Vesper is a simple and elegant tool for collecting notes, ideas, things to do — anything you want to remember. Use tags to group related items into playlist-like collections. Vesper imposes no system; organize and curate your notes whatever way comes naturally to you. Eschewing complications, Vesper’s focus is on how it feels to use it.
Great looking app from John Gruber, Brent Simmons and Dave Wiskus.
Dan and Jim discuss what could be announced at Apple’s 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference next week in San Francisco. Later they discuss the risk of malicious, hacking iPhone chargers, the importance of an external power source for your phone at events like WWDC, Apple and Samsung’s US market rivalry, The White House’s war on patent trolls, and more.
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According to VCs, without VCs we wouldn’t have Silicon Valley.
Venture capital is the lifeblood of our industry; the jet fuel in our Gulfstream; the saliva in our 23andme test. If it weren’t for free and easy capital, Instagram and Tumblr and {insert your employer’s name here, you unit-test-skipping, standup-meeting-lying bullshit artist} would have had to come up with a pesky business model.
He’s at it again—and it’s funny.
Eddie Van Halen is absolutely amazing. Having the tracks isolated, you can really hear him play.
Less than a tenth of Android users care that it’s open
The number of people who care that Android is open is about the same as the number of people who run Linux
This was a fascinating read.
A new posting on Intel’s blog from Dan Snyder talks about Thunderbolt 2 – the next generation of Thunderbolt technology that will be coming to market in 2014.
Known up to now by its Intel code-name, Falcon Ridge, Thunderbolt 2 doubles Thunderbolt’s bandwidth to 20 Gigabits per second. Intel says this is enough to do 4K video file transfer and display simultaneously (4K is so-called “Ultra HDTV”). The connection is DisplayPort 1.2, so it’s backwards-compatible with today’s cables and connectors.
Intel already revealed that Falcon Ridge was due to go into production before the end of the year, and this news reiterates that. Things will be ramping up next year, so mark 2014 as the year of Thunderbolt 2.
I remember all of these.
The Washington Post will phase in a paid online subscription model for Web content starting June 12, charging some readers $9.99 a month for access to more than 20 articles a month on desktop and mobile devices.
For $14.99 a month, readers can get a premium package that includes access to all of The Post’s custom apps.
It will be interesting to see how they do with this strategy.
New versions of BBEdit and TextWrangler are available for download from Bare Bones Software web site. Bug fixes – no new features. Grab updates from the Mac App Store if that’s where you downloaded them from.
Typical Masshole.
The U.S. International Trade Commission today reached a decision [PDF] in the ongoing Apple vs. Samsung case, ruling that Apple infringed on Samsung Patent No. 7,706,348, titled “Apparatus and method for encoding/decoding transport format combination indicator in CDMA mobile communication system.”
It’s important to note that any sales ban that comes from this ruling will only affect older iPhone models. The iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 and future models will not be held up with this decision.
OS X has been updated with lots of fixes. The download is available in the Mac App Store — just check for updates.
Market research firm comScore on Tuesday released results of its latest research into smartphone market share in the United States. The results showed that Apple is leading and growing faster than its competition, including Samsung.
During the three months ending April 2013, Apple held 39.2% of the U.S. market, up 1.4 points from the 37.8% it held in January 2013. For April, Samsung has 22.0% market share, up only 0.6 points from the 21.4% it held in January.
HTC (8.9%), Motorola (8.3%) and LG (6.7%) round out the top five. All three were down slightly in the April report.
Android leads the platform race for the April report with 52.0% of the U.S. share, but that’s down -0.3 points from the 52.3% it held in January.
Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, is up 1.4 points to 39.2% in the April report. iOS had 37.8% in the January report.
BlackBerry (5.1%), Microsoft (3.0%) and Symbian (0.5%) round out the top five. None of these companies grew market share.
The White House announced a set of executive actions and policy recommendations Tuesday aimed at preventing certain patent-holding firms, known as “patent trolls” to their detractors, from abusing the patent system.
The Obama administration’s actions are intended to target firms that have forced technology companies, financial institutions and others into costly litigation to protect their products. These patent-holding firms amass portfolios of patents and focus on pursuing licensing fees rather than using the patents to build new products.
Good.
One of the biggest parts to making a song sound good is having an experienced engineer to mix and master your work. It’s great to see professionals get together and give indie artists an affordable way to have their songs sound top notch.
Until now reading aids for the visually impaired and the blind have been cumbersome devices that recognize text in restricted environments, or, more recently, have been software applications on smartphones that have limited capabilities.
In contrast, the OrCam device is a small camera worn in the style of Google Glass, connected by a thin cable to a portable computer designed to fit in the wearer’s pocket. The system clips on to the wearer’s glasses with a small magnet and uses a bone-conduction speaker to offer clear speech as it reads aloud the words or object pointed to by the user.
I’ve been testing out Byword’s new blog features on The Loop and it works like a charm. This is great update. The Mac version is available on the Mac App Store.
Apple posted this PDF today showing the economic impact its current and future facilities have on Cupertino.
App Camp for Girls wants to address the gender imbalance among software developers by giving girls the chance to learn how to build apps, to be inspired by women instructors, and to get exposure to software development as a career. Our goal is to grow our non-profit organization into a national force, with programs in multiple cities, helping thousands of girls.
Much respect to Jean MacDonald.
Fraser Speirs uses his experience in education to give some suggestions for iOS 7.
This is a great list. The more I mix a song, the worse it seems to get because after a while you just keep tweaking until there is nothing left to the original magic of the song. That’s when I usually walk away for a few days and come back refreshed.
According to WBZ sports reporter Dan Roche, the pilot on his JetBlue flight from the Steel City back to Boston did a little gloating himself.
It’s way too early to say the Boston Bruins have won the series, but this is classic.
This week’s iMore Show podcast was a WWDC preview. Rene Ritchie hosted; I was there and our special guest was some homeless guy Jim Dalrymple. Watch as that fucker laughs uncontrollably every time he sees my headphones and calls me Princess Leia.
It’s great to see Reeder’s developer Silvio Rizzi adding support for these services.
Katie Marsal:
The U.S. Department of Justice’s opening statements in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple have been published online, laying the groundwork for what the government hopes will prove illegal collusion between Apple and book publishers that led to higher prices.
I think the DOJ is going to have a tough time proving this. Tim Cook recently said at the D Conference that Apple wouldn’t admit to something they didn’t do. Cook is going to fight this and good for them.
MindNode is an easy to use and elegant mind mapping app for iOS and OS X. Whether you’re brainstorming for your next project, organizing your life, or taking notes during a meeting, MindNode lets you collect, structure, and expand your ideas. And integrated iCloud sharing means you always have your mind maps with you.
You can learn more about MindNode here.
The Short Films of Matthew Modine will be available tomorrow in the iTunes Store.
iMore is one of the sites that includes some great photography in its posts. Over the weekend they put together a story from several of its writers detailing what gear they use to shoot and edit.
Michael Mulvey:
In the 2010’s photo, the connection is no longer one-to-one between the audience and the performers. A middleman has been inserted between the two sides. What this means is the priority is to capture a great version of what’s happening, not to experience the performance.
Just look at those two photos. I’m guilty of doing this at recent shows too.