Matt Drance:

Put simply: the Internet we know and depend on will become something very different. The business relationship with your provider will change its focus from consumption (how many ones and zeros came over the wire) to behavior (what kind of ones and zeros). The latter is much more discriminatory and insidious.

Research firm NPD today announced the results of its latest Connected Home Report, showing that Apple increased its share of the U.S. smartphone installed user base by seven percentage points, from 35 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 to 42 percent in the same quarter of 2013. Second-place Samsung increased its share of the market by a smaller margin from 22 percent to 26 percent, while other major manufacturers saw their shares drop.

There are only two players in the smartphone business.

This week, Merlin Mann sits in to chat with Jim about the Nest acquisition, the problem with Google’s opaque creepiness, Jim’s upcoming trip to NAMM, plus some special interactive tips from Jim on working the pentatonic blues solo.

Homework: Practice on GnR’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”

5by5’s bandwidth for January provided by CacheFly: The fastest, most reliable CDN in the business.

Sponsors this week:

• Ting ($25 off)
• Shutterstock (25% off everything with discount code “DANSENTME114”)
• Freshbooks (They’re giving away birthday cakes!)
• Squarespace (10% off everything with discount code “NEWYEARS”)

I wish this video was better quality and I wish it was shot landscape instead of portrait. But soldier on, it’s a great little story. You’ll be rooting for both the bro and the skunk by the end.

A major challenge in registering for classes is working out schedule conflicts from overlapping classes, finding a solution that allows you to take the classes you need to take while sprinkling in courses you’d love to take or maximizing your sleep schedule. This is a complex problem with a lot of moving parts. Most universities offer, at best, some primitive calendaring solutions, even though the ability to optimize your schedule based on specified priorities is eminently solvable using software.

Two Yale students did their fellow students a huge solid by building a nice little system. It became quite popular. Then Yale shut them down.

As first reported by the Yale Daily News, representatives of the registrar’s office contacted Yu and Xu last week asking how they had obtained their data, with whose permission, and where it was hosted. Officials also expressed concerns that the site was making course evaluation information available to individuals not authorized to view the information. While the site required Yale credentials to log in, it did not have a way to sort between undergrad students and other members of the academic community. In later correspondence, the administration cited concerns about the prominence of evaluation information and unauthorized use of the words “Yale,” “Bluebook,” and the Yale logo.

At a meeting Friday, the brothers say they were told they needed to shut down the site due to these issues. “They seemed to be panicking a little bit about it,” Xu said in an interview. But the brothers countered with proposals aimed at addressing the university’s concerns and they rushed to implement changes over the weekend — including changing the name to CourseTable and adjusting how they displayed rating data. “We thought we could work out all of these issues,” says Xu, “up until Sunday night.”

Then, without further warning, Yale blocked the page from university networks — effectively cutting off students who intended to use their service to guide their shopping period.

Do the right thing here, Yale. Address this. These students should be lauded for their service work, not frozen out. This is potential egg on your face, easily avoided.

Part of the problem with selling eBooks is determining the price. You want to find the sweet spot that maximizes your profit.

Turns out that that sweet spot varies with geography and genre. Rachel Willmer at TechCrunch used the Luzme eBook search service to build a rough eBook pricing model. Interesting read.

To me, it all comes down to this:

Pressure will likely mount on the architect of the Wii success in 2006 to step aside or shift course to focus on making money from “Super Mario” and other software titles. Nintendo so far has refused to allow its games to be played on machines built by competitors or on tablets or other mobile devices that are used by gamers.

The pressure is building. Nintendo needs to either reinvent themselves entirely, shrink to focus on their handheld success, and/or start licensing franchise brands like Zelda and Mario to Microsoft or Sony.

Nintendo will be around for a while, no doubt. They project a loss of about $335 million this fiscal year and they have about $14 billion in the bank. That’s excellent news for them and gives them plenty of planning time. I worry that their hand-held business might deteriorate once the phone game controller market matures over the next few years. The longer they wait, the fewer the options.

This has the potential to be a real boon for diabetics. The contact lens has an embedded glucose sensor, a wireless transmitter, and a tiny antenna, all tucked high enough on the lens to not interfere with the wearer’s vision.

I see so much potential here. But plenty of room for harm. What else can you learn from tears? Is it possible to do illicit drug screening? DNA sampling? Personally, if I’m going to allow Google access to my body, I want the source code that communicates with the lens to be open and available so I can verify/rebuild it myself.

I love Beta Monkey drum loops—I use them on a lot of my songs.

In this issue, Don Lehman examines what “Post PC” really means; Darren Murph looks at how Land Rover is investing in brand loyalty; Kirk McElhearn looks back at the beauty of mono recordings; Dermot Daly discusses the iPhone’s 20 year reign; and Chris Domico gives us an inside look at the life of a freelance musician.

Share your world through Storehouse. It’s the easiest way to create and discover beautiful stories.

Combine photos, videos, and text to meaningfully document your experiences. Publish your stories for friends and followers, or share them by email, Facebook, or Twitter. Explore stories created by your friends and our community of storytellers from all around the world.

This looks like a great app, and it’s free.

There’s some good information here from Kirk McElhearn.

I laughed out loud at this comic.

Are you kidding me? The deal for Apple to reimburse parents for money their kids had spent on apps was already done, and then the FTC swoops in like it’s doing some great thing for the public.

Fresh data on the straying of teenagers from Facebook to other social media platforms. I wonder what is behind this trend. Is it the trend of parents on to Facebook that is driving their kids away? Is it the lure of the apparent (but not actual) temporariness of SnapChat?

Really happy this went through. The proposal for rolling out 67,500 new iPads to Los Angeles schools was laid out in July, 2013. After 6 months of in-fighting, the proposal was adopted, with a compromise on the number of iPads.

In voting for the $115 million proposal, the board sided with schools Superintendent John Deasy, who has championed the iPad effort since its inception in July 2013. An oversight panel advised against the large tablet buy, recommending 38,500 units would be more than enough for the district’s purposes. School staff requested 67,500 iPads, but the final number will be somewhere in between, the board said.

The delay in approving the proposal means there is a newer iPad available than was in the original proposal.

In other developments, Deasy announced that Apple Inc., the maker of the iPad, had agreed to provide the latest tablets at no additional charge. Until now, the district has been locked into paying top dollar for a discontinued model.

Great move, Apple. Nicely done.

Are you kidding me, Starbucks?

The Starbucks mobile app, the most used mobile-payment app in the U.S., has been storing usernames, email addresses and passwords in clear text, Starbucks executives confirmed late on Tuesday (Jan. 14). The credentials were stored in such a way that anyone with access to the phone can see the passwords and usernames by connecting the phone to a PC. No jailbreaking of the phone is necessary. And that clear text also displays an extensive list of geolocation tracking points (latitude, longitude), a treasure trove of security and privacy gems for anyone who steals the phone.

Apparently this is a purposeful choice for them, a choice between security and convenience.

“A company like Starbucks has to make the choice between usability to drive adoption and the potential for misuse or fraud,” said Charlie Wiggs, general manager and senior vice president for U.S. markets at mobile vendor Mozido. “Starbucks has opted to make it very convenient. They just have to make sure that their comfort doesn’t overexpose their consumers and their brand.”

“Yes, it does surprise me,” said Gartner security analyst Avivah Litan. “I would have expected more out of Starbucks. At least they should have informed consumers.”

And apparently Starbucks could have done that. Two executives — Starbucks CIO Curt Garner and Starbucks Chief Digital Officer Adam Brotman — said in a telephone interview that they have known for an unspecified period of time that the credentials were being stored in clear text. “We were aware,” Brotman said. “That was not something that was news to us.”

So how does Starbucks respond?

Starbucks is downplaying the potential for customers to be victimized and claims that it has made (vague and unspecified) changes that alleviate the problem. Brotman said the issue should no longer be a concern because “we have security measures in place now related to that” and “we have adequate security measures in place now.” He declined to say what those security measures were, but said that customers’ “usernames and passwords are safe,” because Starbucks has added “extra layers of security.”

Yeesh!

Buried in this article on the Nest acquisition is this little gem:

Researchers in 2011 were even able to use a similar approach to determine what movie was being watched on a television set by making energy profiles of each film. This was achieved by observing that a television’s electricity load will vary over time depending on whether dark or light scenes are being displayed to the viewer.

Although the researchers in question relied on very granular data from the television set, Danezis worries that such techniques could one day offer smart-home companies an X-ray view of your home.

Here’s a link the research. Basically, they used an energy profile to determine what you were actually watching.

To me, that’s the real value of this Nest deal for Google. Google has so much to learn about you and your habits, and this is their first foray beyond the screen. The Nest thermostat learns about when you leave your home, when you are home for extended periods, etc. The name of this game is extrapolation. Are you suddenly home for extended periods? Does this mean you lost your job? Perhaps some nice help wanted ads on your refrigerator would be appropriate.

Struck by two things here. First, and most obvious, check before you buy, people. This is your hard-earned money. If you heard about Google buying Nest and just can’t resist, make sure you know the proper stock symbol before you hit add-to-cart.

Second, and most interesting to me, people were rewarded for this mistake, at least until the roller coaster went back down again. Apparently, this sort of confusion happens periodically. Nestor, Inc. trades over-the-counter under the symbol NEST. The question is, did an actual savvy investor spot this name confusion and buy Nestor as soon as the Nest acquisition was announced, then sell at the top?

Very interesting, but I’ll stick with my jeans and t-shirt for now.

This is very cool.

[Via Swissmiss]

Apple Inc will refund consumers at least $32.5 million to settle a longstanding complaint that the technology company billed U.S. consumers for charges incurred by children through mobile apps without their parents’ consent.

Or, you know, you could just look after your kids and take responsibility for what they do.

This is the best sounding Boss pedalboard I’ve heard in years.

A facelift, but you’ll definitely still recognize it. I have one of these that’s 10 years old or so.

This is good if you use cover images.

First, let’s get the most mysterious thing about the Galaxy S5 out of the way: Yes, it will come in both metal and plastic versions as has been rumored, with the metal version costing around 800 Euros and the plastic model coming in at around 650 Euros. It’s pretty much similar to what Apple has done.

Maureen O’Connor writing for New York Magazine:

There is such a thing as too much information for you. There is such a thing as information the speaker will later regret. But if an audience is willingly and pleasurably consuming the information, then by definition, that is the right amount of information for them. Assuming the information in question is yours to share — your life, your ideas, your stories, your pictures, your theories about elf genealogy in Lord of the Rings — you cannot share too much of it. There are no captive audiences on the Internet.

I enjoyed this article.

Recode:

The principle of the idea is that the speech of 300 million Americans is more important than the profit-making activities of four or five companies.

Unfortunately all too often “principle” falls to “commerce”.