

It will be interesting to see if, going forward, average consumers start taking these kinds of issues into consideration when purchasing and using various products and services.

On Tuesday, Google Inc. officially began offering the Livestream video-sharing app in its MyGlass store. The software lets Glass wearers share what they are seeing and hearing with other Livestream account holders free of charge by using the command, “OK Glass, start broadcasting.”

Sweet holy shit! No, Google!

This is just priceless. Much respect to David Tovar, Vice President, Walmart Corporate Communications, for a great response.

Net Neutrality advocates are running a campaign called Occupy Google. According to its Twitter timeline on this page, a number of arrests were made last night.