Pretty interesting study on the statistical failure rate of hard drives. Have you backed up your drive recently?

This is a pretty useful tip, new to me. Click on a document in the Finder, then hit space to open the Quicklook preview. In the upper-right corner, you’ll see a button that says “Open with xxx” where xxx is the default application for that document type. If you press and hold the button, you’ll see a list of other applications that will also open your document.

Nice.

Great heist story from Dan Lewis and Now I Know.

Ran a little Twitter survey this morning. The new Retina mini appears to be available for purchase now in the US, Australia, Canada, Singapore and throughout much of Europe. That’s who I’ve heard from so far. Poll results show shipping in 1-3 days for the WiFi model, 5-10 days for the cellular model, though Belgium, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland show shipping as 5-10 days for both models. The models range from 16GB up to 128GB.

In the US online Apple Store, as of 6:30 am ET, the 16GB and 32GB WiFi-only models show as ready to ship in 1-3 days and everything else is marked to ship in 5-10 days.

Just fascinating to read.

Outdoor Photographer:

Aerial imaging using consumer-level “drones” is now within reach of any photographer.

In the past few years, developments in a new form of remote-controlled unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) called “multi-rotors” have opened up easy-to-accomplish, aerial imagery to photography on a budget.

Eric Cheng is a world class photographer and does a great job of explaining how you can get into aerial shooting.

Smile has released a new app in their PDFpen suite of PDF editing tools. PDFpen Scan+ lets you scan documents, articles, receipts, and more, using your iPhone or iPad camera.

PDFpen Scan+ includes OCR on the device, with support for 16 languages. The OCR is performed on the device, so you can use it even if you are not connected to the internet or if you have sensitive documents you can’t share with an online service.

Once OCR has been performed, the text in the scanned document can be copied and pasted into another document or the PDF can be exported with searchable text included. You can also open your scans in PDFpen for iPad or PDFpen for iPhone for further editing or share them via Dropbox, Evernote and other services for seamless editing on your Mac.

PDFpen Scan+ is available on the App Store at the intro price of $4.99. Check out the video demo to see all the powerful features packed into this indispensable tool.

The only thing scummier than Samsung are its lawyers.

Today is Remembrance Day (in the Commonwealth countries) or Veterans Day (United States). Thank you to all those who sacrificed their lives so we could be free.

This is huge news, both for Amazon and for the US Postal Service. Starting with LA and New York, Amazon Prime customers will now get package delivery on Sundays at no extra charge.

Amazon prime customers – who pay a $79 annual charge – will now be able eligible for free two-day shipping on millions of items, and can receive their packages on Sunday. The company announced on Monday that it has teamed up with the U.S. Postal Service and plans to roll the service out to a large portion of the U.S. in 2014 including Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and Phoenix.

USPS has really been struggling, with 7 consecutive quarters in the red.

The semi-independent government agency has suffered in recent years with the introduction of email and the drop in sales from stamps as well as a 2006 congressional mandate to prefund up to 75 years of its future retirees’ health care.

Earlier this year, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe made pleas to lawmakers to allow the financially troubled Postal Service to switch to a five-day delivery schedule for first-class mail in an effort to reduce costs to return the organization to financial stability.

Package deliveries – which was never part of this plea – continues to grow and Donahoe said in the press release on Monday that the Postal Service is very happy to offer shippers like Amazon the option of Sunday deliveries. Research on the websites of rivals FedEx and UPS suggest that the two companies do not currently offer a Sunday delivery service. Both were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

The internet and e-commerce have been tremendously disruptive to the Postal Service. This plan will help the USPS find a financial model that allows them to prosper instead of fade. A real win/win.

Ever since I read the book Into Thin Air, by John Krakauer, I’ve been fascinated by attempts to reach the peak of Mount Everest. Incredible how many people died trying to reach the summit or, having reached the top, died on the descent.

They are grisly, but these pictures are a part of the Everest story.

The engineer who oversaw development of Apple’s Siri technology is now at Samsung building an online service for linking together the “Internet of things.”

Luc Julia, a vice president at Samsung’s innovation lab in Menlo Park, California, demonstrated the project, called SAMI, or the Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions, at a conference north of San Francisco on Friday.

I don’t really know what to say.

Despite the incredible “power” of Office’s productivity, Microsoft’s own depiction of its software running on its hybrid tablet results in a $500 error. Charged with adding up just seven rows of numbers, Microsoft Excel running on the Surface comes up with a total of $9,000, as can be seen in the zoomed in detail below.

Frank Shaw’s head must have exploded.

I thought this was a great quote.

Last weekend at Garrison Bespoke, an upscale tailor shop in Toronto, a potentially lethal scene was unfolding in the back room, where employees were taking turns trying to stab Michael Nguyen, Garrison’s co-owner, with a hunting knife.

The latest technology improvements don’t always come in the newest phone.

Love the American Masters series.

Hear My Train A Comin’ traces the legendary guitarist’s remarkable journey from his hardscrabble beginnings in Seattle, through his stint as a US Army paratrooper and as an unknown sideman to R&B stars until his discovery and ultimate international stardom. With previously unseen footage of the 1968 Miami Pop Festival, home movies, and interviews with those closest to Jimi Hendrix.

This is one clever design. Take a bulky UK iPad charger and give it a twist so it folds flat. Perfect for travel. Terrific job.

Interesting infographic. Take a look, see if it all looks right to you, then read the comment below it.

Some breathtaking shots. My favorite is number 69, Invisible Reflection. Wow.

Many thanks to BlissList for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. BlissList is an iPhone app that enables you to buy from all stores in one central place, with just one account.

While social shopping hubs such as Pinterest and Wanelo do a great job of helping you discover products from different stores, they require you to go to each store’s site to buy those products. What stands between you and the perfect pair of jeans and shoes is that you have to go through a painful, multi-step checkout process at different stores. Not to mention, the inconsistent buying process between stores and the small canvas of a mobile phone make you want to tear your hair out. BlissList eliminates all these hassles by providing a centralized and convenient way for you to buy the products you want. With BlissList you can add any product from any store and securely check out in one place, so your credit card is not all over the web. Additionally, you can connect with your friends for social funding for your products. BlissList is free and there are no service fees or price markups. Buy your shoes and keep your hair. Download BlissList on the App Store.

A great article from Charles Arthur that delves into the differences between market share and installed base.

According to Reuters, BlackBerry’s board has had discussions with Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Lenovo and others about selling BlackBerry intellectual property, similar to the patent purchases from bankrupt Nortel back in 2011.

Allyson Kazmucha does a nice review of the Olloclip with lots of comparison photos. I’ve always wondered if these things were really worth it, but it looks nice.

Jim and Dan talk about the new iWork, iMac performance for recording, Universal Audio’s Apollo, guitar cabinets, IK Multimedia’s iLoud, MacBook Pro 13-inch keyboard and trackpad issues and a fix, desktops, Alfred and launch-bar style alternatives, and more.

Besides emphasizing Office, Elop would be prepared to sell or shut down major businesses to sharpen the company’s focus, the people said. He would consider ending Microsoft’s costly effort to take on Google with its Bing search engine, and would also consider selling healthy businesses such as the Xbox game console if he determined they weren’t critical to the company’s strategy, the people said.

Xbox is the only Microsoft product I currently use.

When Eddie Van Halen releases a new guitar and amp, people notice.

Everyone needs a beard.

Don’t worry it’s safe for work. I don’t know how this works and I don’t think I want to.