Jake is an incredible guitar player and one of the reasons I came to love Charvel guitars so much.

BBC News:

Erwin Perzy III knows a thing or two about making it snow – it’s the family business.

The 57-year-old Austrian is the grandson of the man widely acknowledged as the inventor of the snow globe. His grandfather, the first Erwin Perzy, came up with the idea by accident in 1900.

Mass production started in Vienna in 1905, and 108 years later, the company – Original Vienna Snow Globes – is still going strong.

There’s something a little bit magical about a well done, well made snow globe.

Every year, thousands of people resolve to get organized in the new year. If you’re one of them, let Benjamin help. Benjamin is a task manager for iOS based on the FranklinCovey system of time management. Built specifically for those who love the Franklin Planner, Benjamin stores all your tasks, projects, and notes so they’re always at your fingertips. Best of all, Benjamin lets you sync your information between iPhone and iPad so that it’s conveniently available whether you’re at your desk or on the go.

Give yourself the tools you need to succeed in 2014. Give yourself Benjamin on the iPhone and iPad.

Here’s the text of the email. It’s been a great year for Apple.

Team,

This holiday season, tens of millions of people around the world, from all walks of life, are experiencing Apple products for the first time. Those moments of surprise and delight are magical, and they’re all made possible by your hard work. As many of us prepare to celebrate the holidays with our loved ones, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on what we’ve achieved together over the past year.

First and foremost, we introduced industry-leading products in each of our major categories in 2013, showing the breadth and depth of innovation at Apple. We extended our lead in the smartphone market with iPhone 5s; launched iOS 7, an extraordinarily ambitious project; released OS X Mavericks for free to our customers; introduced the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina display; and this week began shipping the Mac Pro from a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. We also marked our 50 billionth download on the App Store – a milestone no one could have predicted we would reach so quickly.

Together we’ve shown the world that innovation at Apple goes beyond our products to the way we do business and how we give back to our community. This year, Apple raised and donated tens of millions of dollars for important charities and relief efforts like Red Cross aid to typhoon victims in the Philippines, and we continue to be the largest contributor to (PRODUCT)RED, supporting the Global Fund in its fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa. Just a few weeks ago, Jony Ive led an unprecedented effort that brought money and awareness to eliminating the transmission of AIDS from mother to child.

And finally, Apple is standing up for what we believe is right. We know that equality and diversity make our company and our society stronger, so we’ve urged the U.S. Congress to support workplace protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. We are also laser focused on our contribution to several environmental initiatives and we will increase our efforts even more in this area in the future.

We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love. I am extremely proud to stand alongside you as we put innovation to work serving humankind’s deepest values and highest aspirations. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world for the opportunity to work at this amazing company with all of you.

Happy Holidays,

Tim

Marcus “The Magnificant” Malone was a member of the original Santana lineup and played percussion on the first Santana album, released in 1969. Marcus fell on hard times, doing three years in San Quentin prison and ending up homeless on the streets of Oakland, California.

Watch the video. I hope Marcus gets back on his feet.

Apple and China Mobile today announced they have entered into a multi-year agreement to bring iPhone to the world’s largest mobile network. As part of the agreement, iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will be available from China Mobile’s expansive network of retail stores as well as Apple retail stores across mainland China beginning on Friday, January 17, 2014. iPhone 5s, the most forward-thinking smartphone in the world and iPhone 5c, the most colorful iPhone yet, will be available for pre-registration from China Mobile’s official website (www.10086.cn) and customer service hotline “10086” beginning on Wednesday, December 25, 2013.

China Mobile now has over 1.2 million 2G/GSM, 3G/TD-SCDMA, 4G/TD-LTE base stations and over 4.2 million Wi-Fi access points, providing broad coverage to quality networks for iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c customers. China Mobile is rolling out the world’s largest 4G network. By the end of 2013, China Mobile’s 4G services will be available in 16 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. By the end of 2014, China Mobile plans to complete the rollout of more than 500,000 4G base stations, which will cover more than 340 cities with 4G service. The collaboration between Apple and China Mobile will give a big boost to the development of China’s homegrown 4G/TD-LTE technology. iPhone on China Mobile supports major cellular network standards, making a global phone a reality for China Mobile customers.

This is a huge deal for Apple—this is the one people have been watching.

NBC World News:

Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer. They fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church.

It’s easy for some of us to dismiss this as silly but the story has a great quote in it from an Icelander. He says, “I got married in a church with a god just as invisible as the elves, so what might seem irrational is actually quite common.” So who are we to say Icelandic Elves don’t deserve protections?

Nasa:

In December of 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first people to leave our home planet and travel to another body in space. But as crew members Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders all later recalled, the most important thing they discovered was Earth.

It can be argued the picture, “Earthrise”, was the one photo that changed the earth the most. It expanded our understanding and concern for the planet we live on.

Simply incredible.

A week ago, Cuban-American artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada unveiled his latest public land-art project, “Wish,” as part of the Belfast Festival. “Wish” depicts a portrait of an anonymous girl spanning 11 acres of land that can only be seen from the highest points in Belfast or, for the best view, from an airplane. The face is formed from organic materials like sand, grass and soil, all of which were donated by local businesses.

This project took several years for Gerada to finish. He used satellite technology and manually placed 30,000 wooden pegs on the field, finally “drawing” the face with nearly 8 million pounds of soil, sand and rock.

Fascinating article on how your stolen credit or debit card info makes its way through the digital underground.

If you’ve used your debit or credit card at Target between November 27 and December 15, read this article. The most important takeaway:

Debit card holders: call your bank immediately. Debit card users should be especially vigilant. Credit card users won’t be out of pocket if they suffer fraud and contest the charges, but the opposite is true for debit card holders since fraudulent transactions may take their bank balance to zero.

Accordingly, Velasquez recommended that any debit card users who might have been Target breach victims immediately contact their card issuers and ask for advice. “Tell them you’re a victim of the Target breach,” she said. To help combat fraud, different institutions offer different options, such as putting passwords on accounts or changing PIN codes. “But alerting your specific financial institution is really the way to go, because they all have different rules,” she said.

The gaming world is a cesspit of maladjusted, comically aggressive, emotionally (and maybe actually) adolescent males who have a deep fear and distrust of women. The problematic gamers are, naturally, almost exclusively male – and no doubt skew towards the young side. No-one’s surprised by that. I’m not surprised.

I’m with Matt.

Interesting side effect when Apple shuts down iTunes Connect for the holidays: Apps that are discounted as of today (December 21) stay that same price until iTunes Connect reopens on December 28th. Follow the headline link for a good list of discounted apps. Head over to AppShopper.com for more. Be sure to click the “Price Drops” tab.

Happy Birthday CSS.

The Mac Pro is quite incredible. Watch the movie at the end of the article to see just how much power this machine has.

Yamaha Corporation and Line 6, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement for Yamaha to acquire Line 6, a leading manufacturer of innovative solutions for musicians. The acquisition expands Yamaha’s portfolio of modeling guitar processing products as well as pro-audio equipment, and offers new and exciting opportunities for accelerated growth for both companies.

Holy shit, that’s big news.

Great idea for a magazine on the iPhone. We are all photographers in some ways these days.

Nice little collection of apps at a discount.

Another fun marketing stunt and some pretty great friends.