I Put a Spell on You:

While this piece of ridiculousness was ostensibly given to John for his birthday, I’m now delighted to reveal that this present was given for my own secret benefit as well. Before I explain, there are some facts you need to know.

As we get older, hopefully our pranks on friends get subtler and more mature. Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba just pulled a great prank on John Gruber of Daring Fireball.

Deadspin:

You should probably go ahead and not watch this if you’re squeamish. Yes, the tooth was part of a bridge, so the pain might have been minimal, but self-dentistry is never pleasant.

Now that’s a good old tough Canadian hockey player!

NPR:

As of Tuesday, Michael Erb was the No. 1 customer reviewer on Amazon. He has reviewed everything from doorbells to travel mugs to toothbrushes.

As Erb has risen up the ranks among Amazon reviewers, the stream of free stuff has grown because manufacturers have started sending stuff directly to him to review.

This feels really shady particularly because Amazon doesn’t identify “paid” reviewers.

The Nexus 5 and Kit Kat software are designed to make it easier to use Google’s search engine and other services to learn about a person’s habits and needs so it can display helpful information. Google Inc.’s virtual assistant, Google Now, also engages in richer dialogue with Nexus 5 users.

C R E E P Y

Alek’s Controllable Halloween Decorations:

Use the three halloween webcams for a live view of a buncha halloween decorations & lights and also CONTROL them – heck, you can even inflate or deflate the giant Frankenstein & Homer Simpson – D’OH!

All three webcams are online from 1800 to 2200 MDT (GMT-6) which is when you can turn stuff on & off and “entertain” the neighbors.

Ignore the spectacularly ugly web design and just think of all the tech this guy has installed.

Rian van der Merwe:

Apple would look at that data and say, “let’s cut the bottom 200 commands.” Microsoft looked at it and said, “We’re going to need a bigger ribbon.”

Rian makes some good points in his article, but the highlighted portion above sums up my thoughts on Microsoft.

Passengers will eventually be able to read e-books, play games, and watch videos on their devices during all phases of flight, with very limited exceptions. Electronic items, books and magazines, must be held or put in the seat back pocket during the actual takeoff and landing roll. Cell phones should be in airplane mode or with cellular service disabled – i.e., no signal bars displayed—and cannot be used for voice communications based on FCC regulations that prohibit any airborne calls using cell phones. If your air carrier provides Wi-Fi service during flight, you may use those services. You can also continue to use short-range Bluetooth accessories, like wireless keyboards.

Nice article from John Moltz. I think Microsoft’s biggest problem is its lack of vision—they don’t have a next big thing in their arsenal.

Admittedly small things in such a large OS, but these are the types of details that Apple thinks about.

Wow. Just wow.

In movie buff circles, there’s an ongoing trivia question that is getting close to an answer: “Who is the first actor to appear in three trilogies?”

There were plenty of near misses. Christopher Lee is in seven Hammer Dracula films, and three Lord of the Rings films (the Extended Cuts, anyway) but only two of three Star Wars prequels. Emilio Estevez made three Mighty Ducks movies, but the Young Guns and Stakeout franchises stalled at two. And so on.

Don’t want to spoil this. If you are interested in such minutia, read the article (I found it fascinating). Then try your hand at this question:

Who is the only actor to star (not necessarily appear) in 3 separate billion dollar franchises? Feel free to tweet me (@davemark) if you think you have it.

Seven years ago, Intellectual Ventures paid $750,000 for a patent. They are now suing Symantec and Trend Micro for infringing the patent for about $310 million.

The two companies are asking a federal judge to bar IV from seeking such large licensing fees on the grounds that a patent acquired for so little couldn’t possibly be worth so much. That’s on top of more traditional arguments that Symantec and Trend Micro do not violate IV’s patents in the first place.

In court filings and at a hearing in August, Symantec and Trend Micro lawyers argued that the law prohibits IV from calculating such a high royalty. A patent license is, by definition, less valuable than outright ownership of a patent, Symantec and Trend Micro lawyers said.

If this argument succeeds, this will change the game for patent trolls, especially if the Supreme Court allows defendants in patent battles to recover attorney fees.

If there’s one company in the world I want spending more on R&D, it’s Apple.

Apple’s investments in research and development continue to grow, surging another 32 percent in fiscal 2013 to reach $4.5 billion — its highest-ever sum spent in a 12-month span.

I see this growth as responsible (it’s in line with the increase in net sales) and a great predictor of innovation to come.

Yesterday, emails went out to all customers who ordered a 3G-enabled iPad on or before June 7, 2010:

If you purchased or ordered an iPad with WiFi + 3G on or before June 7, 2010, you could be entitled to $40 from Apple under a class action settlement.

Note the use of the word “could”.

You may be entitled to a $40 payment from Apple under a settlement that has been reached in class action lawsuits titled In re Apple and AT&T iPad Unlimited Data Plan Litigation. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California authorized this notice. The Court will have a hearing to consider whether to approve the settlement so that the benefits may be provided.

You may be entitled to a $40 payment. Here’s the claim:

The lawsuits claimed that iPad 3G purchasers were not provided with access to an “unlimited” data plan in the manner originally advertised. Apple and AT&T deny all allegations and are entering into this settlement to avoid burdensome and costly litigation. The settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing.

And here’s the kicker:

You must submit a valid Claim Form by February 3, 2014. The Claim Form will require you to affirm that the ability to switch in and out of the “unlimited” data plan was a factor in your decision to purchase an iPad 3G.

I’ve seen this sort of language before, but I always find it a bit odd. I need to affirm that the ability to switch in and out of the unlimited data plan influenced my decision to buy an iPad 3G.

I can honestly say, I would have bought an iPad no matter what. I guess there’s no $40 for me. Ah, well. Wonder who gets my $40.

Developer Justin Williams gives us a pretty comprehensive list of hardware and software that he uses.

What goes around, comes around.

Adobe Systems Inc said on Tuesday that the scope of a cyber-security breach disclosed nearly a month ago was far bigger than initially reported, with attackers obtaining data on more than 38 million customer accounts.

Oopsie.

The police officer cited a California law stating that “[a] person shall not drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating and is located in the motor vehicle at a point forward of the back of the driver’s seat, or is operating and the monitor, screen, or display is visible to the driver while driving the motor vehicle.”

There is an exception that allows for GPS, so she may be able to fight the ticket.

I love that this could have been done with images, but he tackled the problem with CSS instead.

Jim gets angry and talks with Dan about the Loop Magazine reboot, Apple’s Q4 results, hands-on with the new iPad Air, Tim Hortons, busting your iPhone, Stunt Copter, iPad keyboards, and more.

There has certainly been a lot of talk about features being removed from the latest (free) versions of iWork. It certainly did hurt the power users, but I think Apple was looking for a consistent user experience across devices. It will be interesting to see how many of these features return in future updates.

Fantastical is one of those apps that just works. Love it.

“We recently discovered a manufacturing issue affecting a very limited number of iPhone 5S devices that could cause the battery to take longer to charge or result in reduced battery life,” said Apple spokesperson Teresa Brewer. “We are reaching out to customers with affected phones and will provide them with a replacement phone.”

A number of Dell users have complained that their Latitude 6430u Ultrabooks “smell of cat urine”.

Dell engineers have ruled out biological contamination, and said the smell was not a health hazard.

There are some jokes in there somewhere.

This article gave me a new perspective on the Surface 2. The author does a side-by-side comparison against the Asus T100, which runs Windows 8.1, something the Surface 2 cannot.

Over the past week, I’ve had the fortune to play with both Microsoft’s Surface 2 and the Asus T100 Transformer Book. These are very similar devices — convertible laptops with detachable keyboards — except for one big and fundamentally life-altering difference: Where the Surface 2 is powered by Nvidia’s ARM-based Tegra 4 SoC, the Transformer Book has Intel’s x86 Bay Trail under the hood. As a result, while the Surface 2 runs Windows RT, the T100 runs full Windows 8.1. Yes, every program and game that you use on your Windows desktop PC also works on the T100. Steam works on the T100. Team Fortress 2 works on the T100. Photoshop works (surprisingly well!) on the T100.

A common selling point of the Surface 2 vs the iPad is the fact that you can have the desktop experience on the go, as opposed to the desktop/tablet model the Microsoft marketing folks assail. This is a bit of a crack in that facade.

So much of Apple’s history stems from that house.

Steve Jobs built the first 100 Apple 1 computers at the Crist Drive home with help from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Patricia Jobs. The first 50 were sold to Paul Terrell’s Byte Shop in Mountain View for $500 each, according to the evaluation. The rest were assembled for their friends in the Homebrew Computer Club.

“I’d get yelled at if I bent a prong,” Patricia Jobs told The Daily News in an interview last month.

The original computers are now worth tens of thousands of dollars. One sold for $213,000 at an auction in 2010.

The home is also where Jobs courted some of his first investors, including Chuck Peddle of Commodore Computer and Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital, according to the evaluation.

The first partnership for Apple Computer Co. was signed on April 1, 1976, and nine months later the company was established and operations moved to nearby Cupertino.

“These significant events took place at the subject property,” Commissioner Sapna Marfatia wrote in the evaluation.