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

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.