Must have!

I found it really interesting that the place I found the most information about what each model of Les Paul was all about was at Musician’s Friend, not Gibson. This is a good guide.

Seems like this era might be coming to an end.

Speaking at an investor conference in New York City on Tuesday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that with smartphone penetration at over 75 percent and soon reaching 90 percent, wireless operators need to work harder to get customers to use more of the network rather than simply getting on the network.

“When you’re growing the business initially, you have to do aggressive device subsidies to get people on the network,” he said. “But as you approach 90 percent penetration, you move into maintenance mode. That means more device upgrades. And the model has to change. You can’t afford to subsidize devices like that.”

AT&T is now offering $15 a month as an incentive to keep your older phone.

Stephenson also acknowledged that breaking customers of their habit of upgrading to a new phone every 18 months to two years is not an easy task. But he said a business models focused on financing rather than providing a subsidy would be “transformative” for the industry. He said the company’s new AT&T Next program, which offers no-money down and 0-percent financing, drives smartphone penetration in a way that is more sustainable over time.

“If you are a customer and you don’t need to upgrade your device, you can get unlimited talk and text and access to the data network for $45 all-in,” he said. “You can use your own device or finance it. I think this will be very powerful. It’s where we see the market going.”

Fascinating article.

Here’s a nice little article by Kirk McElhearn on customizing your OS X sidebar.

I’ve been testing Castro and I really like it. If I were going to recommend a podcast app, this would be it.

Go paperless with Doxie – tiny and beautifully designed mobile scanners that scan everything, starting at just $149.

Doxie scans your paper: simply and automatically. Battery power and built-in memory means you can scan anywhere, then tuck Doxie away when you’re not using it. Once you’ve scanned everything, Doxie’s included Mac software makes organizing it all easy. Save, share, create searchable PDFs, and send to the cloud.

The Loop readers get free U.S. shipping and Guaranteed Christmas Delivery for all orders placed through December 19th. Order your Doxie today and give the gift of paperless.

Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher are leaving News Corp at the end of the year for the greener pastures of NBCUniversal. The main names behind the AllThingsD brand will take along most of their staff but, since they couldn’t agree to terms with New Corp, will be forced to leave the AllThingsD name behind.

I’m looking forward to watching their new venture blossom.

One of the problems that has prevented wider adoption of solar panels is the drag on the grid. When the sun goes behind a cloud, there is a surge of power draw as a huge swath of panels is no longer able to provide electricity and they turn to the grid, all in unison. Not a problem today, because there just aren’t enough solar panels to be more than a drop in the power usage bucket.

The obvious solution to this problem is battery backup, but battery tech is expensive. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has created a rapidly growing company, SolarCity, to take on that problem by leveraging Tesla battery production.

SolarCity has an interesting business model. For years, they’ve provided the solar panels for free and charged you for the power you use. Since they charge less for the solar power than you’d pay the power company, it’s a good deal for you.

Now SolarCity is adding free batteries to the mix. More win for the consumer, since they can get cheaper power even when the sun isn’t shining. And more win for the power grid, since the power usage surge is eliminated as solar grows in popularity.

That Musk guy is one smart cookie.

Let me make sure I’ve got this straight.

Apple ships a 64-bit processor. Qualcomm labels it a marketing gimmick. Then Qualcomm announces their own 64-bit processor, saying, “We see this transition happening and we want to be there to help enable the ecosystem.”

OK, got it. But wait, there’s more.

Now Qualcomm is shipping their version of the Apple iBeacon.

Gimbal is a comprehensive context aware, proximity platform for brands to engage their customers’ mobile devices with highly relevant communications using a powerful combination of physical location, activity, time and personal interests. Gimbal helps increase the relevance of content delivered to end users’ devices, filtering out the irrelevant and offering more personalized experiences, thereby allowing retailers, venues, content providers and developers to send personalized high-value content to enhance their users’ mobile devices. The overall Gimbal context aware platform supports iOS® and Android™; while the new Gimbal proximity beacons support iOS today with planned support for Android.

Some original thinking, Qualcomm.

The good news is, this expands the platform. Any iOS apps that make use of iBeacon technology will just work with Qualcomm’s Gimbal. As it should be.

Yes. You read that right. From the description:

This delightfully deceased taxidermy chess set is sure to get peoples attention. Every mouse was a unique creature in life, making each piece of this set a one of kind creation. Hand stuffed by me, but created by the guy upstairs (or whoever you believe created mice).

The set includes 16 light colored mice and 16 dark mice, in various sizes, pawns being the smallest. Set comes complete with wooden hand painted chess board, and storage case (not pictured)

All specimens were acquired from a captive breeding facility that distributes frozen rodents for reptile feeding, so don’t feel sad if these little guys were not battling it out on the chess board they would be deep in the belly of a snake.

Anyone else find this just a bit surreal?

Mashable:

Airports are perhaps the least jolly of locales during the holiday season, generally filled with disgruntled people facing delays, lost luggage and other mishaps. But, thanks to WestJet, one gaggle of weary travelers was treated to a Christmas miracle that turned an airport into Santa’s workshop.

Sniff. Excuse me, I have to go. I’ve got something in my eyes.

The Information published some information about what Scott Forstall has been up to—Business Insider relayed some of the news:

Amir Efrati at new technology site The Information is reporting that Forstall spent the year traveling to Italy and South Africa. He also advised a few startups, and became more philanthropically involved, focusing on education, poverty, and human rights.

I haven’t used Drumasonic, but based on the information and the video, it looks pretty good. I love the fact it uses 10 mics per instrument.

What an incredibly inventive name for a company. They sell a product called Teüna, a chromatic tuner for iPhone and iPad.

Unlike other match 3 games that just match, at Primary University, you’ll learn to mix primary colors (Red, Blue and Yellow) to create secondary colors (Green, Orange and Purple) to make matches, create power-ups and solve puzzles.

People will have fun with this, no doubt. It’s made for iPhone and iPad.

So true, they need to be redesigned. Sometimes it’s difficult to even find my seat on the tickets. Throw in tickets for all sporting events and airline tickets and you’ve got something.

The uses could be almost limitless, but here are a few good ideas.

I linked to the “print” page because Citeworld split the article up into three pages.

I love No. 3.

Matthew Bischoff wrote a great article about why he chose to criticize his former employer, The New York Times, on their software strategy.

Good find from Cali Krueger.

Fascinating article in today’s NY Times.

The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.

I get it. But I find it astonishingly surreal.