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.

New capacitive sensing technique brings the concept of gesture detection into the real world.

Touché is a form of capacitive touch sensing, the same principle underlying the types of touchscreens used in most smartphones.

But instead of sensing electrical signals at a single frequency, like the typical touchscreen, Touché monitors capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies.

This Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) makes it possible to not only detect a “touch event,” but to recognize complex configurations of the hand or body that is doing the touching. An object thus could sense how it is being touched, or might sense the body configuration of the person doing the touching.

Watch the video to get a sense of the applications for this tech. For example, you might grasp a door handle in one way to leave a “do not disturb” message, another way to leave a “back in 5 minutes” message. The video offers a thoughtful peek at this world. Seems like the tip of the iceberg. Great stuff.

Bored Panda:

Advertising doesn’t try very hard to conform to moral standards, but after looking back at some offensive, racist and sexist vintage ads – today’s ads are as good as gold.

I hate the vast majority of today’s advertising as much as the next person but ads like “Is It Always Illegal To Kill A Woman?” just make me shake my head in wonderment.

Hypervocal:

2012 was a tough year to top in the unintentionally amusing world of live local news. Between the lady who flashed her boobs at the vacuum cleaner man, Jay Z’s sister interrupting a live newscast and the weatherman aroused by “moisture from John,” you wouldn’t be wrong to think we’d peaked.

You would be wrong. Live local news brought the goods this year.

We all know that, for the most part, our local news sucks. I’ve watched it for years all over Canada and the US and generally, the quality is pretty awful But luckily, it delvers some gems like these.

This is a big milestone for the US App Store. Worldwide apps hit one million in October.

An interesting take on a tasks app with lots of filtering options.