January 10, 2014
Written by Dave Mark
Wow. Yesterday, we posted this little doozy, Jim’s classic reaction to Google’s new default that allows people on Google+ to send you email, even if they don’t have your email address.
While digging into that story, I ran across this little gem (via FastCompany). Seems Thomas Gagnon got slapped with a restraining order by his former girlfriend. Then, a few weeks ago, she got a Google+ invite, attributed to him.
Gagnon, of 10 Wilson St., Beverly, was arrested Thursday evening at his home, 90 minutes after his former girlfriend went to the police station with a printed copy of the Google Plus invitation and the restraining order. Police agreed that the invitation violated the order, and obtained an arrest warrant.
Yikes! Gagnon claims he didn’t send the invite. Is it possible Google sent it on his behalf?
A status hearing in the case is set for Feb. 6.
Here’s hoping he’s got an attorney who knows his way around Google+.
January 9, 2014
Written by Jim Dalrymple
U.S. Mac sales spiked 28.5 percent year over year in the just-concluded fourth quarter of calendar 2013, according to the latest figures from Gartner, giving Apple a 13.7 percent share of its home market while the rest of the industry continues to struggle.
I guess it’s a good time to own a Mac… and iPhone… and iPad.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Yes, I will take one of those.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Dante D’Orazio for The Verge:
Once the service goes live over the next few days, a new setting will appear in Gmail called “Email via Google+.” If you don’t want everyone on Google+ to be able to send you an email, you’ll have to opt out by selecting “no one” or choosing another option to limit the feature to people in certain circles.
Stop it!
Don Lehman is the Founder and Designer of More/Real. You can follow him on Twitter.
Today is the seventh anniversary of the iPhone. It’s one of those anniversaries that feels both shockingly long ago and not that long ago, but what it’s providing for me today is perspective.
The perspective comes from Las Vegas, where today also happens to be the second to last day of CES. This year’s show is notable for the amount of wearable tech that has been demonstrated and almost universally dismissed as “not ready”. It reminds me of exactly where we were in the years leading up to the iPhone, when the only thing that was working for smartphones was the idea.
In retrospect the iPhone is obvious, but from our current vantage point, wearable tech is anything but. We like the idea, but no one has nailed it yet. It sure isn’t for lack of effort, as this CES has demonstrated, but it shows the chasm between idea and execution and how hard it is to marry the two.
It also gives context to the Apple vs. Samsung fight and why Apple is so mad about having their “obvious” ideas used by a competitor. Apple bet the company on making a great smartphone. The issues they had to solve: Underpowered OSes, a new interface, battery life, what does the thing look like, what features should it have… Does this sound familiar? These are the exact—and I mean literally, the Exact. Same. Issues. that companies trying to make wearable devices are facing.
When Apple did nail it, their competition couldn’t believe they had actually done it. RIM’s executives ripped open an iPhone on launch day and were shocked at what they had found. Their solution to battery efficiency had been to use a small, low res screen (by today’s standards) with an OS designed to minimize battery usage. It was an elegant solution for the time and everyone else was copying their lead. Apple’s solution? Use a really big battery. Obvious. In retrospect.
What I’m saying is this: Let’s appreciate what these companies who are trying their hand at wearable tech are trying to do. This is really hard stuff. But let’s also appreciate that no one has figured it out yet. When someone does figure it out, it will feel obvious. And everyone else will quickly copy them, forgetting how hard it was to do in the first place.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I’m not a lawyer, but there’s some good stuff in here.
Written by Shawn King
Wall Street Journal:
TV is stuck in an innovation cul-de-sac. There are no new ideas in TV hardware that are worth paying for, so, thanks to competition and production efficiencies, good TVs keep getting cheaper. The cheaper they get, the more desperate TV makers become, filling their sets with more and more useless piffle. From 3D to 4K to curved screens to Sony’s strange “wedge-shaped” sets (don’t ask), we are witnessing an industry out of ideas, a business desperately casting about in the dark for something—anything—that might persuade us to part with our money.
For most of us, the TV we already have in our living rooms is perfectly good for what we watch. There’s little compelling in the offerings at this year’s CES.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Expect to see a host of new wearables from Samsung this year, including some that were designed, in part, in San Francisco.
Allow me to translate: We expect Apple to release wearables sometime this year. As soon as they do we will copy them in an undisclosed location in San Francisco.
I love the videos from CrazyRussianHacker. This is super easy. You’ll need 12 Q-tips, a hot glue gun, and some dish soap or bubble liquid. Got kids? They’ll love it!
Written by Dave Mark
This is a court case in Germany that has drawn a lot of international attention.
Germany’s Supreme Court has just handed down a landmark ruling on the liability of Internet subscribers in copyright disputes. Overturning an earlier decision by a lower court the Federal Court of Justice said that an account holder could not be held liable for piracy carried out by an adult family member if he had no reason to believe any was being carried out.
Not clear how this ruling will impact other countries, but it is a precedent.
Written by Dave Mark
Like a lot of you, I’m sure, I’ve been a Mac user since the beginning. True, I didn’t buy my first Mac until March of 1984, but that was purely lack of funds, not lack of desire.
And, in the blink of an eye, it’s 30 years later. Big wave of nostalgia.
On January 25, 2014, All Planet Studios, the Computer History Museum and Macworld/iWorld will be throwing a celebration at the Flint Center in Cupertino, Calif. The event will be held in the same 2,300-seat auditorium where Steve Jobs first introduced the Mac, though the space has since been renovated. Of course, you wouldn’t go just to see the auditorium, so the organizers have put together some fantastic panels.
Members of the original development team will be holding a series of discussions about the creation of the Macintosh from conception to the modern day. Using previously unreleased video, attendees will be taken back in time to experience those early days. And, in what is possibly the coolest aspect of the event, directer Ridley Scott will be on hand to discuss his iconic “1984” ad.
Daniel Kottke will be one of the main hosts of the event, with author Steven Levy, Randy Wigginton, George Crow, Rod Holt, Larry Tesler, Bill Fernandez, Bruce Horn, Ron Nicholson, Larry Kenyon, Jerry Manock, Donn Denman, Bill Bull, Martin Haeberli, Bryan Stearns, Bob Belleville, David Beaver, Sam Lyall, Carolyn Rose, Joe Sheldon, Debi Coleman, Brian Robertson and Pamela Wyman making appearances along with other original Macintosh team members.
Wow! This is a great group. Here’s the official link. You can buy your ticket on the site. All proceeds after expenses go to Coder Dojo, the open source, volunteer led, global movement of free coding clubs for young people.
Written by Dave Mark
Take a look and, if you’ve got some experience in this area, add to the thread.
Written by Dave Mark
About the size of a miniature ukulele, the Jivix JamStik features real strings that can be pressed, strummed, and bent, as well as piezo and infrared sensors so the Jamstik can be used as a MIDI controller. There’s even a GuitarHero-like tutorial to help you learn.
This has real possibilities. A travel guitar you can fit in your backpack. The JamStik is available for preorder, but be aware that this is an IndieGogo project, not yet a shipping product. That said, this was demoed on the floor of CES, so that gives me hope.
January 8, 2014
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon will attend the session with in-house lawyers only, according to a Wednesday court filing. Their legal teams had met on January 6 to “discuss settlement opportunities,” the filing read.
Let me get this started: Stop stealing our shit you slimy bastards and we’ll stop winning lawsuits against you.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Nilai will be renamed, redesigned, and be completely open sourced. We’ll offer a fully hosted solution that people can use for both for free and for pay for but anyone that would like to they can download the application and run it themselves. We’re going to build it out in the open, which means that we’ll be publishing our roadmap, our internal discussions, our design mockups (both failures and successes), our business ideas, our marketing materials — anything and everything we can publish as early as we possibly can. In short, we’re going to rebuild Nilai into something new and do it in public.
Interesting. This comes from the folks who make the Barley CMS.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Totally agree with Gruber.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Jim and Dan talk about Canadian blizzards, Jim’s missing 2013 Mac Pro, the LaCie Fuel, Dropbox, DROPOUTJEEP, coding on an iPad, apps that Must Always Be Installed, Jim’s amazing new rig, and more.
Sponsored by Ting, Squarespace, and Freshbooks.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
One of the best things I purchased for my guitar pedals.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Every year brings some new exciting things in design.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Some interesting thoughts from Om Malik on the Snapchat drama of late. I don’t know, I think they really screwed up, but maybe I’m in the minority.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
The gathering featured some 200 manufacturers displaying an array of gadgets that is quaint by today’s standards, but must have been impressive at the time. As The New York Times described it, the conference’s audio section alone offered products ranging from “phonographic needles to the tiniest radios and TV sets, to giant high fidelity, stereophonic sound systems.”
It’s great looking back. I enjoyed this more than any CES coverage this year.
Written by Shawn King
Mashable:
We’ve found 10 of the most interesting and interactive real-time visualizations on the web. Feast your eyes on these awe-inspiring pages for a fresh look on what’s happening on the planet right now.
I don’t know about “put the world in perspective” but the Tweetping and FBomb_co data is fascinating.
Written by Shawn King
The Week:
if you wanted to improve your Canadian accent, you would do better to just use your Californian accent. In some important ways it is closer to the real Canadian accent and vice versa than other American accents are.
Canada actually has many regional differences in accents. The most extraordinary ones are of the people native to Newfoundland but mine and Jim Dalrymple’s home province of Nova Scotia has some very distinctive accents too.
Written by Dave Mark
A few days ago, a picture appeared on Reddit showing a flatbed truck loaded with a gigantic Amazon box. If you haven’t seen the picture, click here.
Lots of people speculated on the contents of the box, but we now have a definitive answer.
Great marketing! (H/T to Jonathan Hendry)
Not sure when this feature got added, but since this was new to me, thought this was worth sharing.
Launch QuickTime Player (it’s in your Applications folder). Now select New Screen Recording from the File menu, or type control-command-N. A small screen recording window will appear, like so:
Click the little triangle on the right side of the window to adjust microphone and mouse click options. When ready, click the record button in the center of the window. Click and drag a section of the screen to record part of the screen or just click to record the entire screen. Once you do that, click to start recording. Click the stop button that appears in the menu bar to stop recording.
Pretty easy, and the end result is a QuickTime movie you can use anywhere you’d expect (iMovie, YouTube, etc.) Clearly not a method a pro would use, but if your needs are relatively simple, this is a great solution.
Written by Dave Mark
I like David Pogue. And I like what he’s done with Yahoo Tech. The new look is very clean and easy to navigate. As you’d expect from Pogue, it’s also very friendly.
All that said, I suspect the site will be an acquired taste for some. It’s more visual than organized, so if you are a list oriented person, it might be a little hard to take in. But me, I’m good with this approach.
Spend a few minutes digging through it. I’ve added it to my daily reading list.
Written by Dave Mark
Fresh water sources throughout the southwestern US are dwindling.
The Colorado basin states tried in the 1920s to stave off future fights over water by splitting it, 50-50, between the upper-basin states of Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming and the lower-basin states of Arizona, Nevada and California.
In fact, the deal underestimated how much water the fast-growing lower-basin states would need. During most of the wet 20th century, however, the river usually produced more than enough water to offset any shortage.
Now, the gap between need and supply is becoming untenable.
Lake Mead currently stands about 1,106 feet above sea level, and is expected to drop 20 feet in 2014. A continued decline would introduce a new set of problems: At 1,075 feet, rationing begins; at 1,050 feet, a more drastic rationing regime kicks in, and the uppermost water intake for Las Vegas shuts down. At 1,025 feet, rationing grows more draconian; at 1,000 feet, a second Las Vegas intake runs dry.
Read the article. Not an easy problem to solve.
