Delaware Online:

While shooting football in the snow makes for fantastic photos, it’s also the most challenging scenario a modern photojournalist can find themselves in. Cameras today rely so heavily on autofocus for sports that snow renders them functionally useless.

Imagine trying to photograph someone standing behind a waterfall. Even if you can see them clearly, no matter what you do your camera focuses only the water. The same went for every thick snowflake between me and the players on the field, and when you consider there were thousands falling every second the challenge was daunting.

This was a fun game to watch and this guy got some spectacular shots in amazingly difficult photographic conditions.

Matthew Ungar sent me these pictures today that he took of iPhones and iPads at China Mobile. Great to see.

New York Times:

SantaCons of years past have been distinguished by sexism, drunkenness, xenophobia, homophobia and enough incidents of public vomiting and urination to fill an infinite dunk tank. Despite these rampant violations, the departing police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, recently praised SantaCon, claiming that it “makes New York New York.”

So “sexism, drunkenness, xenophobia, homophobia” are what make New York be New York? Bull.

The Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford and the Vatican Library have joined together to digitize their collection of ancient texts. One of these (perhaps the most important, in my opinion) is the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book created using movable type.

This epoch-making book was the work of Johann Gutenberg (c. 1398-1468), a goldsmith from Mainz. Printing probably began in 1454, and was completed by March 1455. Fewer than fifty copies survive today, and the Bodleian’s copy is one of only seven complete examples in the British Isles. It is no surprise that the first substantial book produced in the West using metal type should be the Bible. Not only was it the primary text of medieval Europe, it was also, in its Latin form, the most international. Sufficient sales of even such a lavish and expensive production as Gutenberg’s Bible could therefore be guaranteed. Indeed, all copies were sold before printing was complete.

A long time ago, I made my way to the British Museum to see a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. It has since moved on, but it left an indelible impression on me. Here’s a link to the digitized version of the Gutenberg Bible. Simply fantastic. Really happy to see this scan made public.

This is pretty damned cool.

Star Trek:

The Starship Enterprise NCC-1701 was the first fictional spacecraft to carry on the name of many vessels in English and U.S. history. There were actually two ships in the English Navy called the HMS Enterprize (and that’s not a typo). The first was from 1743 and the second sailed in 1775. Fast forward to the U.S. Pacific Fleet during WWII and the USS Enterprise CV6 was our first Aircraft Carrier to carry the name Enterprise. In 1955, the second USS Enterprise CV65 took to sea. She was a massive aircraft carrier and the first of our nuclear-powered fleet. Fast forward again to 1967, and a new USS Enterprise would to take us into space… with Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek.

But every true Star Trek fan knew all of this already, didn’t they?

I enjoyed reading this piece by Rene Ritchie, especially when he talked about the future. This is what I’ve been saying about Apple’s future devices—expect some magic, not a smart watch like the shit Samsung is putting out.

I’ve seen people posting on both sides of this issue tonight.

Last season, the Rockies were the first MLB team to adopt PlayerLync’s technology to automatically push and control videos, scouting reports and more to the teams’ iPads.”

“It used to be difficult and time consuming to distribute video and scouting reports to anyone outside our building,” says Brian Jones, video coordinator for the Colorado Rockies. “Now, with PlayerLync’s technology, we are able to automatically disperse those videos and reports to the iPads of any player, coach, or scout, no matter where they are. PlayerLync has revolutionized our process, and there’s not another technology solution like it.”

Great use of iPads.

Good news.

This is a pretty amazing story. Blatantly stealing other people’s work is not right.

Truth has never been an essential ingredient of viral content on the Internet. But in the stepped-up competition for readers, digital news sites are increasingly blurring the line between fact and fiction, and saying that it is all part of doing business in the rough-and-tumble world of online journalism.

I’m not saying I disagree, but it seems odd that the Times would post something like this when they are just as guilty as posting shit as the sites they condemn.

I give you Exhibit A.

The Les Paul Foundation awarded Little Kids Rock with a grant that will power music education initiatives in public schools over the next year. To further the partnership, the foundation’s Executive Director Michael Braunstein visited Lower Manhattan Community Middle School- MS896, a Little Kids Rock school in New York City, on Wednesday, December 11th surprising the students with a delivery of Epiphone Les Paul electric guitars. Simultaneously, supporters of Little Kids Rock’s Chicago chapter delivered Epiphone Les Paul electric guitars to Edwards Elementary in Chicago and the young rockers jammed via Skype from nearly 800 miles away! The guitars will be used to augment the successful Little Kids Rock music programs.

Les continues to give.

Sarah Lockard is the “CEO and Publisher” of AroundMainLine.com in Philadelphia, and yesterday Philadelphia magazine ran an email she sent to area restaurants in which she offered them a “VERY innovative” and “exciting” opportunity: to host her family dinner on Christmas Eve in exchange for coverage on her site.

That’s just awful.

Volvo has specific plans to put 100 driverless cars on actual commuter roads around Sweden’s second largest city. The project starts in 2014 with a goal of cars on the road by 2017.

This is PR for Volvo, but it also assigns a date certain for putting driverless vehicles on the road with the rest of us. Makes all this much more real to me.

Big loss for Samsung today.

Samsung suffered a loss in its home country of South Korea Thursday, where a judge cleared Apple of infringing on three different smartphone patents held by Samsung. Apple can continue to sell its iPhones in South Korea without facing a ban.

“We are disappointed by the court’s decision,” Samsung said in a statement. “We will continue to take the measures necessary to protect our intellectual property rights.”

You do that, Samsung. You do that.

This is more than simply modernization. It’s also part of an effort to preserve Norwegian culture.

The National Library of Norway’s vision is to act as a national memory bank by providing a multimedia knowledge centre focusing on archiving and distribution. To achieve this vision the National Library of Norway shall be a modern digital national library – and thus a new form of national library.

Some interesting issues. How will they deal with international copyright? Norwegian law requires that all published content, in all media, be deposited with the National Library of Norway. So they are digitizing everything. How will they back all this up to ensure that it survives over the millennia?

The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it’s a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that’s okay.

Asshole.

Some good thoughts here from Daniel Jalkut.

Some nice tips here so you can have a nice recording in your home studio.

When Microsoft co-founder and then-chief executive Bill Gates hired Ballmer from Procter & Gamble in 1980, it was to be “the business guy, whatever that meant,” Ballmer says. Since that day, his rallying cry has always been “How do you make money? How do you make money? How do you make money?”

And this, in my opinion, is why Microsoft is in trouble right now. Apple’s philosophy is “How do we make the best product?” They figure the money will come if they make great products that people want. And they’re right. Ballmer’s philosophy led them to making shitty products that people felt locked into owning. Those days are quickly coming to an end.

Great news for Mac users today from Universal Audio—the company released a public beta of its Pro Tools AAX implementation.

UAD software v7.4.1 is a free public beta that gives Pro Tools 11 users:

• Total session and automation compatibility with earlier versions of Pro Tools
• Access to the complete library of UAD Powered Plug-Ins in AAX 64
• Seamless interoperability with Apollo series interfaces and Realtime UAD Processing
• Support for Pro Tools 11’s faster-than-realtime (offline) bounce feature

There’s also some new functionality including:

• AudioSuite processing for file-based workflows, which allows you to process files and selections with UAD plug-ins, commit the changes and free up DSP
• Multi-mono support, so you can use UAD plug-ins on surround and stereo tracks with full linking and unlinking capability