I love that these types of transitions no longer require Flash.

I have never used a case on my iPhone, except for the Mophie Juice Pack Plus. Having the extra battery power made it worth while and the Mophie never let me down. Good seeing it available for the iPhone 5.

Zakk Wylde, Lee Ritenour, JJ Grey & Mofro, and Rock Candy Funk Party (RCFP)–featuring Tal Bergman, Joe Bonamassa, Ron DeJesus, and Mike Merritt–will take The Iridium stage to celebrate Les Paul’s 98th birthday with more than a week of shows June 3-12.

I was at the first celebration at the Iridium in New York after Les died sitting at a table with Zakk Wylde and Steven Van Zandt. Jeff Beck played that night — it was absolutely amazing.

Jalopnik:

Sydney has been having a big problem with oversized trucks driving into tunnels that are too low. So Sydney needed a stop sign that is absolutely impossible to miss. Here it is and it’s amazing.P

It’s a curtain of water with a stop sign projected onto it.

I don’t know – it seems like they might scare the daylights out of the driver and cause even more havoc.

Slate:

…as a scientist, I can’t help but notice that every now and again, just sometimes, maybe, Trek ventures into some pretty dicey science territory. Let me be clear: I have no problem with faster-than-light travel, time travel, teleporters, the Universal Translator, or anything like that. Every genre has a conceit, a gimme, and in scifi that means advanced tech that we can’t necessarily explain today. That’s fine, and as long as it’s internally consistent in the story I’m happy.

My beef is usually when the plot relies on some error in science, or when the tech is used inconsistently.

In honor of the release of the latest Star Trek movie today, this should get the Trekkies all wound up.

Police were called to calm Star Wars and Doctor Who fans at a science fiction convention in Norwich, UK, after the two groups got into a heated argument, the BBC reports.

Meanwhile the Star Trek fans just watched from the sidelines, recording the fracas on their Windows 8 phones.

Moving into Union Square is great for Apple.

Jason Wilson, VentureBeat:

EA is doing away with its Online Pass program from this point forward, a decision the video game publisher says is partially based on player response.

“Yes, we’re discontinuing Online Pass,” EA senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed to GamesBeat in an e-mail. “None of our new EA titles will include that feature.”

Online Pass was EA’s attempt to short circuit the used game market. New console games included an “online pass” code that players needed to input in order to play their games online. Games purchased second-hand from GameStop and elsewhere required users to purchase an additional code in order to play.

With all the bad press that EA’s getting this year over SimCity and other fumbles, it’s no wonder they did away with this program. It was as welcome as a turd in a punchbowl.

“Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”

That is the line that the DOJ is using in its e-book case against Apple. However, when you look at it in context with the rest of the comments Jobs made, it’s pretty innocuous.

Google is pissed off that Microsoft made a YouTube app for Windows Phone, but excluded the advertising. Here is a section of Google’s letter:

“Unfortunately, by blocking advertising and allowing downloads of videos, your application cuts off a valuable ongoing revenue source for creators, and causes harm to the thriving content ecosystem on YouTube,” says Google’s letter, addressed to Microsoft’s Todd Brix.

Actually Google, Microsoft has it right — this sounds like a great YouTube app.

I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland, but I won’t be able to catch this event. If you’re in Edinburgh, stop by and check it out.

Jim and Dan talk about Google’s recent announcement including Google Play Music All Access and changes the changes coming to Google+, Larry Page’s voice issues, the release of The Loop magazine app, and the issues that arise when launching such an app.

Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME5 for 30% off), and Shopify.

Eight years after Google launched Maps as a beta product, the search giant is reinventing the map for a new data rich web that lives on fast broadband, and runs on computers with oomph to spare.

Glad to see it.

Statement by Apple spokesman Steve Dowling:

“Apple is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, having paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012,” Dowling said in a statement. “We also help create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. by keeping our R&D in California and creating category-defining products like the iPhone, iPad and the app store, which has generated billions of dollars in sales for software developers.”

If they are going to ask Apple about its offshore money, they should ask the politicians too.

Gizmodo:

On December 21st of last year, Commander Hadfield and his team (Expedition 35) docked with the ISS after a two-day flight in aboard a Soyuz TMA-07M, and began their mission.

Hadfield was the first to realize, on a large scale, that we don’t want a lecture, we just want to see cool stuff. So he told what amounts to the Good Parts version of living in space. He got results, too. His most popular video has 7 and a half million views, with several more in the millions or hundreds of thousands.

Commander Hadfield made all Canadians very proud.

The 50 billionth app has been downloaded from Apple’s App Store. The winner hasn’t been announced yet, but we’ll update the info when it comes out.

Jon Seff for Macworld:

Like Spotify and its ilk, All Access offers millions of tracks (although Google didn’t say how many millions, or which music labels for that matter) for streaming on Android phones and tablets, as well as from a Web browser. And in the process, Google has also taking a big swing at its Android app partners like Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody.

It seems suspicious to me that Google won’t tell us which music labels they have or how many songs they have. That immediately leads to the assumption that it’s not that good.

I’m not at all surprised that Google is taking a swing at its competitors. The third-party app developers and services are making money from Google’s operating system and users — it makes sense that Google would want to cash in on some of that.

Turning back to the browser, Pichai said that Chrome now has 750 million active monthly users—an increase of 300 million users from last year. Much of that growth is happening on phones and tablets: Chrome works on both Android and iOS, and Pinchai stressed that its goal is to “move the mobile Web forward.”

It will be interesting to see what Google is going to do with Chrome, but I don’t see it as an operating system alternative right now.

Daniel Eran Dilger:

Malware targeting mobile devices is rapidly growing in both the number of variants found in the wild and in their complexity and sophistication, but the only platform being actively targeted is Google’s Android, which researchers now say is resembling Windows on the desktop PC.

Perfect.

I supported this. It’s always nice to see what how people can move things forward.

Ive is making the point that whilst embellishments (like skeuomorphic design elements) can be perceived as clutter, that’s not the core problem. The actual issue is that such designs focus on analogy rather than essence: a paper book itself, rather than the novel inside.

This is a great article from Matt Gemmell.

The 40-year-old co-founder of the world’s No. 1 Internet search engine said that doctors have been unable to identify a cause for the “very rare” nerve problems affecting his vocal cords, but that he has been making progress in his recovery and is “fully able to do all I need to at home and at work,” he wrote on his Google+ page on Tuesday.

I hope he gets better soon.