This is crushing news.

Ramis, a longtime North Shore resident, was surrounded by family when he died at 12:53 a.m. from complications of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a rare disease that involves swelling of the blood vessels, his wife Erica Mann Ramis said. He was 69.

Ramis’ serious health struggles began in May 2010 with an infection that led to complications related to the autoimmune disease, his wife said. Ramis had to relearn to walk but suffered a relapse of the vaculitis in late 2011, said Laurel Ward, vice president of development at Ramis’ Ocean Pictures production company.

I always looked up to Harold Ramis, thought he was under appreciated. Brilliant body of work, influenced a generation of writers.

Ramis leaves behind a formidable body of work, with writing credits on such enduring comedies as “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (which upon its 1978 release catapulted the film career of John Belushi, with whom Ramis acted at Second City), “Stripes” (1981) and “Ghostbusters” (in which Ramis also co-starred) plus such directing efforts as “Caddyshack” (1980), “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983), “Groundhog Day” and “Analyze This.”

Previously he was the first head writer (and a performer) on Second City’s groundbreaking television series “Second City Television (SCTV)” (1976-79). More recently he directed episodes of NBC’s “The Office.”

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Steve Jobs and everything he did in his life, so I wanted to put together an issue of The Loop Magazine dedicated to Steve and his accomplishments. What better day to publish it than on Steve’s birthday.

I gathered together people that worked with Steve and those that were influenced by his extraordinary life. Former Apple executive, Richard Kerris, tells of introducing Jobs to The Rolling Stones to show off iTunes before it was released to the public; Don Melton, former head of the Safari team at Apple, tells of a number of interactions with Jobs; Industry analyst, Tim Bajarin, recounts how he watched Steve grow into the showman we all saw on stage; Actor Matthew Modine played John Scully in the recently released “Jobs” movie and talks about that experience; Matt Gemmell believes we’ve all met Steve through his work; and Jonathan Zufi talks about why he set out to photograph as many Apple products as he could to publish “Iconic,” a design book about Apple.

You can download The Loop Magazine from the App Store on your iPhone or iPad.

Someone on Reddit dug this up. Seems so very right. Heh.

Apple and Google and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft, have a huge lead in the smart phone mindshare race. Some might argue that the lead is unassailable.

You may have heard of the operating system Tizen (you may even know how to pronounce it: tie-zen, not tee-zen or tiz-zen).

But the chances of it running your smartphone are slim, about the same as having had one of its predecessors or rivals: Maemo, Moblin, MeeGo, Bada, Ubuntu, Sailfish or Firefox.

Hard to argue with that. So why do these companies persist? Are they tilting at windmills? Or, perhaps, are they pursuing the next wave?

Instead, attention is shifting to winning a share of a potentially bigger pie: the software that runs your car, camera, fridge, smartwatch or TV. The thinking here is that if web-based operating systems like Firefox or Tizen can gain a foothold in those internet-connected devices, they could then gain broader acceptance among users and app developers on mobile, too.

Interesting discussion of the internet of things and emerging markets.

This article starts in a chilling way:

A Canadian internet service provider has been ordered to hand over the names and addresses of about 2,000 customers who allegedly downloaded movies online.

We’ve heard this sort of thing before. The pursuit of copyright protection can take on the nature of a patent troll using scare tactics to grab money from the guilty and innocent alike. But this case took an unexpected turn, thanks to case management judge Kevin Aalto.

A Federal Court decision released Thursday compels Ontario-based TekSavvy to identify the customers allegedly linked to downloads of films by the U.S. production company Voltage Pictures, which is behind the likes of The Hurt Locker, Dallas Buyers Club and Don Jon.

As a result, those TekSavvy customers could eventually receive a letter from Voltage threatening legal action. Under the federal Copyright Act, statutory damages for non-commercial infringement range between $100 and $5,000.

But while the court sided with Voltage’s efforts to go after copyright violators, it sought to protect against the company acting, “inappropriately in the enforcement of its rights to the detriment of innocent internet users.”

“On the facts of this case, there is some evidence that Voltage has been engaged in litigation which may have an improper purpose. However, the evidence is not sufficiently compelling for this court at this juncture in the proceeding to make any definitive determination of the motive of Voltage,” wrote judge Kevin Aalto.

Aalto ordered that before Voltage can send a letter to the alleged downloaders, it must return to court to get the wording of its communications cleared by a case management judge.

Much more work for the court, but this seems much more likely to limit the damage to innocent folks caught in the web. The cost of infringement would be much more equivalent to a speeding ticket than the overly expensive defense of a lawsuit.

Thomas Friedman writing for the New York Times about the value of a high GPA, good grades, and the like to companies like Google.

LAST June, in an interview with Adam Bryant of The Times, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google — i.e., the guy in charge of hiring for one of the world’s most successful companies — noted that Google had determined that “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.” He also noted that the “proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time” — now as high as 14 percent on some teams. At a time when many people are asking, “How’s my kid gonna get a job?” I thought it would be useful to visit Google and hear how Bock would answer.

Also:

“Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure,” said Bock.

“They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved. … What we’ve seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’ ” You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time.

Looking for a job? Trying to help a friend or family member? This is worth a read.

Fascinating read:

It’s simple: Businesses that are agile and willing to embrace cloud infrastructure will have an advantage over ones that don’t. And employers willing to accept the developer’s newfound prominence will fare better than ones that are slow to adjust to this new reality. As O’Grady puts it in his book:

“Developers are now the real decision makers in technology. Learning how to best negotiate with these New Kingmakers, therefore, could mean the difference between success and failure.”

When I heard this, I filed it under “impossibly dumb rumor”. But no, the plan to split California into 6 more easily governable regions might actually come before the voters this year. I just can’t see it.

California has reached the breaking point, says Tim Draper. The Silicon Valley venture capitalist is pushing a proposal to crack the nation’s most populous state into smaller pieces — six of them.

California has grown so big, so inefficient, it’s essentially ungovernable, according to a ballot initiative that could reach voters as early as November.

Tim Draper is the Founding Partner of VC Draper-Fisher-Jurvetson and better known as one of the people behind Skype.

“Vast parts of our state are poorly served by a representative government,” according to Draper’s plan, which cleared a key government hurdle this week, part of the process to qualify for the ballot. California residents “would be better served by six smaller state governments.”

I can’t imagine the possibility.

Even if it were to be approved by voters, Congress would have to endorse the idea of creating six new states — and adding 10 senators to the chamber’s political mix (as with all states, California currently has two). Congress, under the U.S. Constitution, must approve the creation or division of any states.

Crazy, right?

Draper, in documents he submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office, recommends dividing California regionally, including establishing a state called Silicon Valley, which would include San Francisco and nearby counties that are home to technology giants like Facebook and Apple.

Los Angeles would become part of the new state of West California, which also would include the coastal cities of Santa Barbara and Ventura. The state’s farming heartland would become Central California. San Diego would be the largest city in the new South California.

Oh, California, what will you think of next?

If this is true, this is a big deal for both Microsoft and BlackBerry.

Ford Motor Co., struggling with in-car technology glitches, will base the next-generation Sync system on BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX and no longer use Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, according to people briefed on the matter.

Using QNX will be less expensive than licensing Microsoft technology and will improve the flexibility and speed of the next Sync system, said the people, who declined to be identified because the decision hasn’t been made public. Ford has more than 7 million vehicles on the road with Sync using Microsoft voice-activated software to make mobile phone calls and play music.

BlackBerry bought QNX for $200 million back in 2010. Microsoft Sync and BlackBerry QNX are the two leading in-car operating systems.

Remember, Ford CEO Alan Mulally was a leading candidate to become the new Microsoft CEO. Interesting sequence of events.

Earlier today I posted about Apple’s recent security patches.

Follow the headline link to read Adam Langley’s take on the details behind the bug. [Via Matt Abras]

I enjoyed this read. One thing that struck me, time and time again, was the thought that none of these responses sound even remotely like Steve Ballmer. For example:

Q. [What leadership lessons have you learned from] Bill Gates?

A. Bill is the most analytically rigorous person. He’s always very well prepared, and in the first five seconds of a meeting he’ll find some logical flaw in something I’ve shown him. I’ll wonder, how can it be that I pour in all this energy and still I didn’t see something? In the beginning, I used to say, “I’m really intimidated by him.” But he’s actually quite grounded. You can push back on him. He’ll argue with you vigorously for a couple of minutes, and then he’ll be the first person to say, “Oh, you’re right.” Both Bill and Steve share this. They pressure-test you. They test your conviction.

I get the sense that Nadella is a thoughtful, intelligent person, that he constantly assesses the moving pieces to get his arms around the big picture.

Also:

So how do you create that self-organizing capability to drive innovation and be focused? And the high-tech business is perhaps one of the toughest ones, because something can be a real failure until it’s not. It’s just an absolute dud until it’s a hit. So you have to be able to sense those early indicators of success, and the leadership has to really lean in and not let things die on the vine. When you have a $70 billion business, something that’s $1 million can feel irrelevant. But that $1 million business might be the most relevant thing we are doing.

To me, that is perhaps the big culture change — recognizing innovation and fostering its growth. It’s not going to come because of an org chart or the organizational boundaries. Most people have a very strong sense of organizational ownership, but I think what people have to own is an innovation agenda, and everything is shared in terms of the implementation.

Just an impression, but he could be just what Microsoft needs right now.

I found this story incredibly moving. It deals with dying, so don’t read it if you are not on solid ground, emotionally.

Wow! I’m guessing there’s a web site out there collecting stories like this.

Microsoft is trying to make devices that run Windows easier to sell by making significant cuts to the license price.

Stronger competition from Apple Inc. and Google cut revenue last quarter at Microsoft’s devices and consumer licensing division, which includes Windows software, as the computer industry posted its biggest annual decline on record. By offering incentives for PC makers to sell cheaper models, Microsoft may be able to increase its share of the growing $80 billion tablet market and stave off Chromebooks, notebooks that run Google’s operating system.

This is a slippery slope. Windows is in a race to the bottom and that’s no place for innovation. Time will tell if this strategy will help grow their mobile market share. Personally, I’m skeptical. Make your products more compelling, not cheaper.

I don’t subscribe to many newsletters, but Dave Pell’s Next Draft is definitely worth it. The newsletter is free and a great daily read.

The Air Force is replacing 5,000 of its BlackBerry devices with Apple smartphones, in a broader move to eradicate the legacy devices in favor of more modern commercial technologies.

I wonder if the BlackBerry CEO will yell at the US military like he did with the CEO of T-Mobile.

[Via iMore]

Mashable:

The 2014 American International Toy Fair this week ushered in a collection of the hottest toys due out this year — from a Siri-like teddy bear and an augmented reality bedtime stories to a board game that teaches coding to pre-schoolers — but scattered within the shiny and new is the bizarre and wacky.

Gotta feel bad for today’s kids. Some of these toys are really lame.

Explore the majesty of nature in breath-taking 3D with Professor Brian Cox as your personal tour guide.

This is such an amazing app. Interesting note: This is built on the same platform that powers The Loop Magazine. The same developers built both apps.

This is big news for iOS developers (just like the ios app developer sydney). The rumors were flying ever since Wednesday:

> Burstly, the makers of an in-app ad management platform called SkyRocket and the parent company of popular mobile app testing platform TestFlight, has been acquired, we’re hearing. Though we’re working to get more information on this now, including deal terms, our understanding is that Apple is the acquirer here.

This rumor was confirmed earlier today by Re/code.

TestFlight is a widely adopted app build and distribution system. Looks like the current implementation will be winding down.

> On Wednesday, TestFlight announced it would be terminating Android support as of March 21, for example, while also announcing that it was discontinuing its TestFlight SDK. According to support documentation, only existing teams will be able to continue to upload builds with the SDK. New users and those who have never uploaded the SDK are now being asked to remove it from their builds.

So far, I’ve not seen a public comment from Burstly or TestFlight. Questions are redirected to their email support page. Still digging.

This is fascinating technology.

The device’s sensors allow it make over 250,000 3D measurements every second and update its position in real-time.

Google said potential applications may include indoor mapping, helping the visually-impaired navigate unfamiliar indoor places unassisted and gaming.

Watch the video below to get a better sense of this. I think this is a great idea, long time coming. The question is, can Google make this useful and usable. The potential is huge.

As markets mature, fraud is sure to follow. Google and Apple both have their share of problem to solve, from online browser and YouTube click fraud for Google and App Store gaming issues for Apple.

From the DoubleClick blog:

This is a fight we’ve taken seriously from the beginning. Over the years, we’ve invested significantly in the technology and talent to prevent fraud and create greater accountability online. For example, we put extensive resources towards keeping bad actors out of our ad systems — last year alone, we turned down millions of applications from sites looking to join our network because of suspected fraudulent activity. We also introduced new measurement tools, like MRC-accredited Active View, which lets advertisers buy only those ads that are viewable on a page. Active View offers greater peace of mind to all media buyers, but is especially important for brand marketers who want to know, first and foremost, that their ad has a chance to be seen.

On the spider.io acquisition:

Our immediate priority is to include their fraud detection technology in our video and display ads products, where they will complement our existing efforts. Over the long term, our goal is to improve the metrics that advertisers and publishers use to determine the value of digital media and give all parties a clearer, cleaner picture of what campaigns and media are truly delivering strong results. Also, by including spider.io’s fraud fighting expertise in our products, we can scale our efforts to weed out bad actors and improve the entire digital ecosystem.

Dave Verwer on the clones that continue to infect the App Store rankings:

A quick look at the top free App Store chart today tells me that we are not yet done with the Flappy Bird madness. There are two Flappy Miley Cyrus clones in the top 10 free apps chart. I downloaded them both (naturally) and one of them shows an advert at the top constantly and then a full screen ad after when you fail. The other has a black bar on the bottom of the 4″ iPhone screen. Shocking.

Is this really what the App Store is about? Someone save us…

This struck me as a meeting of opposites, the Ministry of Silly Walks meets the straight-laced Harvard Business Review. But I did enjoy it, this bit in particular:

Q: As a scripted comedian, what do you think about the rise of improv?

A: The delights of improv have always rather escaped me. I don’t know why it’s considered a major art form. I don’t mean that it’s not interesting or skillful. But over the years all the comedians that I’ve respected—I could also say all the comic writers—are people who put words down on paper and went on working on them until they felt they couldn’t improve them anymore. That seems to me the most important and interesting part of comedy. The other is sort of a party trick, which I respect, but it doesn’t seem to me that it should be regarded at the same level. I got an Oscar nomination for the script of A Fish Called Wanda, which had been through 13 drafts, and by the end of it, I really felt I had brought it all together. That is not a feeling I have with improv. They don’t really build to any kind of dramatic climax or comedic climax.

Fascinating guy.

Remember the negative film about Samsung I mentioned the other day—now Samsung is trying to get newspaper coverage of the film killed too.

I find this astonishing:

This is RedCross Rescue, or at least that was its title when MobileX Labs released it in November of 2012. But after a few months of poor sales, its name was changed to “Bike Race HD” in January 2013. It gained some traction, breaking the top 250 in the Adventure category, but it began to slip once more.

Then, just last month, its fortunes miraculously shifted, climbing almost 750 spots from its 1,000+ ranking in Adventure to the top 300. But this amazing change of fortune wasn’t due to a new update, cool level pack, or added functionality. No, it was achieved with nothing more than a simple name change. Overnight, Bike Race HD became “Bike Race Ninja Clumsy Run HD.”

Capitalizing on the absolutely scorching hot search term “Clumsy Ninja,” the app did quite well, but its transformation wasn’t complete. On February 14, a simple new app called “Le Pupppy” took the App Store by storm, becoming a top 10 game shortly after launch. And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as Le Pupppy began its climb to the top, the app formerly known as RedCross Rescue evolved once again, this time to “Le Puppy Clumsy Biker Pupppy Race Ninja 2 HD.”

The article goes on to follow this app through another renaming scheme. Not sure how to police this, but this just hurts everyone.