Juli Clover’s take on the 3D object sensing technology Apple just acquired when they purchased PrimeSense. As much as she sees, my guess is, Apple sees much more. Object sensing technology has been around since the 1970s, when Patrick Winston first wrote about computer vision and described the artificial intelligence algorithms needed for a computer to distinguish the corners that make up a room.

Devices like the PS4, Xbox One, and the smart TVs to which they send their signals can interpret the world around them, from facial features to body movements to subtle hand gestures. The interfaces are solidifying, reliability increasing. This stuff is consumer ready, about to make the leap from the niche gamer markets to the wider world around us. Imagine going to a store and gesturing to a device to find your brand of frozen broccoli, or waving to a parking meter to indicate how long you plan on staying and how you’d like to pay.

To me, this technology was made for the brains at Apple. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

I’ve seen some confusion over iCloud’s Photo Stream feature and whether it allows your photos to perpetually remain in the cloud. Apple could do a little more to help clear this up, but until then: Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams are two related features that have different rules, and yes, there is a simple, official way to permanently store and share your photos with iCloud.

Nice article from David Chartier.

I definitely want to get in on this action. Back in the early 1900s, locals in Canada’s Yukon Territory placed bets on the exact moment when the river ice would melt. The stakes started as a round of drinks for the winner. Last year, the winner took home about $318,500. They use a specially constructed wooden contraption to determine ice breakage. When it moves a certain distance down the river, the clock stops.

Follow the headline link for all the details. Here’s a time-lapse of this year’s thaw, just to give you a sense of the process.

Back in 1991 (22 years ago yesterday), Nirvana was asked to perform on England’s Top of the Pops. Problem was, they were told they had to play off a backing track (pre-recorded instrumentals) with live vocals. As you might expect, Kurt Cobain and the band did not take things as seriously as the show would have liked. Watch for the not-so-subtle fake guitar-work, vocal mugging, and Dave Grohl’s wildly off-beat fake drumming. Love this.

This is a long article, but it’s worth reading. Randy was one of the greatest guitarists ever.

Ars Technica:

“We’ve heard a good bit in this courtroom about public key encryption,” said Albright. “Are you familiar with that?”

“Yes, I am,” said Diffie, in what surely qualified as the biggest understatement of the trial.

“And how is it that you’re familiar with public key encryption?”

“I invented it.”

Nice.

Scott Adams Blog:

My father, age 86, is on the final approach to the long dirt nap (to use his own phrase). His mind is 98% gone, and all he has left is hours or possibly months of hideous unpleasantness in a hospital bed.

I’d like to proactively end his suffering and let him go out with some dignity. But my government says I can’t make that decision. Neither can his doctors. So, for all practical purposes, the government is torturing my father until he dies

I can’t imagine how painful this must be for Adams and everyone else in this situation.

Wired:

At this point, the smartwatch is a category getting ahead of itself. It’s a device that precedes its purpose. But that’s not necessarily a problem. No one really knew what Twitter was for when it started, either.

And no one really has yet, have they?

United We Ball:

Buckyballs are tiny, powerful magnetic balls and cubes that were sold as an adult desk toy. They became wildly popular after coming to market in 2009 and sold more than 2.5 million sets—until the CPSC banned future sales and, through a recall request, tried to force the product out of consumers’ hands.

This whole Buckyball saga is really odd. As the story points out, there are all kinds of products available that are “harmful” to children that the US Federal Government hasn’t banned.

The Verge:

To watch a football broadcast is to see much more than a football game. There are only about 11 minutes of actual action during a three-hour game, which means 95 percent of the time there’s something else going on. The graphics, replays, highlights, and analysis that make a football game into the at-home experience millions of people know and love — it’s all from Fox, and it’s all done on the fly. Nearly everyone on the crew says that while they broadcast the game, what they really do is make television.

I’ve seen a little of the behind the scenes chaos of an NFL game broadcast and it’s remarkable that, with so many moving pieces, it comes off as smoothly as it does.

Glenn Fleishman is going to release a book about The Magazine’s first year. You can support the effort on kickstarter.

He goes on to describe Android’s interface as being “more intuitive” than Apple’s and suggests gifting iPhone users with devices running an entirely different operating system for the holidays in the hopes that they will go along with your not-so-subtle hint and switch their entire mobile ecosystem to Google’s.

This man is out of control. For the record, Bozo has more credibility.

Velocity is the only speed reading app designed and developed exclusively for iOS 7. Using a well-researched speed reading technique, you can breeze through your Instapaper or Pocket queue at superhuman speeds of up to 1,000 words per minute. Speed read websites, documents, or just about any text in one of Velocity’s 3 gorgeous themes and save more time than you know what to do with. See Velocity in action.

Tim Bajarin:

I think Samsung is working toward ditching Android completely sometime over the next three to five years to take complete control over its future. And this is where the backing of Tizen becomes interesting and important. Although Tizen has not attracted a lot of app support to date, if Samsung gets behind it and is able to prove to the market it will continue innovate around the platform, delivering hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets annually under its brand, software developers would be crazy not to develop for it.

I’ve said it before—I think this is exactly what is going to happen. Without Samsung, Google’s importance in the mobile industry will be nowhere near what it is today.

This.

Get real writing done with iPads, iPhones, Android devices, Chromebooks, and other mobile hardware (including Microsoft Surface). Learn how top journalists, authors and public-relations professionals write using an array of mobile gadgets. Get recommendations on the best mobile hardware, software (apps!), and accessories.

All from one of the top technology journalists working today, Julio Ojeda-Zapata from Twincities.com and the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Writing on mobile devices is something we’re all doing more of these days.

It’s a simple question that we often forget to ask ourselves. We’ve found that when we do, it helps us feel positive and remember the things that matter most. We built Grateful in the hopes that it helps you remember too.

The concept is simple: every day enter what you are grateful for. Over time you will have a delightful collection of memories and reminders that we all have something to be grateful for.

Great timing for releasing this app.

Every so often, the CDZA collective puts together a video celebrating a specific instrument or style. This particular video follows the evolution of the bass, from classical music through all the modern incarnations. Don’t forget to take a look at the article linked via the headline for more crunchy bass goodness.

PrimeSense provided the 3D object sensing technology behind the Microsoft Kinect. Wonder if Apple gets a nickel for every Xbox sold.

Lots of numbers on the trend of people ending their cable subscriptions.

As a musician, this just kills me. If you have any information, please contact the band.

Just an incredible amount of money—$12.8 million all told. I just wish I had enough to bid on some of the products.

Striking images.

This article from MIT Technology Review argues that the near-simultaneous release of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One may mark the last wave of consoles, at least as we know them. Not so sure I agree with that, but the article makes some interesting points. Though this generation of consoles is clearly superior to the ones they replace, the technological leap is clearly much smaller than the previous one. In addition, the gaming market has become fragmented, with smartphone and tablet gaming grabbing a significant and, depending how you calculate things, perhaps majority slice of the pie.

Downloadable games such as Angry Birds and Minecraft, which play on mobile phones and basic PCs, now constitute a major part of the industry (in April this year, Angry Birds developer Rovio estimated that its games have been downloaded 1.7 billion times, while in 2012, Minecraft earned its independent creator, Markus Persson, more than $100 million).

There’s no question that franchises like Call of Duty are still selling big. The argument is that the value perception of each new console release is declining and the number of consoles sold is declining accordingly.

Each new iteration of hardware brings a historical downward trend in console sales. Sony’s wildly successful PlayStation 2 sold 150 million consoles. Its successor sold 80 million. It appears that Sony and Microsoft both lose a lot of money on these devices. For these reasons, some people think this new generation of console hardware (including Nintendo’s beleaguered Wii-U, which has failed to capture consumers’ imaginations) may be the last.

For consumers, the decline in consoles is not only a symptom of broader choice (in the 1990s, consoles and PCs were the only way to play complex screen games) but also one of diminishing returns. Martin Hollis, designer of the seminal Nintendo 64 movie tie-in Goldeneye 007, told me: “With each iteration, the multiple of increased power matters less. Looking back, PlayStation 2 was a huge leap from PlayStation. But PlayStation 3 was a much smaller leap. Each time we climb a curve of diminishing returns.” Hollis, like many others, believes that most people who only casually play video games will remain unconvinced by the difference between the new versions of the consoles and the previous ones.

From a gaming point of view, smartphones, tablets, cloud solutions (like Steam and Gaikai) and consoles are all converging. Just as iOS and Android emerged as the last OS standing in the great smartphone dust-up, I suspect there will be just a few players left standing once the gaming chaos resolves itself.

Om Malik:

Well-placed sources tell us that the company is gearing up to launch new private messaging features inside its still red-hot photo and video sharing service. It is also experimenting with the idea of group messaging, our source tells us. The new features are likely to find home in the next version of Instagram, which is expected before end of the year. An Instagram spokesperson (not surprisingly) declined to comment.

Om knows his stuff.

Many thanks to MightyDeals for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. This week MightyDeals is offering a great deal on MotoPress. It’s a WordPress plugin that replaces the default WP editor and makes content editing a snap. It uses a super easy drag-and-drop method, that works on all devices thanks to its responsive design. If you use WordPress, you’ll love this. See how it works.

If you didn’t get a chance to get to the theater to see Through the Never or want to re-live it a few more times, soon you will be able to watch it in the comfort of your own home. We’re super excited to hit you with the home version details as the film will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray, 3D Blu-Ray, digitally and V.O.D. (Video On Demand) on January 28, 2014 through our very own label, Blackened Recordings.

Apple’s new iPad page. Definitely worth a look to see all of the different ways people are using iPads.