Speaking of Warren DeMartini, Charvel has a Q&A with him posted on their site. I especially like the part about Warren and Jake E. Lee:

Imagine this: We’re both hanging out in the middle of the night watching a crappy TV with bad reception, sitting on the floor with our backs against the couch. I’m chipping away at the chords to “Round and Round,” and he’s chipping away at the chords to “Bark at the Moon.” We had no idea where those songs would take us.

Indeed.

NBC News:

The cameras strapped to the skydivers’ helmets were supposed to memorialize their perfectly timed jumps and exhilarating descent from two small planes to the earth 12,000 feet below.

When I first read about this story, it sounded like a headline out of The Onion.

I love Charvel guitars. It’s one of the few guitars that I’ve wanted, but never owned. Christmas is coming though.

Need is a monthly retailer and lifestyle magazine for the modern, discerning man. Each month, Need curates and sells an extremely limited quantity of items — including clothing, literature, furniture, artwork, alcohol, coffee, and so forth — whilst also commissioning independent journalism, photography, video, and so forth.

My good friend Matt Alexander launched his new company today. Looks good Matt, congratulations!

The Verge:

“It succeeded in every possible way,” said Jason Eberle, who built the web version of Everpix, “except for the only way that matters.”

Interesting story on the life and death of a beloved but little used startup company.

Om Malik:

Twitter is making its debut on the public markets and with that the fortunes of its founders, employees and many of its investors will change. As it crosses into adulthood, Twitter and its new owners need to remember this one thing — Twitter is us!

Sage advice from Om.

Lex Friedman asked me to participate in this story for Macworld. My desktop is usually a mess.

Apple is repurposing this First Solar facility to create sapphire glass:

Apple will build a new 700-employee manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona, to make sapphire glass, according to releases from the State of Arizona and GT Advanced, a New Hampshire-based materials manufacturing company. Apple purchased the vacant manufacturing building from First Solar, and has contracted with GT Advanced to “own and operate furnaces and related equipment” at the facility.

Question is, how will Apple use sapphire glass. An alternative to Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 for smart-phones? As a crystal for a smart-watch? Time will tell.

First shown off in October’s iPhone 5s rollout, the Nike Move+ app went live yesterday. If you’ve got an iPhone 5s, you can take advantage of the app to see where and how much you move during the day. I suspect this is the first of many such apps that will take advantage of the M7 motion coprocessor. Another marketing discriminator for the iPhone 5s.

First things first, open up a new Google Maps window and copy and paste these coordinates:

16°51′53″N 11°57′13″E

This should put you in the middle of Niger, Africa, smack-dab in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Start zooming in. Keep going. Eventually, the memorial to UTA Flight #772 will appear.

Flight #772 was taken down by a suitcase bomb back in September, 1989. Switch over to satellite view and you’ll get a sense of what the memorial looks like from the air. Then, follow the headline link to see pictures of the construction of the memorial, using pieces of the wreckage from the crashed jet.

Tragic and beautiful.

Virgin America really raised the bar with this one.

Dogs photographed mid-lick.

Jimmy Page:

“You shouldn’t really have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound good. It should all be done with microphones and microphone placement. The instruments that bleed into each other are what create the ambience.”

Great advice.

Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility:

“iPad activations on AT&T increased more than 200% over the past three days compared to last year’s launch weekend, driven by consumer excitement around the new iPad Air and the popularity of AT&T Mobile Share, which lets customers add an iPad to their existing data plan for just $10 a month. We also saw strong demand for AT&T Next, which offers customers an iPad for $0 down on the nation’s fastest and most reliable 4G LTE network.”

I wish they would give some numbers—that statement feels like something Amazon would do. The obvious question is 200% of what?

A funny comic.

Love the sound of your Apple Earpods but can’t keep them in your ears? You don’t have to replace them, simply snap on a pair of Sprng clips to make them stay put.

Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones.

We updated The Loop Magazine today fixing a few bugs including:

• Memory issues resolved
• Music playback pause while reading fixed
• Auto-zoom is now optional
• Progress indicator on every page
• Character encoding on currencies fixed
• Other minor bugs

It’s available as a free update on the App Store.

Tribus is a simple and addictive game for players of all ages.

Cool, simple game for puzzle lovers

This is very cool if you use charts.

Peter Cohen for iMore:

It was a long road to OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Mac OS X was first introduced as a public beta (codenamed Kodiak) in September of 2000, and beta it was – a radical departure from Mac OS 9, both in look (introducing the “Aqua” interface) and in operation. Mac OS X was built on a UNIX foundation, and was more closely related to the NextStep operating system that had been developed by NeXT, the computing company Steve Jobs founded between stints running Apple.

This brought back some memories.

I love my Slingbox. I use it every time I travel.

Revolution 60 is a breakthrough game for iPad, using the strength of the touch interface to tell a short, intense story. It features gorgeous animations using the Unreal engine and has gameplay that is accessible to the casual iOS user. It is fully voice acted, starring anime legend Amanda Winn-Lee of Evangelion.

It’s amazing what developers are doing with games on the iPad. This doesn’t come out for a few months, but watch the video.

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.

BlackBerry has given up trying to sell itself on the open market, instead turning to debt sale to keep the doors open.

The company said that rather than bid for the company, Fairfax Financial will lead a group of investors pouring $1 billion into the troubled handset maker with its CEO Prem Watsa, becoming lead director. Former Sybase CEO John Chen will serve as interim CEO and executive chairman once the investment is completed, which BlackBerry said should be within the next two weeks.

This is a useful starting point if your company does not yet have an anti-hacking security procedure in place. Even if you know every one of these, odds are good that there are plenty of folks you know who have never given these steps a first thought, let alone a second.

Any suggestions for additions/changes to the list?

This test used an iPad Air purely as a hotspot, no use of the display at all. More than 8GB of data was served, which is more than the standard monthly data allowance that comes with most plans. Good to know.

Lamiraux leaves behind a strong legacy.

Lamiraux first joined Apple in 1990 as a software engineer for the Mac platform, which would later be renamed OS X. In 2000, he earned a managerial position for OS X platform experience before becoming director of engineering for that department in 2004.

In 2005, he switched over to iOS under the important Apps and Frameworks section as director of software engineering, and became vice president of the department in September 2009.

Lamiraux reported directly to Craig Federighi and retired once he shipped iOS 7.0.3.

This is absolutely fantastic. Imagine the implications of teaching history with tools like this at your disposal.

In the video below, the fly-through starts at about :50.

Adam Engst walks through the Mavericks Finder’s tab interface, working through all the dragging techniques and keyboard shortcuts. Good stuff.