Co.Design:

in “Design Forward”, frog design’s founder, Hartmut Esslinger, recounts the inspirations and process behind the computers that revolutionized consumer electronics.

Some of these concepts are really cool. Others make you ask, “What were they smoking?”

The presidential limo is definitely an awesome and unfortunately necessary piece of engineering.

The Secret Service is proceeding with development of a new presidential limousine to replace the Cadillac model currently used by President Barack Obama, according to a new General Services Administration contract posting. The new vehicle is expected to be ready for the inauguration of the next president—whomever she or he may be.

Classified armor development for the new rolling Oval Office has been underway since last year. The government is now seeking bidders to integrate that armor into a new design for “The Beast,” as the heavily-protected vehicle is popularly known, with options for the final construction stages. Details of the new design, like the old, are highly classified and contractors must meet strict security requirements just to get a peek at what they will be asked to build.

Just one suggestion: Make sure it comes with CarPlay, and let Apple furnish the touch screen.

Earlier today, we posted about United Airlines offering a free in-flight movie service, available to folks running iOS but not available on Android.

Now Time writer Harry McCracken uses that info to make the case that Apple has won the app wars. Not sure I quite see it the same way, but I do get his point. No matter the market share, the trend continues to be to develop for iOS first, if not only.

A new update for The Loop Magazine was released today with the following changes:

• Up to 4x faster downloads!
• Push Notifications and Background Updates – major bug fixes and improvements.
• “First launch” setup improved.
• More responsive “Manage Storage” menu.
• Other minor bug fixes.

It’s a great update and can be downloaded free on the App Store.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee:

On March 12, 1989 I submitted my proposal for the World Wide Web. 25 years later, I’m amazed to see the many great things it’s achieved – transforming the way we talk, share and create. As we celebrate the Web’s 25th birthday (see webat25.org), I want us all to think about its future and ask how we can help make it a truly open, secure and creative platform – available to everyone. The idea of an AMA is another great example of how the Web’s helping to connect and empower people around the globe and I’m really excited to be answering your questions!

Every AMA requires a photo as proof you are who you say you are. Here’s Tim’s.

THE COMPUTER used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to write his proposal for the World Wide Web has gone on show at the Science Museum in London to mark the 25th anniversary of the web.

The Next Cube computer arrived at the Science Museum on Tuesday, having been shipped from CERN in Switzerland, where Berners-Lee used to work as a software engineer. Berners-Lee wrote his proposal for the World Wide Web that he submitted on 12 March 1989 on this computer.

I find it amazing to think that the origins of the web were created on a Next machine. If you missed it, be sure to read the story of Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee’s narrowly missed connection, as masterfully told by Stephen Fry.

Could this be the future of business cards? Based on the Arduino Pro-Mini, the programming is done on a computer and downloaded into the chip. A lot of hand work and not flexible, but if the market likes this, I suspect automated manufacturing and a more flexible form factor will follow.

Sweet!

There’s lots of Python as well as discussion of his movies (like Brazil, my personal favorite).

This story has been making its way around both tech and commercial real estate circles. Google is said to be locking up a lease on 131 Greene St in SoHo for an 8,000 square foot retail space. I find it an interesting choice for Google. Here’s why.

For starters, it helps to have a sense of the layout of this part of Manhattan. SoHo stands for South of Houston and is the area just south of West Houston St at the southern end of the city. SoHo is a big shopping are with both small boutiques and major market clothing retailers. Lots of foot traffic, much of it focused on the east-west running streets like Houston and, one block south of that, Prince St.

For commercial real estate, being on Prince St is like gold. The SoHo Apple Store is right in the middle of all that action, at the intersection of Prince St and Greene St., right on the corner. A fantastic location.

If the rumors are true, Google has chosen to place themselves just half a block from the Apple Store. Smart move.

But.

Google’s potential space is on a relative side street. Greene is a cobblestone street that runs north and south between Prince and Houston. Charming, yes, but the north and south streets don’t have nearly the foot traffic as the main east-west streets. It could be that Google took what they could get, being relatively late to the game. It could be that they valued being close to the Apple Store and are gambling on the future of Greene St, thinking the Google name will bring the foot traffic.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Personally, I’m fascinated by the thought of a brick and mortar Google Store. I hope this rumor turns out to be true. And if it does turn out to be true, I think the restaurants on that stretch of Greene St better gear up for some more customers.

Apple Insider:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday published an Apple patent application covering a smart wrist-mounted pedometer that can automatically determine its location on a user’s body and compensate for missed steps using advanced processing algorithms.

Since readings from on-board sensors reflect detected changes in magnitudes of forces, including gravity, software analysis now plays a large part in outputting accurate movement data. As far as the hardware is concerned, spikes in directional magnitude can be masked by arm swings, jolts of taking a step or a bump against a keyboard.

Further, current algorithms based on peak magnitude and step frequency data fail to sufficiently take into account possible missed steps. For example, some systems compare a moving average of magnitude measurement thresholds, a technique that can miss steps due to motion interference. This is especially problematic when a device is worn on the wrist as a user’s arm swings may offset or otherwise disrupt readings.

Bottom line, differentiating a step from, say, a bump or an arm raise is a difficult problem to solve. Arm biometrics is an important part of the future. This is just one step of many to come, I’m sure.

Ouch, it erased everything that was on it. You know LeBron, there are Apple stores everywhere—time to upgrade from the junk.

I had a chance to speak with Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President for Internet Software and Services, about iTunes Festival last night.

Politics aside, President Obama’s appearance with Zach Galifianakis on Between Two Ferns was pretty big news. This interview with creator Scott Aukerman digs into the backstory on how they got the President on board.

Zach and I didn’t really think that anything would come of it. I mean, we’d been hearing rumors that President Obama has perhaps been interested in doing the show for quite a few years now and it never really panned out. And then months and months went by and nothing really happened with it. So, approximately three weeks ago, we heard that if it was ever going to happen, it was going to be now, so we should get ready and prep.

It really came around in a week. We heard he was interested, and Zach and I prepped and wrote up a treatment for them to look at, with what we wanted to do with the video and how we wanted to approach it. For me, the most important thing was that it didn’t come across as an advertisement. I really wanted it to be a funny, normal “Between Two Ferns” video. And the great part about it was that the White House was very accommodating of that and didn’t want to get in the way of our process. They didn’t want it to be just any kind of ad; they knew that it had to be funny and it had to be what we normally do for anyone to actually watch it. So, to their credit, they actually stayed out of our way with it. But yeah, within a week Zach and I had pitched what we wanted to do, they accepted it, and we flew out to the White House [laughs] and filmed it.

Here’s the video:

Collectors Weekly:

There’s an open secret in America: If you want to kill someone, do it with a car. As long as you’re sober, chances are you’ll never be charged with any crime, much less manslaughter.Over the past hundred years, as automobiles have been woven into the fabric of our daily lives, our legal system has undermined public safety, and we’ve been collectively trained to think of these deaths as unavoidable “accidents” or acts of God.Today, despite the efforts of major public-health agencies and grassroots safety campaigns, few are aware that car crashes are the number one cause of death for Americans under 35. But it wasn’t always this way.

In light of the discussions we’ve been having here and elsewhere about CarPlay and distracted driving, this is an interesting history lesson in how we used to view cars versus today’s perceptions. If you committed a violation of bond conditions Texas while driving your car, it is advised that you contact your criminal defense lawyer at once.

This is pretty cool. A collection of early on, old school web sites from companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, the BBC, CNN, and many more.

Fantastic piece from MG Siegler on the trend of producing high quality content traditionally reserved for films, making it longer, then cutting it up for television or for web consumption.

Regular readers will know my fascination with True Detective. It’s not just that it’s a great television show; it’s great content, period. I think it stacks up against the best films in the genre that I’ve seen. And, in fact, in some ways it’s better because it’s essentially a seven hour film, broken up into more easily digestible pieces.

That last part is the key. True Detective as a seven hour film would be just as amazing as the television show is, but it would be very hard to watch. Attention spans aside, it’s hard to sit through anything for seven hours straight. The genius of True Detective is using the traditional television format of “episodes” to break up the content into easier-to-consume pieces. The sum of those parts is equal to — or perhaps even greater than — the whole if it were one continuous entity.

Of course, none of this is particularly new. But the difference in my mind is that the television content is now equalling — or even surpassing — that of film. House of Cards. Game of Thrones. Etc. These are like great films, cut up, and extended. The format isn’t new. But the end result is.

I couldn’t agree more. One reason this is possible is that new revenue models have evolved that make such ventures possible.

Great read.

From today’s New York Times DealBook blog:

The maker of Candy Crush Saga, the hugely popular puzzle game, said on Wednesday that it hoped to raise as much as $532.8 million in its initial public offering, valuing the company at nearly $7.6 billion.

In a revised prospectus, the company, King Digital Entertainment, said it planned to price its shares at $21 to $24 apiece. At the midpoint of that range, the company would raise $499.5 million and be valued at roughly $7.1 billion.

Should demand prove higher than unexpected, the game developer’s underwriters can sell additional shares in what is known as a greenshoe option, pushing the maximum size of the offering up to $612 million.

The mind reels. Analysts are troubled by Apple’s current stock price, proclaiming doom and gloom. But Candy Crush? They can’t wait to get their hands on this stock. I just don’t get it.

Nice writeup by the Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica. This is definitely worth a read.

One thing that struck me was the big overall benefit that came from subtly speeding up various animation elements from 7.0.x to 7.1. Watch the first video to get a sense of this. iOS 7.1 is on the right side.

I do get the value of limiting further in-app purchases without reentering your password.

Among the new features of iOS 7.1 is the addition of a warning message for users concerning the 15-minute in-app purchase window. This quarter-hour window allows you to buy IAPs on an iOS device without further authorization for 15 minutes following the correct entry of a password.

But why 15 minutes?

The feature (which can be turned off in the “Settings” menu) is likely related to Apple’s settlement with the FTC, which saw the company refund $32.5 million to customers on the back of a lawsuit over IAPs. At the time Apple said that it would not only issue refunds to those affected, but also modify its in-app billing system to make the process clearer for users. These changes came with a March 31 deadline from the FTC.

Ah, makes sense. Sort of like saying, “How much trouble can someone get into in 15 minutes?”

From the New York Times:

Today, more than two people in five are connected to the web. Every minute, billions of connected people send each other hundreds of millions of messages, share 20 million photos and exchange at least $15 million in goods and services, according to the World Wide Web Foundation.

On net neutrality:

While Mr. Berners-Lee said he was incredibly grateful for what the web has done since those early days, he warned that people need to realize that a current battle around so-called network neutrality could permanently harm the future of the web.

The idea behind net neutrality is simple: The web material we see on our laptops and smartphones, whether from Google or a nondescript blog, should flow freely through the Internet, regardless of its origin or creator. No one gets special treatment. But companies like Verizon hope some people will pay more to get preferential treatment and reach customers quicker.

“The web should be a neutral medium. The openness of the web is really, really important,” Mr. Berners-Lee said. “It’s important for the open markets, for the economy and for democracy.”

He worries that people online have no idea what could be at stake if large telecommunications companies took control of the web and the type of material we now have access to without any blockades or speed barriers.

We may look back on these days as a golden age of net access. When you read the article, don’t overlook the very first screen shot. It’s a bit hard to read, but this is how it all started.

“We are thrilled that the city of San Francisco has given its final approval to begin work on our new store and public plaza, which will make a wonderful addition to Union Square and create hundreds of local jobs,” Apple spokeswoman Amy Bessette told Re/code. “Our Stockton Street store has been incredibly popular, welcoming over 13 million customers since it opened nine years ago, and we look forward to making a new home on Union Square.”

Located at the corner of Stockton and Post on Union Square, home to many of the city’s luxury retailers, the new store will tape out at around 24,819 square feet — about 45 percent larger than Apple’s current store at Stockton and Ellis. Apple expects it to require about 400 employees to run, 50 more than its predecessor. And the company expects the finished store to become “more iconic than the glass cube in New York City.”

Bessette declined to say when Apple expects to begin construction on the new store, but sources close to the company suggest it will likely be this summer.

I love the emphasis Apple puts on creating iconic structures. I think this is especially important when you take a potentially historic property and convert it to commercial use.

This is infuriating.

Tesla was dealt a crushing blow in New Jersey today after the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission passed a rule that will prevent the company from selling its electric cars directly to consumers starting in April. Unlike other automakers, Tesla sells its Model S through company-owned retail stores — a business model that cuts out the franchised auto dealerships that have ruled the market for decades. New Jersey is the third US state to ban car manufacturers from selling directly to customers, joining Texas and Arizona. But unlike those two states, New Jersey is home to a booming luxury vehicle market, making this a major loss for Tesla.

From the Tesla Motor Team’s blog post today:

Since 2013, Tesla Motors has been working constructively with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (NJMVC) and members of Governor Christie’s administration to defend against the New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers’ (NJ CAR) attacks on Tesla’s business model and the rights of New Jersey consumers. Until yesterday, we were under the impression that all parties were working in good faith.

Unfortunately, Monday we received news that Governor Christie’s administration has gone back on its word to delay a proposed anti-Tesla regulation so that the matter could be handled through a fair process in the Legislature. The Administration has decided to go outside the legislative process by expediting a rule proposal that would completely change the law in New Jersey. This new rule, if adopted, would curtail Tesla’s sales operations and jeopardize our existing retail licenses in the state. Having previously issued two dealer licenses to Tesla, this regulation would be a complete reversal to the long standing position of NJMVC on Tesla’s stores. Indeed, the Administration and the NJMVC are thwarting the Legislature and going beyond their authority to implement the state’s laws at the behest of a special interest group looking to protect its monopoly at the expense of New Jersey consumers. This is an affront to the very concept of a free market.

Proposal PRN 2013-138 seeks to impose stringent licensing rules that would, among other things, require all new motor vehicles to be sold through middlemen and block Tesla’s direct sales model. This move comes in spite of discussions with the Governor’s staff as recently as January, when it was agreed that Tesla and NJ CAR would address their issues in a more public forum: the New Jersey Legislature. Instead, rather than engage in an open debate on such a significant policy issue, the Administration has expedited the implementation of a new law that the Commission intends to stealthily approve at a meeting in Trenton today at 2:00 PM EDT.

We are disappointed in the actions of the NJMVC and the Christie Administration, which come on the heels of more than nine months of unexplained delays in the issuing of a new sales license for Tesla, despite our numerous requests, calls, and letters. In addition, the NJMVC has also delayed the annual renewal of Tesla’s current dealer licenses without indication of the cause of the delay. The delays have handicapped Tesla in New Jersey, where, without clear licensing procedures and fair enforcement of existing law, we have been forced to delay our growth plans. This is an issue that affects not just Tesla customers, but also New Jersey citizens at large, because Tesla would be unable to create new jobs or participate in New Jersey’s economic revival.

At the same time, neither Tesla nor the taxpayers of New Jersey have been able to participate in any of the analysis or been granted a hearing as requested last year when this was first proposed. Despite being the subject of the regulation, we were only able to obtain information about today’s meeting with less than 24 hours notice and in direct contravention of assurances by the Governor.

We strongly believe it is vital to introduce our own vehicles to the market because electric cars are still a relatively new technology. This model is not just a matter of selling more cars and providing optimum consumer choice for Americans, but it is also about educating consumers about the benefits of going electric, which is central to our mission to accelerate the shift to sustainable transportation, a new paradigm in automotive technology.

We urge the Christie administration to act in good faith and withdraw the proposed amendment, or amend it so that it reflects the true intent of the Legislature and the people of New Jersey.

Examiner:

A child was at the Barrett Pharmacy & Variety in Watford City, North Dakota this past December, and the 6-year-old informed the pharmacist that she couldn’t sleep at night. According to the little girl, she was afraid of monsters that were in her room. Pharmacist Jeff Dodds prescribed the girl a bottle of anti-monster spray to take care of the problem.

“Spray around the room at night before bed, repeat if necessary,” the instructions on the label informed the user.

What a sweet thing to do. I wonder if he’d prescribe anti-moron spray I could use on the internet?