Ars Technica:

Screen protectors: don’t use ’em, don’t want ’em, don’t need ’em. I’ve been rocking a naked smartphone since 2007, and I don’t ever anticipate changing. And yet the screen protector PR pitch that landed in my inbox last week proved difficult to resist:

Subject: Preview the bulletproof iPhone? On March 18, Sir Lancelot’s Armor will announce the first reusable screen protectors for iPhones and iPads made of bulletproof glass….If interested in getting a sample to use or test, please let me know the model and color of your iPhone.

The only word I needed to hear was “bulletproof.”

I got the same PR email and thought, “Bull.” Glad to see testing proved me right.

Heart surgery is a big deal. Doctors frequently have to use a reciprocating saw to cut through your breastbone, often have to flip over your heart to get at the backside of it. Any tech that makes this unnecessary, or even a bit easier, is a real boon.

This camera is threaded to your heart via an artery and produces high resolution images in real time.

Though it’s roughly the size of a grain of uncooked quinoa, the images it produces are able to replace two people in the surgical theater. Prior to the invention of this speck-sized sensor, technicians would pore over lower-fidelity cross-sectional images and guide the surgeon verbally while she held the patient’s life in her hands. Degertekin likens his little invention to a flashlight that illuminates the obstructions in a blood vessel, giving doctors a direct look at what they’re up against.

This is a major leap.

Too many people focus on the short term wins in their life. This thoughtful piece, by Brian Fetherstonhaugh, CEO of one of the largest and most successful advertising agencies in the world, is valuable both as career advice and life guidance.

I think there’s incredible food for thought here, so very much worth the time to read.

I’m a long-time Strat fan and find this pretty amazing.

The sunburst-finish Strat bears the serial number 0100. Although some Strats have lower numbers that begin with 0001, Gruhn says they actually were manufactured later in that first year of production. He says the number-one Strat was sold to an amateur who evidently took good care of it.

Very interesting. I thought the earlier serial numbers were pre-production models. This is from the 0001 Strat Wikipedia entry:

The 0001 Strat is a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, with a white body, maple neck, three-way pick up selector and an unusual gold colour scratch plate and hardware. David Gilmour is the guitar’s current owner. He bought it from guitar technician Phil Taylor, who purchased it from Seymour Duncan. This guitar is one of the most notable in his collection as it has the 0001 serial number. Gilmour used the Guitar in the 2004 50th anniversary of the Stratocaster at Wembley Arena along with his Red Strat. It is not the first Fender Stratocaster ever made as prototypes had already been constructed before this one. The origin of the guitar is unknown, and isn’t clear whether it is the real 0001 Strat because the neck (which has the 0001 serial number on it) could have been taken off the original. The 0001 Strat, along with the Red Strat, was used in the 2004 Strat Pack show that commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster.

I’d be very interested in knowing the true story here. Is a Strat with a serial number of, say #0019, a later model than the 0100 Strat? That hardly seems likely.

If someone is going to sell a Strat for $250K, there better be some damn well documented provenance.

UPDATE: Here’s a look at David Gilmour’s #0001 Strat (Hat tip to Pavan Rajam)

From Seeking Alpha (free reg-wall):

Google (GOOG) has announced ‘Android Wear’, a new extension of Android to power smart watches (it also realised some teaser renders of Motorola smart watches that are due for this summer). The Wear concept is that smart watches are remote touch displays for an Android smartphone. They will show the time, accept touch and voice input, display the Google Now feed and they will display all the notifications that apps on your phone produce.

Developers have options (which will be enhanced in future) to customise how the notifications their phone apps produce behave on the watch. But they don’t get native code at all – the developer isn’t running code on the watch, really. The device is really an extension of the phone’s Android OS itself, not an extension of your app.

In effect, the watch is a device for using Google Now and cards that apps on the phone send to it.

This is an interesting model. It means that a Google watch is a satellite device that locks you in to the Google ecosystem. Since the watch without the phone is just a wrist-watch, or less, if it does not have the built in smarts to do its watch and alarm thing without its master.

This is a chess move on Google’s part. If you’ve not had the chance, take a read of John Gruber’s ecosystem chess game post. I think he’s got it exactly right. This is an ecosystem chess match, locking in consumers to a particular ecosystem, making escape as difficult as possible.

If and when Apple comes out with an iWatch or other wearable, will it run iOS? Will it be a satellite device that is simply a tunable funnel for notifications?

There’s a lot at stake in this particular chess match.

This is truly gorgeous. A completely controllable, 360 degree, zooming view from atop the tallest skyscraper in the western hemisphere.

For years after the 9/11 attacks, nearly all the activity at Ground Zero was downward—digging through the piles of debris, excavating a vast pit to restore the ruined transit lines, preparing the foundations for the new buildings that would emerge there. Even the memorial that opened in 2011 was an exercise in the poetics of descent—two vast cubic voids, each with water cascading down all four sides, carrying grief to some underground resting place.

The memorial has turned out to be a lovely thing, but what the site still needed was something that climbed, something that spoke to the idea that emotional burdens might not only be lowered into the ground but also released into the air. Now we have it: One World Trade Center, the glass-and-steel exclamation point, all 1,776 feet of it, is nearing completion close to where the Twin Towers once stood. No doubt the new building’s official dedication will open the way to a necessary debate over its merits as architecture and urbanism, its turbulent design history and the compromises made over the long years it took to get the thing built. But in one important respect, One World Trade Center has already succeeded. It has reclaimed the sky. And this is the view from there.

Brilliant.

Well said, Mike. I feel exactly the same. I know I can turn these notifications off, but that’s an extra step I have to take and an annoyance.

One solution might be to add a bit of fine tuning to the Notification Center, a way to say, “I don’t want any notifications from apps that are purely to get me to come back, or marketing related.”

This is a nice app, I like it.

Pixelmator is one of the apps that I use every day and have for years. It’s very powerful, but yet approachable, allowing new users to instantly manipulate their images. There is no better image editor.

CNBC:

Apple CEO Tim Cook has issued a statement about a new book about the tech giant called, “Haunted Empire,” saying it is “nonsense” and fails to capture Apple or former CEO and Co-Founder Steve Jobs.

Very interesting that Cook released a statement like this.

Minimally Minimal:

The only thing people seem to love to talk about more than Apple’s success are their failures. The iPod Hi-Fi is considered one of the classic Apple failures. Apple discontinued it just a year after its launch and it received universally lukewarm reviews. I’ve always had a crush on it though. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware and I’ve always loved the idea of having a speaker that pairs perfectly with my iPod.

This is one of those products I wish I could sit down with Ive over a beer and ask, “What were you thinking!?”

Tom Conrad has been with Pandora since almost day one. Sad to see him go.

Here’s his email to the team:

Team,

In May of 2004 I met [Pandora founder] Tim for breakfast at a diner in Potrero Hill. I was there to learn about his company Savage Beast and consider the opportunity to join the team of 10 or so he’d assembled. While perhaps I had reservations about the business (music kiosks for book stores!), I knew at once that I wanted to throw my lot in with Tim. Fast forward 10 years and it has truly been the adventure of a lifetime.

The story of Pandora has had many chapters and through most of the twists and turns, I was solely focused on how I could help get the company to the next stage. Rarely did I stop to think about a world where I didn’t make my contribution to the next chapter. I confess though that maybe 18 months ago, I started to think about what I’d need to do to hand over the pen so others could author chapters after my eventual departure.

Then [Pandora’s former CEO] Joe’s decision to leave pushed all of those thoughts to the side. My focus for the last twelve months has been to ensure that the company landed confidently in the hands of an exceptional new leader. We’ve found that leader in [Pandora’s new CEO] Brian. As I look at the revitalized executive leadership team he has put in place, consider the great leaders on my own team, and contemplate the exciting roadmap we’ve set for the future, I’ve decided that all the pieces are in place to allow me to step aside and let others write the next chapters.

So today we’ve announced that in three months I’ll be transitioning to an adviser role.

We’ve also announced that, effective today, [former Pandora VP of Engineering] Chris Martin has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer and will join the executive leadership team representing our engineering efforts. We are also promoting [former Pandora VP of Technical Operations] Steve Ginsberg to Chief Information Officer today and he and his team will now report to [Pandora CFO] Mike Herring. I’m as proud of all the senior leaders on my team — Chris, Steve, [Pandora VP of Design] Tony and [Pandora VP of Product Management] Mike — as I am about anything I’ve ever accomplished here. These promotions are one reflection of that, and they are richly deserved. If there are successes from the last 10 years you credit to me, they’d almost surely more fairly be credited to Chris, Steve, Tony and Mike.

The company is also announcing today that we’re opening a search for a Chief Product Officer who will report to Brian. I’ll be staying on full time for the next three months and then in July, after a bit of a vacation, I’ll transition to a part time role advising the company and offering support as Brian sees fit. A big part of my role in the coming months will be to help the company find a CPO that we’re all really excited about.

Through all these years perhaps the most gratifying thing has been how the whole company has evolved. From the scrappy group that wrote those first lines of code to the dynamic and talented assemblage we have today, through it all we’ve benefitted from a group of men and woman that are without question the most talented, intelligent, thoughtful and hardworking team I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. I’ll miss working with you terribly but I am incredibly confident in the trajectory the company is on, the leadership that Brian and the executive leadership team will bring, and Chris, Steve, Tony and Mike’s ability to do my job better than I ever did.

For those that have been on this journey for a while thanks for the memories and for all I’ve learned from you. Sorry for the moments when you had to suffer while I figured out what I had yet to learn. For those that are newer to the team, I wish nothing more than for you to come away from your years at Pandora as marked and improved as I have.

Take care of Pandora for me. I’ll think about you everyday.

Tom

Best of luck, Tom! [Hat tip to Matt Abras]

Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin talk about Jim’s visit to Austin for SXSW and his interviews at the iTunes Music Festival, buying and listening to albums vs. songs, the new iPads, the 8GB iPhone 5c, Steve Jobs and Apple making televisions, iOS 7.1, CarPlay availability, and more.

Sign outside a Dublin barbershop. I just could not not link to this.

Here’s bit rot in a nutshell:

At The Guardian’s 2013 Activate conference in London, the computer scientist and Internet founder Vint Cerf, when asked about the future of libraries in the digital age, expressed concern. “I am really worried right now about the possibility of saving bits but losing their meaning and ending up with bit rot,” he said. “You have a bag of bits that you saved for a thousand years, but you don’t know what they mean because the software that was needed to interpret them is no longer available or it’s no longer executable … This is a serious, serious problem, and we have to solve that.” He noted that even now, people are producing huge volumes of digital data—spreadsheets, photos, UK betting sites not on GamStop, ephemeral apps—that may outlast the context that gives them meaning.

There are legacy image formats that are no longer supported. Over time, the ability to import those formats will disappear from current software. This same is true for legacy text editing formats.

Just as we search for ways to preserve our ancient video and photographic images, it’s critical that we work out a mechanism for preserving our digital archives. Interesting article.

Marco Arment is a co-founder of Tumblr and the creator of Instapaper. This is a bit of a rant, but there’s logic at the core of Marco’s argument.

Maybe the reason Prime economics have become tricky is because Amazon bundled in a video service nobody wants since 2011, leveraging one business’ extreme success to juice the numbers of one that’s faring poorly against its competitors. Netflix charges $95.88 per year for a similar service. How much of Prime’s price hike was really to help pay for the video service that’s just a tax on Prime members who have never used it and don’t want it?

This is a classic business problem. How do you distinguish a product that is a drag on revenue from a product that has yet to blossom?

Ever consider subscribing to Office 365? Here’s how Microsoft handles things when you let your subscription lapse. Interesting.

Facebook is working on improving face verification software, an alternative to fingerprints for verifying someone’s identity. There are ways to get around both fingerprint scanners and facial recognition systems, using dummy fingers created from lifted fingerprints, or realistic masks created from photographs of someone’s face.

The linked article gets into Facebook’s efforts and their goal to recognize faces as well as you do.

This article, Behind the mask of biometric security, gets into the details of fooling such systems. Don’t miss the video on this one.

This is the story of how Google artist Jennifer Hom went about creating the Google Doodle for St Patricks Day. Good research, but even better artwork. Lovely stuff.

From Ars Technica:

This morning Apple made a couple of new additions to its iOS lineup, where “new” in this case means “old stuff that is nevertheless better than what it is replacing.” It has finally removed the iPad 2 from its lineup and replaced it with 2012’s fourth-generation iPad. For its second tour of duty, the 16GB iPad 4 will set you back $399 for a 16GB Wi-Fi version or $529 for a cellular version, $100 less than the equivalent iPad Air models and equal to the 16GB Retina iPad mini. There’s also a new 8GB model of the iPhone 5C, which as of this writing is only available in certain territories.

Diary of a Mad Man:

My close personal friend, Jim Darlymple, was down in Austin, Texas this past week attending the SXSW iTunes Music Festival. He apparently had a great time.

Except for that time when that guy stole his guitar. I watched the video, fully expecting to see Jim beat the guy to death with his own arm.

The Verge:

The software maker has been inviting members of the media to a special cloud- and mobile-focused event in San Francisco on March 27th. Nadella is expected to discuss Microsoft’s “mobile first, cloud first” strategy, and there will be some major news ahead of the company’s Build conference in early April. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell The Verge that the event will mark the introduction of Office for iPad.

Do you care?

The Push:

A class of apps, christened “ambient apps” by the blogosphere, are endowing mild-mannered smartphone users with what might have passed for superpowers a few years ago. They work by keeping your smartphone’s mic, GPS and even its camera listening, watching and seeking out every signal coming from your surroundings.

In many ways, ambient apps are a logical step in the evolutionary process of mobile devices. For some, however, they press too hard against our personal space, intrude upon our most precious moments and deliver marketers far more about ourselves than we care to divulge.

Some of these apps are really cool, like Flightradar24, but some are disturbing – yet seemingly inevitable.