Lodsys decided over the weekend to dismiss its case against Kaspersky with prejudice. Instead of facing a jury, Lodsys will slink away instead. It was an unconditional surrender.

Good.

Isn’t this like admitting you’ve gone too far?

Scott Buscemi:

For pre-iPhone 5s devices, ARGUS usually drains about 20-30% of battery life per day while running in the background. The app continually checks for motion and calculates the distance and number of steps using the accelerometer and GPS. With the M7, however, the app does not need to be running in order to keep track of the number of steps – all of that data is tracked by the M7. As such, ARGUS no longer takes up any battery power while running in the background and the stated battery life from Apple – 10 hours 3G talk time, 250 hours of standby – will stay exactly the same.

This is just huge.

Sam Radford talks about Apple’s 5GB of iCloud storage space and how the company has to increase the limit. I agree with Sam. Years ago 5GB was a lot of space, but if Apple wants users to utilize iCloud and all of its services, they are going to have to increase the limits.

Part of me marvels at the coolness of this water slide. But the other side of me is just plain scared.

Click on the link and a web page with a piece of cloth (looks like a piece of graph paper) will appear. Click and drag across the cloth and you’ll rip it. The simulation is very realistic, complete with gravitational physics.

Even better, if you right click (hold down the control key), your mouse turns into a cutting tool.

And as a pièce de résistance, all the code is there to play with and learn from, including the HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Absolutely brilliant.

Twitter has been a bit of a thorn in the side of the Iranian government, giving the world a seldom seen view of the political unrest in the country, especially during the 2009-2010 election protests, the so-called Green Revolution.

Social media is still banned in Iran, which made the Twitter exchange between Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and newly elected President Hassan Rouhani so newsworthy.

Dorsey first tweeted, “Good evening, President. Are citizens of Iran able to read your tweets?” And, in response, Rouhani said, “Evening, @Jack. As I told @camanpour, my efforts geared 2 ensure my ppl’ll comfortably b able 2 access all info globally as is their #right.”

Social media still banned. Will this exchange signify coming change? To me, this is a perfect litmus test. Turn on the social media for the people, or it’s just words.

There’s a reported fix that works for some, though not 100%:

AppleInsider reported on Monday that a simple procedure has successfully eliminated the bug for many users:

• Disable iMessage in Settings -> Messages

• Reset the iPhone’s Network Settings under Settings -> General -> Reset

• Reenable iMessage.

While the method worked, and continues to work, for most iPhone owners afflicted with the iMessage bug, some have reported that the message failures reappeared after a few hours, forcing them to repeat the steps above.

There’s conjecture that the upcoming 7.03 update will contain this fix. Let’s hope so.

Gizmodo:

This video shows the culmination of the work being funded mainly through public donations, including the massive, yet-to-be-finished 564-foot tower at its center.

The Sagrada Familia is probably the most famous unfinished building in the world and its design is fascinating whether you like it or not. This video of the finished building shows even more radical changes in the future.

The New York Observer:

Colin Powell makes the case: pissing people off is both inevitable and necessary. This doesn’t mean that the goal is pissing people off. Pissing people off doesn’t mean you’re doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

Understand the difference.

I piss people off on a regular basis. It’s rarely my goal but I honestly don’t care if it happens. This article explains it well.

If you were wondering how to use the information collected by the M7 chip on the new iPhone, you can download a new app from David Smith that turns your iPhone into virtual Pedometer.

MASCHINE STUDIO is the flagship music production system for tactile, creative beatmaking with an acclaimed sound library.

“We fought hard for iPad,” a pilot working for the airline told AppleInsider. He described the Delta deal as being about money, travel contracts, and Delta’s Information Technology staff historically being “in bed” with Microsoft.

Why would Delta want to listen to the people actually using the devices at 30,000 feet in the air.

With all that’s been written about The Beatles, I’m amazed that I’ve never encountered this story before. This is well written and really gives you a sense of what George was going through at the time, a time before The Beatles had broken through in the US.

George asked the salesperson if they carried any records by the Beatles and was met with a blank stare of complete unawareness and non-recognition. This introverted George slightly, along with the jarring moment when he saw England’s biggest rock star, Cliff Richard, in his recent move Summer Holiday being played as a second string feature at the local drive-in. These two incidents stayed with George, and when he reported back to the other Beatles upon his return to England, we wondered if they could make it in the States, and actually thought they would flop.

Addy is a startup that lets you embed your own customized turn-by-turn directions (Go about a mile, make a left at the pizza place with the green awning, my house is at the top of the hill, last house on the right) behind a custom URL.

For instance, if you were having people over to your home, an Addy could include details about nearby stores for food and drinks, a buzzer code, and parking instructions.

Good idea.

I’ve always been fascinated by Natural Language Processing (parsing language into a computer understandable form) and speech synthesis (turning raw text into an human sounding spoken voice). Siri is an example of both of these technologies at work.

This article and the video below does a terrific job filling in some of the blanks on how tech like Siri evolved over time and how it works.

Back in May, 2011, a number of small Apple developers using Apple’s in-app payment system received a legal complaint from Lodsys, threatening a lawsuit if the developer didn’t agree to license a specific Lodsys patent.

Within months, that brought a legal challenge by Apple, which saw a clear threat to its ecosystem. Apple had already paid to license Lodsys patents when they were in the hands of an earlier owner—Intellectual Ventures. So Apple went to court, arguing that Lodsys can’t demand additional payments by threatening iOS developers.

Now, after two years of litigation, it’s back to square one. The East Texas judge overseeing Lodsys’ systematic patent attack on app developers has refused to even consider Apple’s motion. Instead, he allowed the patent-holding company to settle all its cases—and then dismissed Apple’s motion as moot. By doing so, US District Judge Rodney Gilstrap—who has inherited the patent-happy East Texas court that once belonged to patent-troll favorite T. John Ward—has enabled Lodsys to threaten developers for months, and perhaps even years, to come.

This is infuriating.

The problem seems to be that all of the iOS developers mentioned in Apple’s complaint have, quite understandably, settled with Lodsys.

Judge Gilstrap ruled that Apple’s motion only applied to the seven defendants in the case. If they were out, the case was done. He ignored the Apple and developer arguments about the widespread nature of Lodsys’ campaign, declining to see any broader issue.

While Apple’s legal challenges continue, Lodsys continues to sue developers. In the meantime, Lodsys is getting countersued by companies they have pursued, such as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Lodsys had demanded Stewart pay $20,000—$5,000 for each of its iPad apps. Instead, Stewart sued Lodsys in Wisconsin, where Lodsys CEO Mark Small lives. (Lodsys’ official office, like so many patent-holding companies, is just an office suite in Marshall, Texas.)

Despicible situation.

CSS Regions allow you to flow content into a series of containers on a single page. It’s the equivalent of linking text boxes in an application like InDesign. It makes possible some layouts that were previously only possible by blurring the line between data and styles.

Music producer Steve Albini had a conversation with Kurt Cobain about the possibility of Steve producing Nirvana’s next album, their final studio album, In Utero. Kurt asked Steve to put together an outline of his thoughts on producing and the letter after the jump was the result. So much great stuff in there.

Good hire for Apple.

Update: In my effort to get caught up after a few days away, I may have posted this too soon. He apparently wasn’t involved in the design of the Fuel Band.

This is an impressive looking upgrade for one of the best drum samplers on the market.

Developer Greg Pierce talks to Charles Perry and Joe Cieplinski about updating his popular app, Drafts, to iOS 7.

eleMount – This universal mount raises the bar, allowing gadgets (smartphone and tablets) to be placed on a premium pedestal that matches their beautiful design and quality. One of the most user friendly mounts ever designed, eleMount sticks to any flat surface and doesn’t care if you prefer Apple or Android or like to keep your case on. eleMount works just as you’d expect. No suction cups, no locks, no instruction manual. You only need one hand to mount your device. This premium, high quality mount is CNC machined, carved from the finest solid aluminum and complements a sleek, minimalistic style. After all, shouldn’t your spectacularly designed device rest on an equally eye-catching pedestal?

NPR:

Here’s how the cable business works: Cable companies pay monthly fees to media companies for every channel they carry as part of basic cable. And then, of course, they pass those fees onto you, the subscriber. As the chart below shows, those fees vary widely — from $5.54 per month per subscriber for ESPN, all the way down to $.05 per month per subscriber for CMT Pure Country. In other words, if you have cable, you’re paying at least $5.54 per month for ESPN — even if you never watch it.

This series of scatterplots shows the relative IMDB scores for shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and The Wire. Well done, though I would argue that the charts show how much people love a show, as opposed to any measure of quality. But no matter. Still interesting.