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Leo Fender enabled us to make beautiful music.

Fast Company:

Decluttr buys anything–because that’s their business model. They will literally buy any CD, DVD, or video game you want to mail them. And they pay the postage, too.

Might be a way to get rid of all that old media you have no use for.

Priceonomics:

Perhaps no other creation in history has navigated the divide between terror and unadulterated joy as skillfully as the roller coaster.

Since these “scream machines” were introduced nearly 250 years ago, they have brought millions to tears in all capacities. As one roller coaster designer told us, anonymously: “My job is basically to get as close to making people poop their pants as possible, then have them step off in ecstasy and want to go again.”

I’ve always loved roller coasters. One of my biggest regrets while I was living in the US was not getting to the sixteen roller coasters of Cedar Point, Ohio.

Back in 2008, Google started scanning and archiving old newspapers, making the archives searchable. From the original announcement:

Today, we’re launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. Let’s say you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon. Try a search for [Americans walk on moon] on Google News Archive Search, and you’ll be able to find and read an original article from a 1969 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

This archive has grown to be quite large over the years. Pick a historic event and try your hand at a search. For example, I did this search:

president garfield assassination

The first result was a newspaper article from July 2nd, 1881. The same day he was shot. I find that incredible. Wikipedia is a great resource, but there’s something about reading about a current event as it was reported.

[Hat tip to Follow CV]

Qi Lu is an Executive Vice President at Microsoft and runs Bing Search, Skype, and Office. Office for iPad was the result of his group’s efforts. This interview was interesting, but I thought the real value was to get to know him.

This bit was notable:

Q: Some of the Mac people have been working on Office for iPad. We haven’t seen a new version of Office for Mac in a while.

A: We are definitely working on a new version of Office for Mac.

Part of my hesitance to sign up for Office 365 is that the apps I use, Excel and Word, have not been updated. So I’d be paying for the right to use those apps on my iPad. Not enough of a pull. But if Office for Mac was updated, that might get me off the dime.

Just start hitting keys (turn sound on first). This is a lot of fun. The only thing I with the developer would have done is make the sounds polyphonic. In other words, if I hit two (or more) keys at the same time, I’d like to hear their sounds simultaneously.

Still, this was interesting and inspiring.

UPDATE: Even more fun on the iPhone and iPad. The interface is all touch (of course) and multiple touches play simultaneously. Huzzah!!! [Hat tip to Kip Beatty]

This is an incredibly clever idea that makes sense. Just took a teenage science whiz to think of it.

Collecting random samples of teachers’ handouts, Suvir concentrated on the most commonly used characters (e, t, a, o and r). First, he charted how often each character was used in four different typefaces: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. Then he measured how much ink was used for each letter, using a commercial tool called APFill® Ink Coverage Software.

Next he enlarged the letters, printed them and cut them out on cardstock paper to weigh them to verify his findings. He did three trials for each letter, graphing the ink usage for each font. From this analysis, Suvir figured out that by using Garamond with its thinner strokes, his school district could reduce its ink consumption by 24%, and in turn save as much as $21,000 annually.

He applied his logic on a larger scale with one of the biggest ink consumers in the world, the US government. Genius. If this bears out (and it sure seems like it should), this kid should get a medal and a full ride to the college of his choice.

An interesting take on the release of Office for iPad.

From Seeking Alpha (free reg-wall):

Neither [Microsoft] nor Apple could be happy about the progress Google has made in recent years. Google’s Android mobile operating system is dominating the global smartphone market, and Google Drive is threatening Microsoft Office. Google Drive is a free to use Office competitor that also grants users up to 15GB of free cloud storage, a massive perk. Since both Apple and Microsoft have had their business threatened by the growth of Google, teaming up finally makes sense. To be clear, Apple is going to take a 30% cut of the Office iPad sales, but this move is bigger than that. Microsoft has finally realized that it’s about time to move away from its dependence on Windows and partner up with its old rival.

More to the point, Samsung’s series of iPad-bashing commercials has a real problem now. The spots focus on features Samsung tablets bring to the table that competing tablets (iPad, Kindle, Surface) do not. Fair enough.

But Office for iPad is going to be a tough selling point for Samsung to ignore, and easy fodder for future commercials, should Microsoft or Apple choose to go that route.

And on the math of Office 365:

The upside for this transformation by Microsoft is that at $100 per year instead of $50 every 6 years on average, it only needs to retain 1 of every 12 customers to make break even even if it loses 100% of its PC sales, which won’t happen. For prosumers and enterprise customers who rely heavily on Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint, the Office 365 subscription on iOS will make sense. But don’t expect too many casual consumers to fork over $100 per year for Word on their iPad. There’s really no point when iWork and Google Drive are both free.

I agree. I think Microsoft should give every iPad owner a free 1-year subscription to Office 365, along with their free iPad apps. The gap between something already installed and working (and free, since I already own it) and the pain of a new install that I have to pay for and deal with is pretty big. But free would tempt me.

Heidi Roizen has long time ties with the Apple universe, including a stint as Apple’s VP of World Wide Developer Relations from 1996-97.

Shortly into my pitch, Steve took the contract from me and scanned down to the key term, the royalty rate. I had pitched 15%, our standard. Steve pointed at it and said, “15%? That is ridiculous. I want 50%.”

I was stunned. There was no way I could run my business giving him 50% of my product revenues. I started to defend myself, stammering about the economics of my side of the business. He tore up the contract and handed me the pieces. “Come back at 50%, or don’t come back,” he said.

This is a great story.

[Via iOS Dev Weekly]

U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco said that the Canadian mobile phone maker had established a “likelihood” of proving that Typo infringed its patents, while mentioning that Typo had not sufficiently challenged the patents in question.

That’s good. There’s little doubt that Seacrest’s company infringed on the patents.

Brad Smith, General Counsel & Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft:

Effective immediately, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property from Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer’s private content ourselves. Instead, we will refer the matter to law enforcement if further action is required.

Mighty good of them.

I haven’t done this, but it could be handy.

Great post from Shawn Blanc. I remember every version of this app—the screenshots bring back memories.

Apple’s complaint, filed in 2012, says Samsung “systematically copied Apple’s innovative technology and products, features, and designs, and has deluged markets with infringing devices in an effort to usurp market share from Apple.”

“Instead of pursuing independent product development, Samsung slavishly copied Apple’s innovative technology, with its elegant and distinctive user interfaces product design, in violation of Apple’s valuable intellectual property rights,” Apple said in the document.

I love “slavishly copied.”

Daniel Eran Dilger on the Apple vs Samsung trial:

Anyone reading Wikipedia’s ostensibly encyclopedic recounting of the initial global lawsuits between the two companies would only get one side of the story: Samsung’s.

An Evening of Guitar Talk & Demos with Taylor’s Friendly Factory Experts

I love my Taylor.

Billboard has long charted the successes in the music industry. Making it to the top of the Billboard charts means money to a band and a label. The charts themselves are used as intelligence data by the industry, tracking trends and emerging artists.

But with the emergence of iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify, the Billboard charts are fading in relevance. Rather than fade away, Billboard cast their lot with Twitter to produce a set of charts that track song and artist mentions, rather than downloads.

On Thursday, the two companies announced a plan to create the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts: continuously updated lists of the songs being discussed and shared the most on Twitter in the United States. The charts, to be published on Billboard.com and through the publication’s Twitter feed, are expected to be introduced in May.

“We have been looking for a way to do a real-time chart for some time,” said John Amato, co-president of the entertainment group of Guggenheim Media, a division of the private equity firm Guggenheim Partners, which owns Billboard. “We couldn’t think of a better way to do that than with Twitter.”

Music is the most widely discussed topic on Twitter, and seven of the top 10 accounts are those of pop stars like Katy Perry, who has the No. 1 Twitter account with nearly 52 million followers. But the company has struggled to find ways to exploit its music-related traffic, and the Billboard deal suggests an effort by Twitter to correct one of its rare public missteps: its #Music app.

I think this is a clever idea. It’ll be interesting to see if this catches on with the industry.

Every time I read about Android and malware like this, I shudder at the though of bringing an Android phone or tablet into my universe. I know Android is popular, but I just can’t get my head around why people seem not to care about this problem. Am I missing something?

Read the article for all the details. [Via BGR]

Just thinking about the process of making my way down this map both scared me and filled me with wonder. I would love the chance to dive this cave. At least virtually.

At 2,197 meters (7,208 feet) the Krubera cave is the deepest on Earth. Located in the Arabika Massif, of the Western Caucasus in Abkhazia, Georgia, it extends for 13,432 kilometers (8,346 miles.)

Here’s the wiki page for the Krubera cave.

To complement the earlier post about the Threes team, here’s some background on the creation of 2048. One interesting comment:

Cirulli said he has made a “few hundred bucks” off of the game from player donations, but has not advertised on the website. He added that his intention was never really to make a profit and he is “extremely satisfied” with the money he has received.

The question in my mind is, where’s the harm here? Both games are fun, and it seems like the Threes team made their money. Is there room for both in the world? I think there is a line, but I think a money grab is where that line gets crossed. To me, this was more of an homage, an inspired weekend project, than a ripoff. But to be clear, I can certainly understand why this doesn’t sit well with the Threes team, who worked so very hard to bring their originally crafted beauty into the world.

Just some food for thought.

UPDATE: I love writing for the Loop. I also love (mostly) the comments that come from the community. I’d like to excerpt two on this post:

No Dave, just no. Why is it perfectly OK for this guy to rip off all the development work that the Threes team did? He says his game is based on 1024! which is a free app store game which blatantly states that it’s a free version of Threes. What really sticks in my throat is the self important note on the 2048 site: “Note: This site is the official version of 2048. […] All other apps or sites are derivatives or fakes, and should be used with caution.” WTF? His is “official” and he warns against derivatives or fakes?? His game is a derivative of a derivative. What right does he have to warn about any other rip offs?

And this one:

The problem is exactly as was stated by the Threes team – they got their thunder stolen. Actually, it’s the exact same problem Apple has with Samsung. You spend an inordinate amount of time working on something, only to have some asswipe rip you off in a few minutes. The CNBC article makes it look like the kid is some sort of genius for coming up with the idea in a weekend, when all he did was copy someone else’s hard work. Where is the article on Threes? Or even a mention? Whether 2048 charges for it or not, he’s still taking money away from the developers by giving away their hard work for free. It also opens up the flood gates for other cloners…

I have to say, I really did not see this clearly. Mea culpa. These are fair points and I wanted to make sure that anyone reading this post got to see this perspective. Thanks to Collider and GadgetGav for taking the time to write these up. Good on you.

This is not quite what you think. This is not about building an animation studio, but about using the techniques that Pixar leveraged into their great success to produce your own great success.

As a brand, Pixar–with 14 consecutive No. 1 box office hits and $7 billion in worldwide ticket sales–has come to stand for consistently wondrous excellence, thanks largely to the leadership of president Ed Catmull and chief creative officer John Lasseter, and an era of oversight by longtime owner Steve Jobs. And much has been written–most recently, Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc.–about how exactly the company goes about creating lightning in a bottle time and time again. Recently, Disney has adopted some of its tactics that helped push its hit film Frozen to a $1 billion box-office smash.

But the question remains: can that kind of success be replicated anywhere?

Thoughtful stuff, well worth the read.

It’s the nature of the App Store that as soon as original hits the store, the cloners start their copiers. There’s been a lot of talk about Flappy Bird and the huge number of clones it spawned. But it’s true of just about every successful app.

From the team that created Threes:

It’s been a weird and awesome couple of months. Our expectations for our tiny game were well, fairly tiny. Basically, we hoped it’d do better than Puzzlejuice. It did. By a lot. It’s still hard to address the world’s response with something beyond a wide-eyed daze but essentially we couldn’t be more thrilled. Duh.

But there’s another side of that daze that we wish to talk about. The rip-offs.

I think this is a terrific read. The comments come across as honest, not bitter, and I think the points made are fair ones. I would suggest that you start by reading about the game 2048, if you are not familiar with it. And, of course, give Threes a try.

Be sure you don’t miss the email exchanges between the creators as the game evolves. Great stuff.

Yesterday, Microsoft released Office for iPad (here are the App Store links). They then tweeted this little gem:

Office 365 is here for iPad. First 50 people to bring in their iPad starting 3/28 will get @Office free for 1 year. http://msft.it/6017gImP

Good idea on Microsoft’s part, though I think they should give those out to all comers. Get everyone on the train. [Via 9to5Mac]

While one of the big holdups for Office for iPad was getting the software just right, another was Apple’s policy that apps that sell things — including subscriptions — use Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism and hand over 30 percent of that revenue to Apple.

This had been a big sticking point historically, so it was one of the key question marks looming over this launch.

Indeed, Microsoft does offer Office 365 subscriptions within the just-released Word for iPad and the other Office apps and, yes, it is paying the 30 percent cut, Apple confirmed to Re/code. Microsoft declined to comment on the matter.

Wonder if that was the real sticking point that kept iPad versions of Office in the can? Maybe the previous regime refused to budge, newer thinking prevailed? Just a thought.

To understand why Oculus Rift matters, it helps to know who John Carmack is… He’s responsible for Quake, the first true 3-D game, which begat Halo and Call of Duty and all the rest of it. Carmack did for computer games what Masaccio did for painting: he turned a plane into a space.

Carmack is a genius.