Cal Worthington was one of the true icons of Los Angeles. He sold cars and there was just no avoiding his commercials and his ubiquitous catchphrase, “Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal.” Every one of his commercials featured Cal and his dog Spot. Spot turned out to be one of an ever-changing menagerie of animals, sometimes an elephant, sometimes an alligator, sometimes a camel. It was all part of the show.

We’ll miss you, Cal.

Thanks to Global Delight, maker of Voila – A Powerful Screen Capture Tool for Mac, for sponsoring this weeks’s RSS feed. Give it a try.

Love it.

An Ohio man named Noam Lazebnik is suing Apple for splitting the final season of Breaking Bad into two individual seasons and charging a separate price to purchase each “Season Pass”.

Two sides here. Apple clearly lists each of the episodes included with the package, so does not appear to be misleading in any way. But the Season Pass description on that same page, says:

This Season Pass includes all current and future episodes of Breaking Bad, The Final Season.

Certainly open to interpretation.

There have been a number of posts discussing the impact of the release of the Samsung Galaxy Gear and, to a lesser extent, Qualcomm Toq smart watches. Some coverage hails the start of a revolution. But I found Mike Elgan’s ComputerWorld piece much closer to reality.

Press and pundits are treating these new entrants as the beginning of the revolution. But they’re not. They’re throwback, unserious relics from the past. They will both fail in the market. And they don’t represent the awesome smartwatch lineup to come.

If Apple chooses to enter this market, you can bet the farm that it won’t be with a product that looks anything like the Samsung and Qualcomm offerings.

This page sorts all TV shows available to stream on Netflix, sorted according to IMDB rank. A nice alternative to Netflix’s own rating system, this list is hand curated by http://suggestashow.com, so be sure to click the Suggest a Show link on the IMDB page if your favorite show is missing.

Have a favorite TV or movie recommendation site? Post it in the comments.

A seminal moment for special effects, the Alien chestburster scared a lot of people and was a marvel of mechanical engineering. The video below shows how it was built, and the post’s title link will take you to a page filled with all sorts of goodies.

Since this was from 1978, Steve was likely making an appearance to promote the Apple II. Sigh. Big wave of nostalgia.

There was a slight glitch in the stabilizing system, but looks to be minor and fixable.

LADEE’s reaction wheels were turned on to orient and stabilize the spacecraft, which was spinning too fast after it separated from the final rocket stage, Worden said. But the computer automatically shut the wheels down, apparently because of excess current. He speculated the wheels may have been running a little fast.

This launch is a critical step in enabling high-bandwidth communications with future long haul manned missions to Mars and beyond.

If you are on the US east coast and have clear skies tonight (Friday, Sept 6) around 1130p, keep an eye out for the launch.

This strikes me as a very interesting strategy. The way I read it, by installing the Chrome browser, you are enabling Chrome apps that you install to live outside the browser.

Chrome Apps amount to a Trojan horse for Google. By way of the Chrome browser, the company is essentially putting its own app ecosystem right on top of Windows and OS X. It’s a play that’s been months in the making. “There are still reasons why a developer would build a native app over a Chrome App today, but we’re working to tackle each one,” Rakowski says. Google began promoting a handful of Chrome Apps (then called Packaged Apps) in May. In July, its Chrome notification center was pushed out to Windows and Chrome OS users, allowing for alerts and pop-ups outside the browser window. And for months, Chrome’s developer channels have shipped with an app launcher that lives in the Windows taskbar — this launcher rolled out to the public today too.

The new apps look and behave much like the native apps you find on Windows and OS X. They’re built using web technologies, but also with Chrome-specific code that means they won’t be able to run on other web browsers — they’re truly Chrome apps. They can exist outside of your browser window as distinct apps, work offline, and sync across devices and operating systems. They can also access your computer’s GPU, storage, camera, ports, and Bluetooth connection. Chrome Apps are, for now, only available through Chrome on Windows or Chrome OS on a Chromebook. Mac users will have to wait another six weeks before their version of Chrome will be updated.

Will be interesting to see how this all works on top of Mac OS X.

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With Intermission, you can jump back and replay something you missed, then resume live playback. Use it to pause any audio while you take a call, answer the door, or use the restroom. You can even pause streaming audio on services like Pandora, iTunes Radio, or Spotify to build a buffer, then skip right past the ads and songs you don’t want to hear!

Another great looking app from Rogue Amoeba.

An extended edition of an article originally published on MacStories.net, “Writing On The iPad: Text Automation with Editorial” contains an in-depth review and detailed guide to Editorial, a revolutionary Markdown text editor for iPad with unique automation features. After reading this book, you’ll have a new perspective on what is possible to accomplish on an iPad with Markdown and text automation.

A new book from Federico Viticci.

Back in 2010 the NSA published “Hardening Tips for Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’” (PDF), a terse, two-page pamphlet recommending a series of security precautions. The agency hasn’t updated that pamphlet for more recent versions of OS X—so I thought I’d do so in the agency’s stead.

Some security tips and explanations.

More iOS music goodness from IK Multimedia.

This product announcement really has me excited. The do-not-call registry caused the telemarketing industry to shift their gears and develop a new strategy, the robocall. When a human being calls you, you can ask them to take you off their list and, legally, they have to comply or face stiff penalties. Their response? Robocalls. Speaking from personal experience, the vast majority of telemarketing calls I’ve received have been recordings, with no way for me to relay my do-not-call request.

Enter Nomorobo, a free service that screens your calls in real time. If it determines that the call is a robocall, it intercepts the call with a warning message heard only by the caller, and your phone doesn’t even ring.

Of course, not every robocall is evil.

Doesn’t block school closings, appointment reminders, weather advisories and other legal robocalls.

Nomorobo launches on September 30th. My hopes are high that this will work.

A federal jury yesterday rendered a verdict that makes Google (Motorola) a convicted patent troll. It has been found to have breached the duty of good faith and fair dealing flowing from Motorola’s FRAND licensing pledges to standard-setting organizations. None of the companies typically described as trolls have actually been convicted of similarly unlawful conduct.

Ouch.

Neil Young has long been working on an alternative to CDs and digitally encoded music formats. His Pono Music project is an attempt to significantly raise the bar on music fidelity.

The key difference between Pono and industry leaders such as iTunes or Spotify is Young’s focus on audio fidelity. An avowed enemy of the CD, Young now wants to “save listeners” from the MP3. “The simplest way to describe what we’ve accomplished is that we’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to its original artistic quality – as it was in the studio,” Young wrote. “Hearing Pono for the first time is like that first blast of daylight when you leave a movie theatre on a sun-filled day.”

Perhaps he is tilting at windmills, but he is persistent and getting a fair amount of attention, especially from professional musicians. Time will tell.

I bet these sound incredible.

Some nice looking guitars and basses here including a Rosewood Telecaster, a Geddy Lee 1972 Jazz Bass and a Gold Top Dusty Hill Precision Bass.

Ever hear of Marty Glickman? He was on the Olympic team that represented the US in Berlin in 1936, alongside Jesse Owens. The documentary, Glickman, tells the story of Marty’s youth as a runner, his trip to the Berlin games (great story, don’t want to spoil it here), and then his rise to become one of the most influential sportscasters in history. Just as most musicians are influenced by the Beatles, most sportscasters have been influenced by Marty Glickman.

Glickman is available on HBO, HBO on-demand, and HBO Go. Terrific documentary.

Mick Jagger’s letter to Andy Warhol, asking him to design the infamous Sticky Fingers album cover.

In my short sweet experience, the more complicated the format of the album, e.g. more complex than just pages or fold-out, the more fucked-up the reproduction and agonising the delays. But, having said that, I leave it in your capable hands to do what ever you want………..and please write back saying how much money you would like.

One of my favorite Stones’ albums. Great letter.

Sony announced a new series of lens cameras, designed specifically as smartphone attachments. Each QX lens has no screen and no body. The camera smarts are inside the lens housing, communicating with the smartphone via WiFi. There’s an attachment that connects the lens to your phone, though that is not strictly necessary. The QX app converts your smartphone screen into a realtime viewfinder. When you press the shutter release on the lens, a compressed version of the image is sent to your phone’s image library. The full-size images are stored in a memory card on the lens.

I really like this idea, though it is hard to imagine mounting the lens on my phone every time I want to take a picture. Something you might get used to, I suspect, and worth it if the images are significantly better than any I can capture with my phone’s built-in camera.

One aspect that I find most intriguing is the fact that the app can control the lens remotely, with the ability to release the shutter, start/stop movie recordings, and adjust common photographic settings like shooting mode, zoom, Auto Focus area and more. This means I can mount the lens on a tripod, move to a comfortable position, make all my adjustments, then take my shot, all remotely. In addition, this lets me take my shot without touching the lens, avoiding vibrations that might affect focus.

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