Great idea and I don’t mind paying for a service, but to be honest, having Reeder support is vital for me. Federico Viticci has a more in-depth look at the service.

Teacher’s Pet is an elegant contextual to-do list and reminder app, designed specially to help you do your job more effectively.

Nice looking app.

For the second consecutive study, Apple ranks highest among manufacturers of tablets in overall owner satisfaction. Apple achieves a score of 836 and performs well in four factors: performance; ease of operation; styling and design; and features.

Apple’s rating was a 5, which is the highest JD Power gives. Amazon, Samsung and Asus all received a 3, which JD Power classifies as “About average.” Acer got a 2 — that’s classified as “The rest.”

Consumer Reports talking about Apple:

The company scored far higher than the other big companies for the elements that make for successful online and phone support: ease of contacting staff, clarity of advice, technical knowledge, patience, and time for follow-up.

And here is what they said about Windows-based companies:

Clearly, there’s room for improvement in tech support: 24 to 40 percent of respondents who sought phone or online help from makers of Windows-based computers said the staff’s patience, knowledge, or clarity was fair at best.

This is so great. Don’t steal, people.

Doug van Spronsen writing about Ron Johnson and JCPenney:

I am not suggesting that great design isn’t effective, quite the contrary. But if the root cause of the issue is deeper, it might be better to start the strategy process a few layers back.

Great article and I agree. Selling iPhones, iPods and iPads is fairly easy because they are great products — the business side of things was working. Couple that with well-designed retail stores and you’ve got a winner.

The move has been a hugely positive one for us, it’s helped establish Tor and Tor UK as an imprint that listens to its readers and authors when they approach us with a mutual concern—and for that we’ve gained an amazing amount of support and loyalty from the community. And a year on we’re still pleased that we took this step with the imprint and continue to publish all of Tor UK’s titles DRM-free.

Hey Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple – are you listening?

Comparing the Samsung Galaxy S4 to the S3 and Apple’s iPhone 5, the iPhone 5 was the clear winner.

Quality usually wins.

The TEC Foundation for Excellence in Audio has formally entered into an agreement to become part of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), strengthening the important work of both non-profits and the NAMM Show. All TEC activities, including the Technical Excellence & Creativity Awards, will join other marquee activities, events and efforts within the NAMM Foundation portfolio including the Museum of Making Music, research projects, the SupportMusic Coalition and global public service campaigns.

This is great news for NAMM, but more importantly the pro audio community.

More cool CSS3 magic.

Russell Holly for Geek.com:

If you head to the Storage section of the Settings on a new Galaxy S4, you’ll find that only 8.82GB is available to the user. That’s the total space available to you, so applications that were pre-loaded by your carrier and anything you sync over during account creation will pull from that amount. The rest of that 16GB you can’t even see as the user — Android tells you that the phone only has 8.82GB total, entirely cutting out the space used by the system itself.

Terrible.

I agree with Gruber on this. No matter what Apple does, someone will find a problem with it.

Samsung has earned something of a reputation for putting on unique and often rather cheesy live events to launch its new products. An example would be the Broadway-themed Galaxy S4 launch event in New York City. A recent effort from the phone’s Indian launch, however, takes things to a whole new level.

Watch the video. Then bleach your eyeballs and shove darning needles in your ears.

io9:

In the first three days of accepting applications, the Mars One project has received a whopping 20,000 applications, with more than 600 coming from China alone. The project plans to send a select group of colonists to the Red Planet for permanent settlement — with permanent being the key word.The Dutch aerospace project, which is aiming to put four humans on Mars by 2023, started accepting applications and audition tapes early last week.

No chance they make that very ambitious schedule but it’s good to dream. One question: Would you go on the one way trip if it was offered?

CleanMyMac 2 is an ingeniously simple and powerful system maintenance solution to get extra space and keep your Mac clean and well-organized.

Besides cleaning your hard drive of outdated cache files, system logs, language files and other unneeded data, CleanMyMac 2 also reduces the size of iPhoto libraries, helps find and delete large files and folders which haven’t been used for an extended period of time, correctly uninstalls applications, and so much more — reclaiming your Mac’s valuable hard drive space and keeping it running at peak efficiency.

CleanMyMac 2 is the simplest, safest, and most effective way to clean your Mac. Try it today for free.

I need some of these. I’m a bear when I get hungry.

I use Toontrack products all the time when I’m writing songs. Really good quality stuff.

Aaron Mahnke:

The goal isn’t to avoid mistakes, though, but to learn how to recover from them.

There’s some truth right there.

Instead of notes, scales and chords, we’re talking about fretting hand position, picking hand positions, strap-height, stance and how you hold your head, neck and shoulders. All of these things affect what you can do on the guitar.

Great video by Alex Vollmer about how we interact with our guitar. There is a preview video available — you can buy the full video for $5.

I use Google Calendar, Apple’s Calendar app, and Fantastical to manage my schedule. In general, my calendaring is in the best shape it’s ever been in: My colleagues can see my free and busy times, and schedule me for meetings, and we can even reserve our office’s conference rooms, all using the same system.

And yet it all feels a bit pedestrian, like I’m really just using a computerized, networked version of a paper calendar. What’s missing are features that could turn my calendar into something more like a personal assistant.

Jason Snell brings up a lot of solid points about how digital calendaring in its current form really comes up short in a lot of ways.

Jalopnik:

Ever wondered what happened to the mall in The Blues Brothers after Jake, Elwood, and all those cops drove right through it? They actually left it just the way it was, but that’s only the start of the Dixie Square Mall’s decline.

One of the most iconic car chases ever filmed.

Lee approaches a heavy-set man standing outside the red awning of a Carl’s Jr. burger restaurant. The man wears glasses and a black pinstripe suit. He inspects the iPhone and offers $100. Lee takes the cash, hands over the phone and gives the signal. Four officers swoop in and place the man in handcuffs, notching another arrest in the intensifying cat-and-mouse game playing out here and in other major American cities between law enforcement and criminals looking to profit from the burgeoning trade in stolen mobile devices.

Interesting look at how people on the street are buying and selling stolen iPhones, and how the cops are trying to stop them.

Notness is a modern, fast and easy to use Multiple Sclerosis diary App for iPhone and iPod Touch. Noteness is tailored to the requirements of a MS-Diary and goes without unnecessary gimmicks.

The app was written by Martin Hartl, a 21-year-old from Germany, who suffers from MS.

Gotta love The Macalope.

These people are pathetic.

[Via Matt Richman]

With Google Reader closing down, it’s nice to see Reeder adding support for some new services. I have a Feedbin account and tried it out earlier today — it worked great.

I’d like to thank the fine folks at AskingPoint for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

AskingPoint includes “Rating Booster,” the smart rating widget that uses your analytics to ask only your best users to rate your Apps. Proven to increase sales dramatically!

By Developers for Developers.

All you need is Heineken.