In June of 2013, I made an interesting discovery about the Android phone (a Motorola Droid X2) which I was using at the time: it was silently sending a considerable amount of sensitive information to Motorola, and to compound the problem, a great deal of it was over an unencrypted HTTP channel.

Scroll down and take a look at the information Motorola is gathering about its users.

[Via Ben Brooks]

Rob Fahey, Gamesindustry.biz:

“… Does anyone really think that a senior, superbly wealthy executive has a bad show at E3, hits the phones and organises a new CEO gig at a multi-billion dollar company to parachute himself into in the space of less than a month? As much as it’s a great story to tell – Mattrick fired for Xbox One’s failures, quickly lining up a new role to make it all look better to the world – it’s clearly, patently not accurate.

“Don Mattrick’s intention to leave Microsoft (for Zynga, ultimately, but I believe that other roles were considered) has been around for months. His bosses – including, ultimately, Steve Ballmer, who may have had a direct hand in choreographing this move – will have been informed of Mattrick’s plans for some time and will have been working behind the scenes to figure out a succession plan for the Xbox division. What has changed, I believe, is the timing.”

Microsoft’s head of Interactive Entertainment Business, Don Mattrick, is taking over the reins at embattled social gaming giant Zynga. It’s an interesting departure and the timing is already getting tongues wagging; Rob Fahey tries to take a more measured look at the change.

This is the way I do it. There is no substitute for putting a mic on an amp—mixing in a DI can also add something to the song.

Small roundup on CSS features that will enhance your web typography.

Only Merlin Mann would ever think to do this.

That implies a net present value of about $40 for each account. This is quite a drop from early 2010 when the value was $866.

Wow.

David Chartier:

“Yes, I live a life of confirmatory non-denial. This is why I drink.

“What I can tell you is that if we were working on some things for Apple’s new things, we would probably have some planned for both the short term and less-than-short term. Since the less-than-short term category is the more interesting of the two, I’ll bet you one whiskey sour that things like UI Dynamics and AirDrop in iOS 7 are really fun things to namedrop enigmatically in a blog post.”

These are true.

Appsfire is a delightful and elegant mobile guide to the best apps. If you believe the App store is not doing enough to help you find the apps that are right for you, try Appsfire. It features an incredibly fast and accurate app search, curated lists of apps and deals, it shows you the apps your friends like and more. In addition, they also help developers grow which is very important. Download Appsfire in the App store or get it here.

The Flag of Equal Marriage is an evolving protest flag for equal marriage rights in the US. It includes one star for each state which recognizes and performs same-sex marriages. We want to see the Flag of Equal Marriage with all 50 stars lit up to match the American flag.

These are brilliant.

Jean-Louis Gassée takes a look at recent events at BlackBerry. The outlook isn’t good.

I’d like to thank StackSocial for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. StackSocial exclusively brings you the The iStack Mac Bundle 3.0. 9 incredible Mac apps that will turn your Mac into a monster. These apps are worth $517, but the deal price is only $29.99! The first 5,000 buyers receive an additional app for FREE. Go get it!

Ben Bajarin:

Overall, Apple is continuing their trend of adding new and useful features on an annual basis. But more importantly, in the grand scheme of things, OS X Mavericks represents Apple’s commitment to innovate uniquely for different form factors. Apple has drawn a line in the sand and stated with their actions that they believe software for the PC is different and should be treated different than software for tablets and smartphones.

In other words, the total opposite of what Microsoft is trying to accomplish.

Thank goodness.

In your iTunes End User License Agreement:

You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons.

It’s amazing how many things I miss in these license agreements.

Great news for Michael Jackson fans.

Today on the quarterly conference call, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins announced that BlackBerry 10 would not be coming to the PlayBook as previously expected. Apparently the performance wasn’t up to snuff, and Heins want the focus back onto core products.

It’s not like there’s enough PlayBook users to bother with anyway.

Many of the problems with common folder-based hierarchies are solved by the use of tags in the sense that no document has a single location with which it is associated. Instead, tags allow documents to exist in any number of locations based on its specific categorizations.

This is a very good point and one I didn’t bring up in my first look of Mavericks.

Justin Esgar built iCloud syncing into SignMyPad so users could access the documents on their iPhone as well.

Nonetheless we were denied for our use of iCloud. Apple’s reasoning was that they will not allow iOS applications to use iCloud to sync “non-user-generated” data between devices. After some lengthy followup, we learned that while using a “drawing application” to create a new piece of art and then saving that file would be considered “user-generated”, using our app to add a signature and content to a PDF and saving it as a new file is not “user-generated”. The exception, of course, being for Apple’s own iOS applications, like those in iWorks. So after a long phone call with Apple that equated to my logical arguments being repeatedly contested with the same sentence from an apparent script (“your app does not follow our guidelines regarding user-generated documents in iCloud”), what was their recommendation for how to get over this hurdle? Use a 3rd party iCloud competitor. Wow.

I don’t get it.

Great looking second edition book from Jeff Carlson.

During iTunes Radio’s first year, Apple will pay a label 0.13 cents each time a song is played, as well as 15% of net advertising revenue, proportionate to a given label’s share of the music played on iTunes. In the second year, that bumps up to 0.14 cents per listen, plus 19% of ad revenue.

That compares to the 0.12 cents Pandora pays labels per listen on its free service. Apple is also offering music publishers more than twice as much in royalties than Pandora does.

And Pandora is looking to pay less.

Now Jim can start a Kickstarter campaign to build a swimming pool filled with Heineken.

The Les Paul Foundation submitted formal paperwork requesting a postage stamp for Les Paul. But we need your help. Sign the petition below to show your support for a U.S. stamp issued for Les Paul’s 100th birthday on June 9, 2015. Be a part of our push to convince elected officials that this needs to happen for Les!! Any questions can be sent to [email protected].

People, let’s make this happen.

A 77-year-old Boston Bruins fan has revealed that the team gave her tickets for life when she said she couldn’t afford them anymore.

Great story.