A little shocked about the National Helium Reserve part of the story.

This is such a great story, told by hockey tough guy and NHL referee, Paul Stewart.

Surprising. A Voxburner poll found that 62% of young adults (ages 16-24) prefer printed books over ebooks.

When asked which products currently available for download were preferred as physical objects, 62% agreed with books. Magazines and newspapers collectively had 47% prefer the physical form. Considering magazines are considered more visually attractive due to its use of imagery and glossy paper, these statistics show text-heavy books still have an audience with young people.

One of the fascinating bits about the study is the affection people develop for printed books. Printed books, especially hardbacks, tend to have deeper design elements than their ebook counterparts.

There is less affection towards electronic versions of books. Whereas age is shown in the spine of each book – and commitment by the size of one’s bookshelf – digital files have no distinguishing characteristic. Most books adhere to the same fonts, as defined by the standards of ebook readers, and e-ink displays are void of any images besides the cover due to the lack of color.

Interesting. This is definitely true in my house. My kids rarely read ebooks, even though they have access to iPads and Kindles.

I’m not sure why, but I enjoyed this and thought I’d share.

Designer Geri Reid has some good points here.

It’s good that Apple is having a shopping event, but don’t expect half-price savings on devices or Macs.

Barley has brought its inline editing abilities to WordPress, giving a lot more people the chance to use this software. This is pretty slick.

I rather enjoyed this article. The app was made out of necessity, which is the best kind.

Anchorwoman Katie Couric, who has hosted high-profile programs on all three major U.S. television networks, will head a team of global correspondents and help shape news coverage at Yahoo Inc., the Internet company announced on Monday.

Marissa Mayer is making some bold moves. I like it.

If you’re going to interview someone for a design job that involves CSS, you should take a look at this. As much as I love what designers do with CSS, I’d fail this quickly.

I have a number of close friends and family members who use hearing aids. This is a huge step forward. Not only can they now have hearing aids that are compatible with their iPhones, but they can now actually tune their hearing aids from an iPhone app. Brilliant!

Universal Audio posted some tips on using the Fairchild Tube Limiter plug-in on a number of instruments.

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.